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!
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/0312364695
Dan 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/1704741963
Will Durant - Our oriental heritage -
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CF5NP9?binding=hardcover&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_thcv
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
um Taylor is going to kick us kick us into the next 100 episodes of doomed to
fail um oh yeah I am thank you thank you for uh I'm I'm I remembered so we are
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and you dear list and you The Listener yes and today it is Taylor's turn to
present is are you ready bars 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 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 who I'm talking about about are you Cyrus Cyrus are great I got one I got
one guing situation right I think um fantastic specifically Cyrus the Great
and the fall of Babylon um there's so many little stories in this I'm just going to talk about like a little bit um and I want to
oh I read zenfon Cyrus the Great like a weird translation where it was in first
person um I've listened to Dan Carlin's the Kings of Kings for like the 90th
time um how 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 um 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 um Dan
Carlin um he quotes W Durand a lot as like a great historian but also mentions
that W drant 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 he talks
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 say this is for Taylor Victoria STK from the first PR iian Church in Libertyville
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 me the whole thing's weird I like I was skimming through it I was like I just don't know what to do but this has
like pictures of like ancient AR archa archaeological things not pictures drawings in it which is kind of fun um
and then I just kept thinking about how Jesus was of course he wasn't a carpenter there are no trees there was a Mason if he was alive um which is a
whole other thing that I can yell about later anyway well I I meant more like the book of Kel's type Bibles where
somebody spent like 3,000 years you mean like the physical
book yeah like yes did 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 we're back in there um well cool this is my this is my
Bible and I will read from it later exciting 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 bring 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 so can sand I don't love that but
you know do you know Cyrus's dad's name was it Darius Dar there is a Darius
Darius is is going to be his son-in-law whole thing we'll talk about Darius but his dad's name is
cames that's fun and I I love Camy so and Sange he can be cam so and Sange so
people are like oh Cam is that like short for like Cameron or Campbell he'll be like no Cam bces and you'll be like [ __ ] yeah it is Cam I love that emoji
keep that keep that in there for you um I wrote shut up that's amazing so um I
love it um 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 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 far ferer quoted by Pierre bront in
the intro to his book from Cyrus to Alexander and that just means like ancient history like the stories that
shape us and like they're like who we thought we were and like that's it's all we have is like those little glimpses
that we get from like carvings and like stories that are like pushed down so it really doesn't like we never know if
they're actually true or not so like let's believe them you know I guess yeah
it's um I think it means you know the way I'm hearing it is if you could arrow on the side of
being cynical or on the side of accepting certain things why accept
it yeah why not why not accept it exactly exactly so um there are also
several women in this story and Dan Point specifically points this out there's not a lot of women in these ancient history stories so are a couple
in here which is really cool which means they were like exceptionally powerful um the xenophon book is called Cyrus the
Great and zenfon 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 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 the way that that the editor had um kind of poised it was like
any leader could use this you know like the way people read like makavelli 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 um this is Biblical times [ __ ] was [ __ ] was
hard um there's a lot about it about like Warfare and battles and this is
this is where I got the part that I think I talked about with you I can't remember when but how like people never really stabbed 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 St a person with a Bayonet most will just drop their weapons and run yeah yeah but this is Ancient Warfare
we're pretty sure 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 like 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 and you're like we 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 think who like look to him as like a
gentle ruler as like a ruler who lets everybody be themselves and we'll talk a little bit about what that means um 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 it's also very
religious 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 them 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 2 200 years later um so some things that
we knowon is Babylon Iraq it is isn't it okay um I'll tell you the name of the
town I have it written here somewhere but I'll let you know um oh also in in
um you know in in Cyrus's book about wait where did I put where did I where
am I going to qu the Bible is it now or is it later it's
later okay um but sorry um so yes this is all like in the Middle
East is where this is all happening um and there's a lot of religious stuff in
the zenfan book that I read like Cyrus is like God wants me to do this he wants me to be in charge and he there kind
Teeters a line between monotheism and polytheism so it's it's around that time people are starting to worship just one
God um 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 um but before Cyrus the 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 of um of like
Asia and Asia Minor and Greece and the Middle East and no one will really do that until Alexander the Great many
centuries later so this is like a a huge deal and it really puts Persians on the map um 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 um Cyrus the Great is the king of anjan
he's the King of Persia the king of media the king of Lydia the king of the world the King of Kings the great king
the king of Babylon the king of sume and aad the king of the four corners of the world and the king of the universe so he
did a lot great got it all he got it all I I love that for him um and one
more warning before we start that I got kind of from reading all of this is like and something think I try to talk about
a lot is you know examine your forefathers but don't pretend that they're perfect you know um 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 people who like you know have that like mythical past but this is definitely my a mythical story we know
Cyrus was a real person we're going to cross into Putin territory tiny bit at the very end okay yeah yeah um so Cyrus
was born into the akid empire in around negative 600 in Anan Persia which is
now fars FS provance Iran does that who
knows it's an Iran yeah fars yeah F FS yeah yeah his dad was K the
first thank you his dad was kambes the first um the king of Anan he was the son
of Cyrus I first his dad died in the Battle of the Persian Border in 551 BC
making Cyrus the king Cyrus's mom was mandane of media her dad and so this is
also like potentially a myth but fun for making who who you are so his mom was a
me part of the median Empire which like another like Persian group of people but not not the same but like
semi-related her dad um as toades 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 take over 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 cises because he didn't think that KES would
be a strong enough man to be the father of a great king which is [ __ ] so they
did that it also that that was like a good political deal because that strengthened the relationship between
the Persians and the mes so now they're you know they they have this marriage in between them but he still doesn't want
you know his grandchild to be to be the king he wants like one of his sons to do it so he once
um once mandane 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 fight
get to 300 a little bit um in maybe in this we get to 300 we get
to 300 um so he says take this baby into the woods giv them to a man named harpus
who was like a sword Bearer guy in in the court and says and harpagus is like I'm not going to kill this [ __ ] baby
he can't kill the baby so he gives it to a farmer man of the woods named mythes
he was a shepherd and mythes 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 harpagus
and harpus gives it to the king and says here you go the baby's dead so everybody's happy then out in the V
where young Cyrus is secretly a king is you know 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 like missing baby and then he comes back to the court and
he comes back and like me is like reunited with his family and like part of the court again and his grandpa the
King was so pissed at harpagus um because harpus lied about killing the baby that he took harpagus his son
killed him and they had a big banquet and he gave harpagus trays of meat to eat and after harpagus was done eating
they said did you enjoy your meal harpagus 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 his the whole time that he was eating and haras like 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 um that probably is made up but like it's a fun myth
again every one of these stories is so game of thron like yes for sure this was
a Game of Thrones at some point yes but it's pretty convenient then that the air would come that the heir to the Persian
Throne would also be a Me by his like Father by his mother so all the things
that he would he it's a good story and so who cares best for cus comes from as
far as we're concerned he grew up in the forest and then he came back um either way he becomes king of the accumulated
Empire him real quick yeah I know we literally just said believe the stories and don't be
cicle 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 baby my entire like it's a it's a much better origin story I
love that for an origin story that's literally the story of that's in Snow White it's in um sleeping Beauty where
she's like taken out to the woods and pretends to be someone else it's in Superman where he like is like given to
a poor whatever a farmer to like raay so yeah it's mowgly syndrome it's like
literally just like the story of mowgly that we just keep recreating in different ways we could 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 Inc it's
inconsequential yeah exactly Cyrus probably had like 20 wives and a [ __ ]
ton of kids but his like main wife or the wife that we're going to talk about now is a woman named Cass andan CS a n d
a n e whatever it might be spelled differently somewhere else but all accounts they loved each other and um
they had four kids that matter to the to the lineage kis is the second bidia
Ariston and atasa atasa is uh the daughter she probably married her
brother CIS is a second because he became King right after cyde this gets very confusing I see your face it gets
confusing here so his son it all sounds like the Bible it's like H's Brothers
cousins sister it is a biblical story 100% yeah fair enough then um
so Cyrus had a dream that dasas the dude
that you mentioned earlier who was like a guy that was around uh had wings and
like became very powerful so he has a feeling that this guy is going to like
somehow usurp and like get in in the in the in the rain and in the line so he
has his son and his daughter get married atasa and Ki the second get married Ki 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 impostor named guamar and guamar may have killed the real son of
Cyrus and pretended to be him and then killed kisis the second so either was killed by his brother or killed by an
impostor 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 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 watch 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 cuz like you know like the really blonde
dude will have a bunch of of like kids with like sex workers you see all these like urchins with bright blonde hair and
you're like oh that must be his child never thought about that yeah I never thought about that such a really
good point yeah yeah so so yeah who knows plenty of people running around
they're all related um but either way now this like other other son perhaps
impostor is in charge and it sounds like atasa the the daughter of of Cyrus is um
really powerful in her own and she marries dasas and so he becomes part of the family and then he overthrows the
impostor SL potentially air and he becomes king so yeah then call out the
because I I think you're trying to pronounce it in a Greek way it's either Darius or in parcus
darush okay I'll go Darius then yeah go Darius that's F Darius just sounds like a guy I would I could
know I mean because it's all descended from this one guy yeah um um okay so
Darius is Darius a great and he is another big king who's going to do a lot
of stuff um he and atasa 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 um we won't get there today but atasa 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 in 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 mes 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 media
and that starts this huge like Persian War and taking over things and just a
growth of the Empire that's going to last a really really long time and this is a story in the book the zenfon book that I read was 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 media and people really like Cyrus because of the thing that I said he
didn't give a [ __ ] who you worshiped he didn't care who you know made like the day-to-day laws as long as 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 [ __ ] ton of slaves and a lot of people got their heads bash bashed in 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 Lydia 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 the that Empire
so one thing about Babylon is it doesn't exist 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 hamurabi was one of
the people who established the Empire and the code of hamurabi 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 haara there you go that actually that's that started in in
Babylon we before Cyrus got there so there were a couple things back and forth now we're in the Neo 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 me on something I believe I believe that they would name it that so I believe you um so Nebuchadnezzar ruled
from 605 to 562 um he did a bunch of building projects so Babylon was like a
pretty like like Metropolis City for being in
the ancient world there were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which like you know we no one has ever seen but you know
essentially one of the W Wonders of the Ancient World um a bunch of big building things it was a really really wealthy
city after he died um his the kingdom went to a guy named nabonidus so
nabonidus 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 um another thing that that nabonidus did is he stole all of the statues from the cities around
him um he was both like trying to trying to consolidate the religion and also like trying to make 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 and again this is
Biblical times where the Bible's like don't do that and then the
um nebas is like everybody do it does that make sense so like they're trying to so different than praying at the
altar today yeah yeah so they have their they all have their own Gods so they're trying to like maybe Consolidated into
one like that's something that is happening like at that time um and then wait let me I 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
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 to his 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 mountain 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 um 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 very he's God is very
me me me in this so 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 where so personally like I don't care
what anybody believes believe whatever you want doesn't matter to me but personally I think that the the fun philosophy and teaching
of religion is just a really good thing to have ingrained in you the stories it feels 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's 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 and 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 that's the thing 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 I forgot this is 600 years later yeah yeah yeah
yeah yes but so much of it is like I Am Lord I am God blah blah like okay calm
down oh this is I think I've heard this before and the humiliation of Babylon
Isaiah 47 come down and sit in the dust virgin daughter of Babylon sit on the ground without a throne daughter of
chaler for you shall no more be called tender and delicate take the millstones and grind your meal remove your veils St
off your robe uncover your legs pass to The Rivers your nakedness shall be uncovered and your shame shall be seen I
will take Vengeance and I'll will spare no one oh Redeemer the Lord of hosts in his name and 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 um I've got really guarding Taylor I I I I look
like a crazy person which like with like I mean people see how I tend to my garden like this guy's nuts I'm happy
for you that's awesome um yeah I was goingon to say so I just
asked our friend Chad GPT to look this up so apparently the original so the Bible was written
between 1,400 BC and 1200 BC so that's before Cyrus then it picked up again in
1,00 BC of 722 BC which is again before Cyrus right yes well was that about then about
about that time so all this stuff about Cyrus probably happened in it's all the New
Testament right old it's it was in the Old Testament it's the old one yeah
because I I I did also look that up Isaiah is the Old Testament I guess it would have been
possible because he was yeah so uh Psalms proverb and job thoughts have
been composed from 10th to the 4th Century BC I don't know this we're getting way in the weeds sorry was there
you know so no one was there that wrote 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 nabonidus is the king um he's thr the
statues no one likes him um bab 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 um his troops consist of
Persians that's the core those are his men that he's like trained from day one there's mes who are um you know from the
area who he had just conquered they they're 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 like walk past you while you're gardening and they're like farts grab that hoe we're going and you gotta like
grab your hoe and put a bucket on your head and go because you don't have any armor 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 woohoo I'm ready I have little floaties on my
arm um 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 um is that they got there and Babylon they conquered its 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 in over the wall so we're just going to sit here and try to weit 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 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 W River
dries up and they walk into Babylon underneath the wall on the riverbed which I would like to believe because
that sounds why did he want to invade Babylon because they had they had it was like
the 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 median Empire all that but yeah yeah but
he wanted more like these guys don't stop you know so he's a jerkoff well they are like it describes him as like I
think in the world Durant it says he dies of ambition just like Napoleon did you know and later we'll talk like this
Empire eventually goes to Alexander the Great who also kind of considers himself as the last Persian king um before like
all of the 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 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 we're competing against I would love to [ __ ] do that get some ambition under your butt go you got to
help me your ancestors conquered Babylon and you're like on Far wake up I'm
having a hard time marketing this podcast meanwhile I have a 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 gross we're g to follow that guy um so I love that I think that's fun
when they get there um you know people of Babylon are like 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 anointed by God to return
people to their dwellings so a lot of people 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
letting them go back to Jerusalem and that was a really big deal and that was make him like a hero of the Old
Testament um 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 um clay 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 clared like a national
thing that that you know they really care about and all these things um guess where it
lives the Lou the British museum shocker even though it's like a
national thing of Iran um there was an episode oh man I
gotta find this there was an episode on how to repatriate things because so many
of these governments have like crazy forign historical relics of like other
cultures and societies and well this is a good example of it that is nuts yeah but 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 will talk about um look made little thumbs up that we'll talk about I
think in the future because it's all super interesting but Cyrus the Great Di in 530 BC at the age of 70 um 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 skians
and the skians were led by a woman named tomis and tamus and Cyrus was like I'll
marry you and we can just put our kingdoms together and 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 ADV and advanced and then they pretended to leave and 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 skians got there
and they're like hahaa 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 we're sneaky people I love that
it's a great idea um uh my's son he was there and he woke up kind of in the
middle of the of the fight and he died by Suicide cuz he was so upset that this had happened and then um tamyris was so
upset that she really went full force on the Persians and in the next battle um Cyrus was killed and she took his head
back to her kingdom um but his body was taken by the Persians back to to Persia
and his um tomb is a UNESCO world heritage site which is like a site
that's like important to world history it's in pass our Good Day Iran I'm G have to look that up because
I'm sure it's a name hold on Cyrus's yeah tell me how you really say
that and it's believed to be real Alexander the Great visited it like it's the place where he is he's not in there
anymore because of like hilling 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 p
god um yeah Kusa oh yeah Cyrus is kuros in fary
too that's what it's is it translates like ar
ar Bor Kur Borg that means big it means Cyrus big Cyrus the big yeah love it
yeah of course of course we all we say the great for all of these that's like what it's called you know um but so
thing that you know Alexander the Great visiting the tomb and it's still being there and like we're still talking about him um 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 Iris the great to be like oh an empathetic militaristic
leader um and then also um 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 cuz
Putin I was watching John Stewart and he had an author named David on and he was talking about how Putin has a portrait
of Peter the Great in his office like he thinks he's Peter the Great you know and like so a lot of people these like
author 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 it's fascinating sorry I
was like I was facing out a little bit 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 it's like so there's Darius the great there's
Alexander the Conqueror there's like there just so many of these guys when the other the Ottoman Empire whoever was
in charge of all that was that was going on the Roman Empire the Greek Empire it's just like thing after thing after thing um and I mean to some extent it
works because we idolized it we still talk about it to this day and exactly it's important enough to talk about but
yeah um it is it is fascinating um the other thing that we know for sure is that um he was handsome that's all
that's the last thing they used him as the model of Persian beauty forever
so yep as 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 you were talking I 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 I'm just
gonna check out on Friday and just have a touristy kind of a day um I was able
to get a a tour of the US House and was
in there and looking around and exploring and doing all that and was just man
I you forget the the grandness of of
everything arure yeah well like all all like the meaning of it you know you watch the news and you get polarized and
you see where your friends are posting on social media you're like everything's whatever and you're there and you're
like man like these are like some pretty solid foundation beliefs and ideals and like things that
like this country was based on and it was very and and as you were talking I because there's this one thing I forgot
what the name of it is but there's this one like 16 Chapel type painting in the top of the Dome have you been have you
been in the 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 it's 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 it's a little bit it's a little bit weird I'm not gonna
say I'm not going 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 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 like we know that 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 Google it like if you look at the painting The fresa on the I'm not
talking about the painting I'm talking about like oh oh okay no no I was thinking the inside of it it was 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 was painted which is not the long ago yeah it was for sure not that long
ago and also it's like Taylor that's C it was like aund like 60 years ago gu like but still it
folds at Old the new I don't know I just thought it was really fascinating for some reason I would have
assumed that we would have like done a lot of that stuff in more of like a modern no I think what 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 the the Democracy of ancient Greece you know like that was something that we like even having a
runda feels a little much actually the G thing makes sense
the gek thing does make sense yeah um we're gonna go to DC in July you should do that you should so
you should um go on the H House's um the US capitals website do all of it like it
was my first a day we're only going to have really a day there with the kids and I want to take them to the A and
Space Museum but like maybe we can get a in on in on like a tour or something as well do you fly in doas 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 DC one
day okay yeah it's it's probably worth because you can actually go through the tour in like an hour like it's not that
timec consuming um but it does it it is very very interesting so anyways I'm
happy for you that's fun it was it was it was super fun because obviously I'm
super into into American history and politics and 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 there's 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 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 it's 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 oh 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
CU I definitely called him a lot of bad words social media but maybe we'll do anyway they'll do it when when I saw a
lot of like Congress people like walking their constituents around and it was like groups of like 20 people like it's fine yeah um but anyways so no thanks
for sharing that like it's h 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 book is huge this um will Durant book but then he goes into I mean
there's a whole lots of chapters on Persia but then um yeah want to hear about like the Darius and the other
cises 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 then there's this is number two is the life
of Greece oh then I have number eight not even close I I'm missing a bunch of them I have one two is life of Greece
eight is the age of Louis the 16th and then it looks like hold on 10 no 11 is
Napoleon I mean that has to be like 35 of these and we're not even close so
which is why I respect Dan Carlin so much because you know he read those he did you know he read 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 um cool well thanks for
sharing that Taylor yeah thank you anything anything we want to dive into before we hop no just thanks to everyone
who's been following along just got a couple hellos from social media I
am watching some social media howto videos cuz I'm like how what is good and
I did a Tik Tok the other day that got like a lot of views more than usual and we got like 40 new Tik toac 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 Tik Tok because I legitimately no you don't
downlo Tik Tok I'm just saying I'm learning and growing my pieces of this and my pieces are making better Tik toks
and I think I made a better one that'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 had to put a limit on my Instagram because I just like I'm on all the time and it's stupid yeah yeah I have moments like
that yeah I 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 time I don't care um oh but I am watching um 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 is stupid and $500 so
no but I do hope no doubt cheers because I would love to go to that yeah if they were aus
I also I was totally G I would totally fly to Austin to see no doubt um I saw
them the last time I don't know 15 years ago in New York but um seen a bunch of times and I would do it
again don't speak um anyways with the the introduction of don't speak we'll
stop speaking and go ahead and cut this off any any last words Taylor no everyone um thanks thanks team please
tell your friends um any ideas say h doomed to F pod 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 um on my like more historical
so I'm going to look at that but yeah cool thanks fars I will see you soon sweet thanks Tor go and cut it off