Literature Review CRMR

Jo Grijpstra 2500798
Harrison, T. 2012, Writing Ancient Persia, London.
Writing Ancient Persia by Thomas Harrison is an essay exploring how the history of
Ancient Persia has been written and is currently being written. It explores how the
perception of the Empire has changed in scholarship, taking the 1980s as a turning
point in the study of the Achaemenids. The 1980s are taken as a turning point for
good reason, this period saw the inception of the Ancient Persia Workshops, initiated
by Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg. The participants of these workshops sought to
break free from the thoroughly Hellenic point of view from which the Empire was
regarded and in to rewrite Persian history, seeking to bring the Persian sources to
the forefront and revalue the Hellenic sources in their own context. This is also is
the angle from which Harrison is entering the debate in this essay.
The work, divided in six chapters, is diverse in the subjects it covers, but not
complete. In the preface Harrison tells the reader that there will be no discussion of
religion, details of the Persian satrapal administration, and while in chapter 6 he
does discuss modern reception of the Persian empire, the Iranian reception of the
Persian Empire has been left out. 1 It does, however, discuss Persian art in chapter
two and the lives of kings and queens in chapter three. Chapter four covers the
dangers of taking the new, more positive light in which the Achaemenid Empire is
being viewed too far by baselessly turning around the prejudices found in the Greek
narratives, chapter five compares trends in scholarship from the 1980s onward with
the scholarship of the 19 th century. Finally, chapter six deals with the reception of
the Achaemenid Empire and the continued discourse between east and west.
Harrison, being a professor of Hellenic studies, wrote this essay for a classicist
readership. Nevertheless it is highly useful for newcomers to the field of
Achaemenid History or scholars who are looking for a fresh angle on the subject.
The work is highly readable, engaging and in general Harrison employs a very
transparent style as to how he reaches his conclusions. Harrison does not solely
debunk centuries old assumptions about the Achaemenid Empire that have been
based on readings of Herodotus and other Greek authors, the fresh gaze of this
classicist on the Achaemenid material also lays bare baseless assumptions and
reactions of modern scholars studying ancient Persia have made in an attempt to
break away from the orientalising view, or in Harrisons own words in his criticism
on modern Achaemenid Studies from the 1980s onwards:
The work of Workshop scholars is inflected more broadly with the terminology
of Orientalism, but at the same time it is hard to resist the conclusion that the
prime role in the new Achaemenid historiography of Saids work (and of the
exploration of the Greek barbarian that it spawned) has been to reinforce its
founding convictions, to confirm that the Greeks accounts of Persia are marked by
pejorative ideas, and so to validate the reversal of Greek stereotypes, rather than to
initiate the detailed investigation of Greek attitudes in their own context. 2
The essays aim is not to present a ground breaking theory which will rock the
world of Achaemenid scholarship and should not be read as thus. Rather, it presents

1 Harrison 2012, 8.
2 Harrison 2012, 116.
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us with a history of the writing of history, an overview of the primary source

material available to scholars and how scholars have interacted with this material
and how they treat it now. However useful the work is in raising the awareness of
scholars to biases and the historical context of the primary source material, there
are matters that might irk the reader. One of them being that Harrisons field of
expertise, being a Hellenic historian, does show in the way he treats primary
sources: he is well versed in the primary sources on the Greek side of matters and
will unfailingly refer back to the primary source material whenever he can. Harrison
treats the Persian material differently: he almost exclusively refers to secondary
material, even when specifically mentioning the existence of primary source
material. It is likely that, given the intended readership, Harrison is meaning to be
considerate to his intended readership and not throw them in at the deep end. In
practice however, he is throwing up another hurdle for the reader that is familiar
with the primary source material of the Achaemenid Empire wanting to get to the
primary source material.
On top of that, Harrison is not always as unbiased and thorough as he sets out to
be. In chapter three, when Harrison paints a picture of the kings and queens of
Persia. He rightfully points out that a lot of the cruel deeds committed by Persian
women in Herodotus Histories are designed as a moral compass on how a Greek
woman should not behave and otherwise. Also, given the universal appearance of
these stories featuring cruel women in other nations outside of Persia he points out
that there likely is an element of literary clich at play. After that however, Harrison
launches into a discussion about how cruel the Persian Empire may have been and
how much it may have relied on varying torture methods. Harrison admits there is
no direct evidence for the use of torture in the Persian sources. For the Greek side
he solely relies on Plutarchs Artaxerxes, written in the second half of the first
century CE, over 300 years after the fall of the Persian Empire. 3 Here Harrison
potentially falls prey to what the same issue he wished to bring to light, the making
of almost baseless assumptions.
In conclusion Writing Ancient Persia is a highly useful essay for both classicist who
have taken an interest in the Achaemenid Empire as newcomers to the field. It will
guide the reader to a wealth of secondary literature from differing points of views,
whilst at the same time making the reader aware of the context of both modern
scholarship as primary sources and the biases that come with them.

3 Harrison 2011, 62-68.

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