Doomed to Fail - Ep 101 - The Immortal Persian King: Cyrus The Great

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Today we go WAY back to 600 BC (-600 if you're like Taylor and want to be mathy about time) to the birth of the first of the Great Persian Kings, Cyrus the Great. We'll cover Cyrus's childhood, being raised thinking he was a shepherd's son, his return to the Persian Court, his conquest of the Medes, and the Fall of Babylon.We could go on so many side quests - this is just the beginning of this story!  Sources:Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great - https://www.amazon.com/Xenophons-Cyrus-Great-Arts-Leadership/dp/0312364695Dan Carlin’s Kings of Kings - https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-56-kings-kings/The Bible Cyrus the Great - Charles River Editors - https://www.amazon.com/Cyrus-Great-Founded-Achaemenid-Persian/dp/1704741963Will Durant - Our oriental heritage - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CF5NP9?binding=hardcover&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_thcv Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back on a lovely Wednesday evening, morning. I don't know what it is. And Taylor is going to kick us into the next 100 episodes of Doom to Fail. Oh, yeah, I am.

Thank you. Thank you, first. I remember, so we are doomed to fail. We are a podcast that releases twice a week, quick little 30 to 40 minutes of episode about true prime, history, sometimes engineering disasters, sometimes volcanoes, geogoraph, we don't know what we're going to do, but we know it's going to be interesting to us and we're entertaining ourselves. And you, and you, dear listener. And you, the listener, yes. And today, it is Taylor's turn to present. is are you ready cars i'm ready to can we do the guessing game or no we can i'm going to start i am going way way back like 600 bc all the way back all the way back all the way back ancient history

and something special for you by request i'm going to talk about the father of all of the persian empire the george washington or the king arthur of persia you know how i'm talking about don't you? Cyrus. Cyrus. I got one guessing situation right, I think. Fantastic. Specifically, Cyrus the Great and the fall of Babylon. There's so many little stories in this. I'm just going to talk about like a little bit. And I want to, oh, I read Xenophon's Cyrus the Great, like a weird translation where it was in first person. I've listened to Dan Carlin's The Kings of Kings for like the 90th time.

How many hours is that? That's got to be like 20 hours long. Many hours, yes, yes, very many. Listen to that. I listened to another just short book about Cyrus the Great and then also someone around here who had an awesome library died because a lot, there are a lot of awesome books at the at the thrift store. And I got four volumes of Will Durant's history. Look at this book. Look at this beautiful book.

And Dan Carlin, he quotes Wilderand a lot as like a great historian, but also mentions that Wilderant has like a 1930s view of the world also. So it's like a little old fashioned even for our times. But in the story of civilization, volume one is called Our Oriental Heritage. And this is where you talk about Cyrus the Great. So I read some of this. And then they also talk about Cyrus the Great in this book, the Bible. Oh, okay.

This is my Bible. It is inscribed to me. This is for Taylor Victoria Astairek from the first Presbyterian Church in Liberty of Illinois, October 14th, 1990. I don't know what the hell you do when you're eight in a Presbyterian church, but for whatever reason, they gave me this Bible. I do like old Bibles. I think they're very, very cool. This one isn't old. It's weird. Look at these pictures. They're like, I mean, the whole thing's weird. I was skimming through it. I was like, I just don't know what to do. But this has, like, pictures of like, ancient archaeological things, not pictures, drawings in it.

But it's kind of fun. And then I just. kept thinking about how Jesus was, of course he wasn't a carpenter, there are no trees there. He was a mason if he was alive, which is a whole other thing that I can yell about later. I meant more like the book of Kells type Bibles where somebody spent like three thousand years. You mean like the physical book? Yeah. Yes. Did anybody think that I was talking about the actual?

I did not. I did not, but you clarified it. I'm glad that you did. So good. I reckon there. Well, cool. this is my this is my bible and i will read from it later um also because um we're talking persians there's going to be a lot of like names that i'm going to try to pronounce

i wanted to break back my segment on things that you can name your future children um i don't think you should name your child cyrus i think cyrus silken sange i don't love that but do you know do you know cyrus is dad's name was it darius there is a darius there is a dari Darius is going to be his son-in-law. The whole thing. We'll talk about Darius. But his dad's name is Cam Bicey's. And I love Cam Bicy's Socan Sange.

He can be Cam Sokensang. So when people are like, oh, Cam, is that like, Cambrane or Campbell? He'd be like, no, Cambyces. I'm going to be like, fuck yeah, it is, Cam. I love that. So keep that in there for you. I wrote, shut up.

That's amazing. So I love it. So we're going to skim the waters with this. one there's a lot here a lot of it is myth a lot of it is propaganda and it's really really ancient history like by the time the bible was written this story is ancient history already so it's just like an old story and i'll tell you a little bit how we know some things about it but like it's really old um a quote that dan i think begins and ends his hours and hours of his series with is you must believe in ancient history even if it's not true um which is a quote by leo ferrer

Ferrer quoted by Pierre Brant in the intro to his book from Cyrus to Alexander. And that just means, like, ancient history is like the stories that shape us. And like, they're like who we thought we were. And like, that's all we have is like those little glimuses that we get from like carvings and like stories that are like pushed down. So it really doesn't, like, we'll never know if they're actually true or not. So like, let's believe them, you know. I guess.

Yeah, it's, I think it means, you know, the way I'm hearing it is, if you could err on the side of being cynical or on the side of accepting certain things, why not, why not accept it? Yeah, why not accept it? Exactly, exactly. So there are also several women in this story. And Dan specifically points us out, there's not a lot of women in these ancient history stories. There are a couple in here, which is really cool, which means they were like exceptionally powerful. The Xenophon book is called Cyrus the Great. and Xenophon is like an ancient historian and he wrote this book and it is essentially how to be a good leader and it is about Cyrus coming to power and conquering Babylon. So each, in the translation that I read, each section was like a lesson that you could learn as a leader and they were like, be nice to your troops, listen to people, admit your mistakes.

And the way that the editor had kind of poisoned it was like any leader could use this, you know, like the way people read like Machiavelli. and other leadership, older books. But it's also in this book, things like, you know, like, be nice to your truths. Like, let them plunder, you know, and like, let them take all the women they want and, like, let them take the slaves they want and things like that. So it's just like, you know, we're talking ancient history. This is biblical times. Shit was hard.

There's a lot about it, about, like, warfare and battles. And this is where I got the part that I think I's talked about with you. I can't remember when, but how, like, people never really stab each other with bayonets. when did we talk about that do you remember I don't remember which episode it was but I do remember that like it was if you're at the point where you could stab a person with a bayonet most will just drop their weapons and run yeah yeah but this is ancient warfare

we're pretty sure that they did like you would go out and you would stab like 15 people in the head before you get stabbed so like very bloody very brutal the problem is that like another author who wrote about this time Herodotus he wrote it his writing was like for the people who were there to recount it and it was probably more like spoken word than it was like a book that you would read so he skips over a lot of the details because he's like yeah yeah yeah they went to battle you know

you know you're like you don't know tell us tell us the details but a lot of those are lost are lost history um one really famous thing about um about cyrus is that he is like very very respectful of other people's cultures and religions. So there are people who look to him as like a gentle ruler, as like a ruler who lets everybody be themselves and we'll talk a little about what that means. But he sometimes is like, you know, most of the time, he's like, let me be in charge. He's the king of kings. So you can still be a king, but I'm going to be your king.

And you can do whatever you want to do as long as you like pay me taxes, you know, which is very nice considering most kings are like, you're my slave now. Give me everything. I'm burning everything down, you know? yeah so also very religious of course because he's like in the bible and so he's mentioned in the bible because when cyrus does take babylon he lets the jews go back to jerusalem um they were slaves in babylon and let's go back to jerusalem so this is in the exact

same part of the world where we're still having these like very similar conflicts 2,500 years later um so some things that we know about was babylon is iraq it is isn't it okay I'll tell you the name of the town I have it written here somewhere, but I'll let you know. Oh, also in, you know, in Cyrus's book about, wait, where did I put, where am I going to quote the Bible? Is it now or is it later? It's later. Okay.

But, sorry. So, yes, this is all, like, in the, Middle East is where this is all happening. And there's a lot of religious stuff in the Xenophon books that I read. Like Cyrus is like, God wants me to do this. He wants me to be in charge. And it kind of teeters in line between monotheism and polytheism. So it's around that time people are starting to worship just one God. And Cyrus is like potentially leaning towards just one. But I don't know how true that is or how much people need that to be true. But before Cyrus are great, Persians weren't.

in the history books like they kind of came out of nowhere they weren't not there and they weren't nowhere but they came into the Western world and like swept up and took over huge parts of like Asia and Asia Minor in Greece and the Middle East and no one will really do that until Alexander

the Great many centuries later so this is like a huge deal and it really puts Persians on the map Cyrus the Great is going to have many titles and these are really fun so I wanted to read them to you at the top Cyrus the Great is the king of Anjan. He's the king of Persia, the king of Medea, the king of Lydia, the king of the world, the king of kings, the great king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumer and Akkad,

the king of the four corners of the world and the king of the universe. So he did a lot of great stuff. Got it all. He got it all. I love that for him. And one more warning before we start, but I got kind of from reading all of this is like, And something I think I try to talk about a lot is, you know, examine your forefathers, but don't pretend that they're perfect, you know. And a lot of this will come back. I have, I think in my, at the end, I'm going to talk a bit about Putin and people who, like, you know, have that, like, mythical past. But this is definitely a mythical, a mythical story. We're going to cross into Putin territory. It's a tiny bit at the very end.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Cyrus was born into the Achaemenid empire. in around negative 600 in Anshan, Persia, which is now Fars, F-A-R-S, Provence, Iran. Does that, who knows, it's in Iran? Yeah, F-A-R-S, yeah. Yeah. His dad was Cambysi's the first. Thank you.

His dad was Cambysi's the first. The king of Anshan, he was the son of Cyrus the first. His dad died in the Battle of the Persian border in 551 BC, making Cyrus the king. Cyrus's mom was mandane of Medea, her dad. And so this is also like potentially a myth, but fun for making who you are. So his mom was a mead, part of the Median Empire, which is like another like Persian group of people, but not not the same, but like semi-related. Her dad, Astigates had a dream that a vine grew out of her back, out of his daughter's back, and covered all of Asia, like all of the known, the known world. So he interpreted that to be that her child would be

this like great king and takeover. But he didn't want that to happen because he wanted like his son to be the heir. He didn't want it to be like his grandson through his daughter. So he married her off to Cambyses because he didn't think that Cambyses would be a strong enough man to be the father of a great king, which is bitchy. So they did that. It also, that's, that was a, that was a like a good political deal because that strengthened the relationship between the Persians and the Medes. So now they're they have this marriage in between

them, but he still doesn't want his grandchild to be the king. He wants like one of his sons to do it. So once Man Dane, Cyrus's mom, gets pregnant, the king takes the baby and gives the baby to a man to kill

in the woods like Snow White. You know, remember that happens in Snow White? No, I was actually thinking about 300. where they put you in the woods you have to find the wolf. Let's actually get to 300 a little bit. In, maybe in this, we get to 300, we get to 300.

So he says, take this baby into the woods. Gives them to a man named Harpigis, who was like a sword bearer guy in the court and says, and Harpigus is like, I'm not going to kill this fucking baby. He can't kill the baby. So he gives it to a farmer man of the woods

named Mithridates. He was a shepherd. And Mithridates, at the same time, his wife happens to be having a baby, and that baby is still born. Very, very fortuitous. So he takes that dead baby, gives it back to Harpicus, and Harpacus gives it to the king and says, here you go, the baby's dead.

So everybody's happy. Then out in the village where young Cyrus is secretly a king, being a child, people can see that he's special. They can see that, like, people are following him. Like, the kids listen to him. They're like, son of a shepherd shouldn't be that special. So then they like start to get the idea that maybe he's this person. is like missing baby and then he comes back to the court and he comes back and is like reunited with

his family as like part of the court again and his grandpa the king was so pissed at harpigus because parpigus lied about killing the baby that he took harpigus's son killed him and they had a big banquet and he gave harpigus trays of meat to eat and after harpergis was done eating they said did did you enjoy your meal harpergis said yes i did and then he said we'll have the rest of it and did a thing and it was his son's head and hands the whole time that he was eating and Harbigis just picked it up and went home to bury his son because he knew that he was eventually going to be

going to be in trouble. That probably is made up but like it's a fun myth. Again, every one of these stories is just so game of throne like it's. Yes. For sure this was a game up throne at some point. Yes. But it's pretty convenient then that the heir will come, that the heir to the Persian throne would also be a mead by his like father, by his mother.

So all the things that he would, he, it's a good story. And so who cares? That's where Cyrus comes from as far as we're concerned. He grew up in the forest and then he came back. Either way, he becomes king of the committed empire. Tell them both quick. Yeah. I know we literally just said, believe the stories and don't be cynical.

But how much easier is it to lead men when you're like, I was raised this poor boy and everybody just followed me everywhere? versus I had 17 teachers and was like literally babied my entire like it's a it's a much better origin story I love that for an origin story that's right that's literally the story of that's in snow white it's in sleeping beauty which like take out to the woods and finds me someone else it's in Superman where he like is like given to a poor family whatever a farmer to like raise so yeah it's it's Mobley syndrome it's like literally just like the story of Mowgli that we just keep recreating in different ways. we could name a million of them yeah exactly um so i'm going to talk about the fall of babylon but i just want to tell you a little bit more about Cyrus's family and like what happens to all of them i think we're going to get there probably i mean not today but like eventually we'll talk about the rest of his family but Cyrus sets sets the stage for more great Persian kings and like a long line of them he probably had like 20 wives who knows and like who knows how many kids he had there's like some point in the story further along where like someone like killed his brother like not cyrus his brother but like some king killed his brother and you're like he could have had like a hundred brothers because if your dad has you know 30 wives each of them have five kids you know you have so many brothers it's not like you're killing sam yeah it's inconsequential yeah exactly cyrus probably had like 20 wives and a shit son of kids but his like

main wife or the wife that we're going to talk about now is a woman named cassende C-A-S-S-A-N-D-A-N-E, whatever. It might be spelled differently somewhere else. But it all accounts, they loved each other. And they had four kids that matter to the lineage. Camp Isis the second. Beridia, Ariston, and Atossa. Atossa is the daughter.

She probably married her brother, Cam Bicey as a second, because he became king right after Cyrus. This gets very confusing. I see your face. It gets confusing to her. So his son. It all sounds like the Bible. It's like His Adaya's, brothers, cousins, sisters, uncles.

And it is a biblical story. 100%. Fair enough, then. So, Cyrus had a dream that Darius, the dude that you mentioned earlier, who was like a guy that was around, had wings and, like, became very powerful. So he has a feeling that this guy is going to, like, somehow usurp and, like, get it. in the rain and in the line. So he has his son and his daughter get married. Atossa and Cambysi the second get married.

Cambysi the second becomes king. He is killed by Bardia, Bardia, who is his brother. But he also might not have been him. He might have been an imposter named Guamara. And Guamara may have killed the real son of Cyrus and pretended to be him and then killed Cambysius II. So either was killed by his brother or killed by an imposter pretending to be his brother.

Which is fun. Taylor, we could, back in those days, me and you could be like siblings. And if I showed up and like when you're like 25 years old and was like I'm far, it's like, I don't even know who that. Like what, who? How do these people even know each other? Yeah, good question. Or even like, I don't wait. It's been a long time.

but you didn't watch the house of the dragon, right? Or you did? No. So we were watching, I was watching it and talking to some of our friends about it. And one of the friends was like, it's pretty convenient that you're guaranteed to have the hair color of your father in this thing. Because like, you know, like the really blonde dude will have a bunch of like kids with like sex workers. And you see all these like urchins with bright blonde hair. You're like, oh, that must be his child.

Actually, I never thought about that. Yeah, I never thought about that. That's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. so yeah who knows plenty of people running around they're all related um but either way now this like other other son perhaps imposter is in charge and it sounds like atossa the the daughter of cyrus is um really powerful in her own and she marries dryas and so he becomes part of the family

and then he overthrows the imposter slash potentially heir and he becomes king so yeah they call out the Because I think you're trying to pronounce it in a Greek way. It's either Darius or in Farsius Darius, Darius. Okay, I'll go Darius then. Yeah, go Darius. Darius just sounds like a guy I could know. I mean, because it's all descended from this one guy. Yeah.

Okay, so Darius is, Darius is great, and he is another big king who's going to do a lot of stuff. He and Atossa have a son, and their son. is the one in 300 do you know oh my the guy with the crazy piercings in his face yeah who they make like really big like exceptionally bigger than a human yeah i can't remember his name he's xerxes thank you yeah so xerxes is the one in 300 when like the 300 spartans blah blah blah we won't get there today but atossa then is either the daughter wife or mother of the first five kings of the empire so she's really important in in this story and like her own way she's definitely like there but let's go back to cyrus the great he became king in 559 bc the persians are

like their own kingdom but also have to like be accountable to the medes um and he doesn't love that his uncle is one of the median kings and there are a lot of different kings um and he wants to take over medea and that starts this huge like persian war and taking over things and just like growth of the empire that's going to last a really, really long time. And this is a story in the book, the Xenophon book that I read, this is about him, like, gaining his uncle's trust. And then, like, his uncle was like, you betrayed me because you want to take over my empire as well.

And he's like, well, it's kind of me to be in charge. And he has a lot of ambition. And he ends up, um, he ends up like, you know, taking over Medea and people really like Cyrus because of the thing that I said, he didn't give a shit who you worshipped. He didn't care who, you know, made like the day-to-day laws as long as like he was. like he was in charge it was fine the people really like they liked that um some people go as far to say he invented civil rights which is like pushing it because like again there were also like a

shit ton of slaves and a lot of people got their heads bashed and there was stabbing but um it was all ancient times but he was more lenient than other ancient kings um cyrus's army had a great calvary and archers there were many many battles we might talk about more i think later um because there's a bunch of them and they're all super interesting but he conquers lydie other parts of the east he gets all the way to india so he's like the if you look at a map like this empire kind of like upside down u shapes over the middle east and like that whole area in the middle of the u is babylonia and that's like the that empire so so one thing about babylon is it doesn't exist now but it was an ancient city in mesopotamia now in modern day iraq like you were saying

um the history dates back to the third millennium bc when it was a small town um hamarabi was one of the people who established the empire and the Code of Hamarabi, which I think we talked about before, too, is like the earliest written laws. When you talked about civil rights, I literally thought about the Code of Hamerati. There you go. That started in Babylon, way before

Cyrus got there. So there were a couple of things back and forth. Now we're in the Neo-B Babylonian Empire, which reached its zenith under King Nebuchadnezzar. So Nebuchadnezzar is also a really fun word. That was also the name of the

ship in the first matrix. Is it? Yes. I hope I'm not wrong. If I'm wrong, just yell at me on something. I believe I believe that they would name it that. So I believe you. So Nebuchadnezzar ruled from 605 to 562.

He did a bunch of building projects. So Babylon was like a pretty like metropolis city for being in the ancient world. There were the hanging gardens of Babylon, which like, you know, no one has ever seen. you know, essentially one of the wonders of the ancient world, a bunch of big building things. It was a really, really wealthy city. After he died, his, the kingdom went to a guy named Nabonitis. So Nabonitis is the next king. He wasn't nice in the way that Cyrus was. He left for like 10 years to go to other stuff and left a guy from the army in charge. No one really liked him. Things were kind of falling apart in Babylon, like politically speaking. Another thing that

Nabonitis did is he stole all of the statues from the cities around him. He was both trying to consolidate the religion and also like trying to make people afraid of him because this is a time when like people think that the statue is the god. You know, like they need that statue in their village to be able to worship, that kind of thing. And again, this is biblical times where the Bible is like, don't do that. And then the, um, Nabondayas is like, everybody. do it. Does that make sense? So, like, they're trying to... It's so different than praying at the altar today.

Yeah. Yeah. So they have their own, but they all have their own gods. So they're trying to, like, maybe consolidate into one. Like, that's something that is happening, like, at that time. And then, wait, let me think this is where I should read a little bit about the Bible. Yes, I think so. So there's parts in the Bible where they're like, God wanted something. Cyrus, the great to do this, to go into Babylon. So I'm going to read from Isaiah 45. It says Cyrus, God's instrument. Thus says the Lord who is anointed to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped,

to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes, to open doors before him and the gates should not be closed. I'll go before you and level the mountains. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. You know, it's weird.

I don't really get it. But, like, the idea is that, like, God gave Cyrus all of the power to do this and, like, helped him do it so that Cyrus would tell people that God was the only God. It's very, he's, God is very me, me, me in this. So here's, okay, so this is. What do you think? I don't know anything about this. I don't know anything about this.

But there's like this weird crossover element of it that I think is why it always loses me. Mm-hmm. So personally, like, I don't care what anybody believes, believe whatever you want. It doesn't matter to me. But personally, I think that the fundamental philosophy and teaching of religion is just a really good thing to have ingrained in you. The stories, it feels like. like you're being spoon-fed it, like a child, instead of being told, here's some basic fundamentals on how to live life, that if you discipline yourself to them, it's not a bad way of

living. It's just a way that it's fed to you that, like, I don't buy into. I clearly, it's clear and obvious all these people are real human beings that live at some point. But when you overlap the two together, it, it adds this fantastical element to like a story like Cyrus. which is like obviously factual but like why does it need to have like this like weird HBO miniseries component of like God being there in the red queen and I don't get it yeah because then it goes into like so Isaiah okay 4520 it says idols cannot save Babylon assemble yourselves and come together draw near your survivors of the nations they have no knowledge those who carry about their wooden idols and keep on praying to a god that cannot

save but also cyrus is like you can have your idols i don't care so doesn't think what's true and what's not because because it's in the bible and it's like put in this oh oh you know it's probably just people trying to later on ascribe god's intent on a real person okay right this much later you know and then but so much I forgot this is 600 years later. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

But some point of it is like, I am Lord, I am God. All about like, okay, calm down. Oh, this is, I think I've heard this before. The humiliation of Babylon, Isaiah 47. Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon, sit in the ground without a throne, daughter of Chaldea. For you shall no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones and grind your meal, remove your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers, pass through the rivers,

Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your shame shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I'll spare no one. Oh, Redeemer, the Lord of hosts in his name in the Holy One of Israel. I guess it's like they were having too much fun in Babylon, and they had to stop that from happening. I mean, gardening is pretty fun. It's true. It is fun. I've gotten really good gardening, Taylor.

I look like a crazy person, which, like, I mean, people see how I tend to my garden. I like, this guy's nuts. I'm happy for you. That's awesome. I was going to say So I just asked our friend Chad GPT to look this up So apparently the original So the Bible was written between

1400 BC and 1200 BC So that's before Cyrus Then it picked up again in 1000 BC to 722 BC Which is again before Cyrus Right Yes it was written then or about that about that time so all this stuff about Cyrus

probably happened in it's all the New Testament right old it wasn't the Old Testament it's an old one yeah because I did also look that up because Isaiah is the old testament I guess it would have been possible

because he was yeah so Psalms proverb and Job thought to have been composed from 10th to the 4th century BC I don't know this we're getting way in the weeds sorry go ahead was there you know so no one was there that wrote everything down we're like you know interpreting things the way we want to interpret them including us you know I like a fun story um I'm going to talk about the fall of Babylon in the funnest version of it that I found

um so Nabonitis is the king um he stole the statues no one likes him um Babylon Babylon isn't also just a city, it's like a whole area, like Babylonia, like an empire. And in 539 BC, Cyrus heads towards Babylon. That's like the great next big empire to conquer. His troops consist of Persians. That's the core. Those are his men that he's, like, trained from day one. There's Medes who are, you know, from the area who he had just conquered. They're, they're a great horsemen, so they're definitely there to help. And then there's other people from places that they conquered. There are some volunteers, some people are forced. But a lot of the military in this time, like, are people who are conscripted kind of like as they walk through your village they're like let's go

so you like have to go with them you don't have a choice so they're like walk past you while you're gardening and they're like Fars grab that hoe we're going and you got to like grab your hoe and put a bucket on your head and go because you don't have any armor because you live in Austin but you got to just go you know I can so I hope there's some fan art of of me with a bucket on my head like I'm a soldier Let's go. Let's go conquer Babylon. You're like, oh, who, I'm ready. I have little floaties on my arm. So either way, there's a lot of people. And then now we get into, like, this is my favorite myth about the fall of Babylon, is that they got there. And Babylon, they conquered cities on the way. And then the city of Babylon has, obviously, big walls around it, like a big city does. And they're like, well, we can't get it over the walls. So we're just going to sit here and try to weep them out. So people in Babylon start to run out of food. blah, blah, blah, all the things.

But at some point, at some point in like the outline of Babylon, the river Euphrates goes underneath the wall to bring water into the city. And Cyrus and his troops find a way to stop the river from flowing. They dam it up like a little bit further down. So the river dries up and they walk into Babylon underneath the wall on the riverbed, which I would like to believe because that sounds dope. Why did he want to invade Babylon? because they had they had it was like one of the largest and wealthiest counties in the world it was just next but he had everything already he had every well he had like a whole bunch of stuff around like iran and iraq and media empire all that but yeah yeah but he wanted more like these guys don't stop you know so he's a jerk off well they are like it describes him as like i think in the will gerrant it says he dies of ambition just like napoleon did you know and later we'll talk like this and

empire eventually goes to Alexander the Great, who also kind of considers himself as the last Persian king before like all of the ancient world started to fall. I definitely want to talk more about Alexander the Great later. But yeah, it's just ambition. It's just like, you're not going to be like, you know what, this is nice. I'm just going to sit here with this like this empire and I like it. Taylor, as an Iranian, what if I'm a descendant of these people and we somehow find a way to unlock my ambition to destroy every other podcast that we're competing against. I would love to fucking do that. Get some ambition under your butt. Go. You got to help me.

Your ancestors conquered Babylon and you're like, Go on Fars, wake up. I'm having a hard time marketing this podcast. Meanwhile, I have a bucket on my head and I'm carrying a hoe for some reason. I have some seeds in my pocket, you guys. Anyone want to come with me? You can have fruit in 17 years. you're gross we're going to follow that guy um so i love that i think that's really fun when they get there um you know people of babylon are like cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool like you know don't kill us you can have everything and one thing that that cyrus does um is he um

this is also part of the bible but he is like annoyeded by god to return people to their dwellings so a lot of people in in Babylon were enslaved and a lot of them were from Jerusalem. And so he let them all go home. That was basically Cyrus, like saving the Jews and let him go back to Jerusalem. And that was a really big deal. And that was to make him like a hero of the Old Testament. A lot of the stuff that we know about this particular part of the story and the story itself

comes from a thing called the Cyrus cylinder. It's like a large play cylinder with writing all the way around it. And that tells us this story. Um, the cylinder is a, um, an ancient symbol of like Iran. There's, it's declared like a national thing that, that, you know, they've really care about and all these things. Um, guess where it lives? The Louvre. The British Museum. Shocker. Even though it's like a national thing of Iran. Um, there was an episode. Oh, man, I got to find this. It was an episode of how to read, patriot things because so many of these governments had like crazy important historical relics of like other cultures and societies and while this is a good example of it that is nuts

yeah that it's in Britain of course it is yeah with the um yeah with everything um so that's how we know a lot about it then then obviously there's parts of it in the Bible um but then he has a couple more battles a little bit more things that we We will talk about, I made a little thumbs up, that we'll talk about, I think, in the future, because it's all super interesting. But Cyrus, the Great dies in 530 BC at the age of 70. One account says he was at home, but, like, that's lame. So other people say he died in battle, and he was battling the Skithians. And the Skittians were led by a woman named Tomris and Tamiris.

And Cyrus was like, I'll marry you. And we can just put our kingdoms together. She was like, no, thank you. Like that. I don't want to do that. and so he went in to invade and his troops kind of advanced and advanced and then they pretended to leave and they kind of were like let's pretend that we are afraid of them and we're going to leave so the persians like retreated but they left their stuff and they left their like tents

full of like wine and food so the skiffyans got there and they're like ha ha ha they left and they drank all the wine and they ate all the food and they all passed out drunk and they all got slaughtered by the persians because they didn't really leave they were counting on them getting drunk. One of the people who died... We're sneaky people. I love that. That's a great idea. Myrus's son, he was there and he woke up

kind of in the middle of the fight and he died by suicide because he was so upset that this had happened. And then Tamiris was so upset that she really went full force on the Persians and in the next battle Cyrus was killed and she took his head back to her kingdom.

But his body was taken by the Persians back to Persia. And his tomb is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is like a site that's like important to world history. It's in Passar Goday, Iran. I'm going to have to look that up because I'm sure it's a name on Cyrus's tune. Yeah, tell me how you really say that. And it's believed to be real.

Alexander the Great visited it. Like it's a place where he is, he's not in there anymore because of like pillaging. There's no gold in there, but he would have been buried with like a bunch of gold. but that's supposed to be his tomb. I think it's Pasargod. Oh, yeah. Cyrus is Kuros in Farsi, too. That's what it's, it translates like

Omge, um, Ge, Kuros, Bozorg. Kurosso bozorg. That means big. I mean Cyrus big. Cyrus is big. Yeah. Love it. Yeah, of course. Of course. We say the great for all of these. That's not like what it's called, you know. But so the thing that, you know, Alexander the Great visiting the tomb and it's still being there and like we're still talking about him. He is the kind of person that like people who want to be great rulers, I look back towards him. So like Thomas Jefferson really likes Cyrus the Great to be like, oh, an empathetic militaristic leader. And then also I did want to swing back to Putin because this is where. in the beginning when I said we should learn about

our forefathers, but not pretend that they're perfect, because Putin was watching John Stewart, and he had an author named David Sanger on, and he was talking about how Putin has a portrait of Peter the Great in his office. He thinks he's Peter the Great, you know? And like, so a lot of people, these

like authoritarian rulers think that they are descendants of this ancient past that may or may not have existed, and also it doesn't matter because like you have to believe it, you know? Yeah. no it's a it's fascinating sorry i was like i was facing a little bit because i was thinking about like there's so many of those it is it is almost like a human mandate that we have to create idols because as you're talking i'm thinking about like you're asking like okay so like do you know this

guy you say so there's there's the great there's Alexander the conqueror there's like just so many of these guys one of the other the Ottoman empire whoever was in charge of all that that was going on, the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire. It's just like thing after thing after thing. And, I mean, to some extent it works because we idolize that. We still talk about it to this day. Exactly. It's important enough to talk about, but it is fascinating.

The other thing that we know for sure is that he was handsome. That's the last thing. They used him as the model of Persian beauty forever. Yep. As an Iranian man, I, can attest that we are a very handsome bunch not me but like the rest of us there's a bunch of others um one thing one thing is you were talking about so this last week i was in dc for a work thing and you know at this point it's probably like my 50th trip to dc and i literally only fly in do my work

stuff and fly out and this was the one time where i was like i kind of am just going to check check out on Friday and just have a touristy kind of a day, I was able to get a tour of the U.S. house and was in there and looking around and exploring and doing all that and was just, man, I, you forget the grandness of everything. The architecture, yeah. Well, like, all, like, the meaning of it, you know, you watch the new. and you get polarized and you see where your friends are posting on social media and you're like everything's whatever and you're there and you're like man like you're like some pretty solid

foundational beliefs and ideals and like things that like this country was based on and it was very and and as you were talking about it because there's this one thing I probably the name of it is but there's this one like a Sistine chapel type painting in the top of the dome have you said been have you been in the capital no so in the middle of the capital like the dome part of it there's it's a double dome and there's a painting on there this guy this italian guy who painted this thing but it's it's like a weird amalgamation of like the founding fathers like touching hands with like angels and like harps it's weird it's a little bit it's a little bit weird i'm not going to say i'm not

to say tragic it does feel like it's like we're really trying to like shoehorn the founding fathers into like the 16 chapel and somehow god is there and like something yeah yeah i mean they they it's all very like roman and greek and like it is very roman and greek it is very roman and greek sculptures weren't white we know they were painted we know they were very colorful but like they're white in the capital you know no they're not so no no no google it like if you look at the painting the fresca on the building i'm not going on the painting i'm talking about like oh oh okay no no i was saying on the inside of it it was just it was again this amalgamation of bringing old and new traditions in because

I mean that was painted in 18 I think it was like 1860 is what it's which is not the long ago yeah it was for sure not that long ago and also it's like tell this it's crazy it was like 160 years ago it's like but still it folds at all the new it I don't know I thought it was really fascinating for some reason I would have assumed that we would have like done a lot of that stuff and more like a modern no i think we're trying to be like we're going to be one of these great empires you know in whatever way and like bringing that into it and being like bringing like the democracy of ancient greece you know like that was something that we like

even having a rotunda feels a little much actually the green thing makes sense the greek doesn't make sense. Yeah. We're going to go to D.C. in July. You should do that. You should, so you should go on the house of the U.S. Capitol's website. Do all of it.

It was my first time we're looking around. We're only going to have really a day there with the kids. And I want to take them to the Air and Space Museum. But like maybe we can get it in on like a tour or something as well. Do you find Adelis? No, we're going to Annapolis. And then like, I'm like, can we have two days to do history things? So we're going to go to Mount Vernon one day.

And then we're going to do D.C. one day. Okay. Yeah. It's probably worth it because you can actually go through the tour in like an hour. Like it's not that time consuming. But it does, it is very, very interesting. So anyways, sorry. I'm happy for you. That's a whole aside. It was it was it was super fun because obviously I'm super into American history and politics and yeah. There's one thing I think you'll see in there that you in particular would like really, really love. So like there's in the middle of the rotunda, like it's like surrounded by all these um sculptures and one of the sculptures has three women carved into it but it has like a platform for a fourth and it was it's supposed to be like

the women that like changed america the most so like um like rosa parks and um harriet tubbin and stuff like that anyways the the last is meant to be for the first female president and it's just like waiting to be carved oh yeah it's kind of cool so anyways if you have a chance very cool no I will um I'll see what we can do when we get there you have to ask your congressman to be able to tour the White House oh I feel like if you check on social media he'll be like no thank you because I've definitely called him a lot of bad words in social media but maybe it'll do anyway we'll do it when I saw a lot of like congress people like walking their constituents around and it was like groups like 20 people like it's fine yeah um but anyway so no thanks for sharing that like it's uh yeah you i asked you a while ago to do something in in persian history and here we are there's a lot more i mean this obviously this this this book is huge this um wilderness book but then he goes into i mean there's a whole lots of chapters on persia but then um yeah i want to hear about like the darius and the other cambyses um super fun

yeah yeah if somebody ever writes like a totality history of civilization, man, that'll be a huge book. I mean, this these, so I have this one, then there's, this is, number two is the life of Greece. Oh, then I have number eight. Not even close. I'm missing a bunch of them. I have one.

It was Life of Greece. Eight is the age of Louis of the 16th. And then it looks like, hold on. 10, no, 11 is Napoleon. I mean, there has to be like 35 of these and we're not even close.

which is why I respect Dan Carlin so much because you know he read those you know he read those I read them and I'm like oh this is where Dan got this and I'm like yeah and then like 15 other anthologies God that guy researches this stuff man good for him

love it love you Dan thanks for listening love you Dan cool well thanks for sharing that Taylor yeah thank you anything we want to dive into before we hop no just thanks to everyone who's been following along just got a couple hello's from social

media. I am watching some social media how to videos because I'm like how what is good. And I did a TikTok the other day that got like a lot of views more than usual and we got like 40 new TikTok followers from it. So I'm super excited about that. So I'm learning and growing. I am firmly putting my stance on not downloading TikTok because I legitimately. No, no, you don't download TikTok. I'm just saying I'm learning and growing my pieces of this and my pieces are making better TikToks. And I think I'm think I made a better one. It's awesome. Yeah.

It's just one of those things I'm like, I'm like, did I age out officially of like new social media things? And I think I've done that. I have to, I have to put a limit on my Instagram because I just like, I'm on all the time and it's stupid. Yeah, I have moments like that. Yeah. I'll confess that when I'm bored and there's nothing happening, I just instinctively pull

out my phone and look at Insta. And that's a waste of life and time. and I probably find something better to do. It's not going to care. Oh, but I am watching a video of No Doubt, No Doubt to Coachella, and I wish I would have been able to go, but I wasn't because Coachella's stupid and $500. So no, but I do hope no doubt tours,

because I would love to go to that. Yeah, if they were in Austin, I would also say that. I was totally calm. I was totally fine to Austin to see, no doubt. I saw them the last time, I don't know, 15 years ago in New York, but I've seen a bunch of times and I would do it again. Don't speak.

Anyways, with the introduction of don't speak, we'll stop speaking and go ahead and cut this off. Any last words, Taylor? No, thank you everyone. Thanks, thanks, team. Please tell your friends. Any ideas? Hit us up at Doom to Fill pot. Oh, we got some

emails from some people with some ideas. I think I might have sent you one or like one was on my on my more historical so I'm going to look at that but yeah cool thanks Farras

I will see you soon sweet thanks Sarah we're going to cut them off