Greek ‘Concubines’ and Achaemenid Dynastic Politics
Abstract
The civil war of 401 BC between Cyrus the Younger and his older brother King Artaxerxes II (r. 405/4-359/8 BC) is well known to Achaemenid historians, thanks especially to the famous account of Xenophon’s Anabasis. While the military aspects of this conflict have been much studied, this lecture focuses on the two Ionian Greek women who accompanied Cyrus on his campaign. Xenophon describes them as “concubines,” but setting these two women into the broader contexts of Achaemenid court culture and of intermarriage between Persians and local people in Achaemenid Anatolia reveals a more complex story.
Citation
Lee, John W.I. "Greek ‘Concubines’ and Achaemenid Dynastic Politics." Pourdavoud Center: Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series (January 19, 2022).
About the Speaker
John W.I. Lee
University of California, Santa Barbara
John W.I. Lee is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches courses on Achaemenid Persia and ancient Greece. He grew up in Asia and Hawai’i, studied history at the University of Washington (Seattle), and received his PhD in History from Cornell University. His publications include A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis (Cambridge University Press 2008), The Persian Empire (The Great Courses 2012), and The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert (Oxford University Press 2022). He is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.