Persian Fire by Tom Holland

The book is Persian Fire by Tom Holland. It was originally published in 2005 by Little Brown, a division of Time Warner books. I read the 2007 Anchor Books paperback edition. I read it in November of 2024 

I read this book because I’m reading through Tom Holland’s history books and this was next on the bibliography. This was the fourth Holland book I’ve read and they’ve all been great. 

Persian religion centered around a god called Ahura Mazda. He was the epitome of something called Arta which can best be described as truth or order. Arta is basically the “right way.” Virtue. Honor. Truth. This is Arta. The opposite of this is Drauga. Which is “the Lie” or darkness. Dishonesty. Drauga is the shadow that tries to overtake Arta. Persians were all about “the Truth.” 

“Three things were taught them, it was said: “to ride, to fire a bow and to tell the truth.” (p32)

Arta is represented by fire as in the light or the truth. Holland couples this with the blazing devastation the Persians inflicted on the Greeks in the ancient world. 

In this book, Holland gives a sweeping history of the Persians and the Greeks and their wars. He gives a lot of background on the rise of Persia and the rise of the Greek city-states and to be honest it was a little confusing. There are so many groups of peoples on both sides and it’s difficult to understand the differences between them. It’s like the Native American tribes. They’re all different nations but they all look the same to me. 

I know I’m not racist when I say this because I can’t tell the difference between the anglo Saxon kingdoms either. Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria. They all look the same to me. I even have a hard time keeping track of who is who when I watch The Last Kingdom or Vikings. They’re all longhaired, bearded white guys. 

Sometimes peoples from very similar geographical regions and traditions tend to look very similar. So it’s okay if someone who is not from that background has trouble telling the difference. 

The Spartans were easier to get a read on, partially because of the movies and because their customs are described in more detail. I probably still couldn’t pick them out of a lineup of Greek peoples but when I hear “spartan” I have more of an understanding of who they are. 

Reading this book as a Christian, I couldn’t help but notice some similarities between the Persian religion and Judeo/Christianity. 

The Persians had a doctrine of a transcendent morality. This was unique from the “might makes right” understanding of morality that the Greeks and other pagans held. The Persians understood a higher standard outside of themselves that they strived to uphold. There was light and there was was darkness. Good and evil. Right and wrong. The Truth and the Lie. 

Holland conveys it as follows. 

“Just as fire, when it rises to the heavens, is accompanied by black smoke, so Arta, the Persians knew, was shadowed by Drauga, the Lie. Two orders one of perfection, the other of falsehood, each the image of the other— were coiled in a conflict as ancient as time.” (p32) 

There’s a dualist nature to their religion. Yin and Yang. Opposite but equal sides of a coin. This is reflected in Christianity as God and the Devil. Holiness and Sin. The similarities get even starker when we consider that the Persians followed, as Holland translates it, the Truth. Not a truth, not true things, but the Truth. 

Christians believe Jesus when he says in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  

Here Jesus is calling himself the truth. Is this Arta? Was Christianity influenced by this ancient Persian religion? It did come way earlier. 

Or what about when the prophet Zoroaster revealed to the Persians that earth is a battlefield between good and evil and that good will ultimately win out by the power of Ahura Mazda the “the supreme, the all-powerful, the only uncreated god.” (p34)

A Christian reader has to admit that sounds pretty close to what we believe. A shortsighted take would be to say that Christianity ripped off part of the Persian religion, or that religious belief evolved over time throughout the world and it trickled down into what we now know as Christianity. 

One problem with this is that you have to show a direct through-line between these ancient religions and how it directly influenced Christianity. If you can’t do that then the accusation is nothing but historic conjecture. 

But the coincidence still stands. And it’s a big coincidence. Here’s what I think is happening in these religious copycat situations. 

Christianity has an historical account from the beginning of creation to Jesus Christ. 

We believe that God created the world and man. God communicated with that man and walked and talked with him in the Garden of Eden (a real place on Earth in real history. Not a metaphor or symbol). 

Then the Fall happened but God did not abandoned them. God still ruled over Adam and Eve and their children, all the way down to Noah. Noah walked with God and found favor in his eyes. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.” (Gen 6:9-10). 

The flood happens, all humanity is wiped off the Earth and Noah and his three sons and their wives are saved in the ark and left to repopulate the world. This is where all the ethnicities of the entire world come from. All people in the history of the world come from Noah’s family who worshiped the judeo/Christian God of the Bible. 

The separation and dispersion of people throughout the world comes after they try to build the tower of Babel. God scrambled their language and that’s what separated them. 

“So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” (Gen 11:8-9)

From this dispersion comes all the peoples, races, ethnicities, cultures, traditions, and religions. They all came from one people who used to worship the God of the Bible. 

Now bringing it back to the Persians and their religion. The Persians are the descendants of the Medes, who were the descendants of biblical Japheth’s son Madai. (Gen 10:2)

Like everything in the world after the Fall, Madai, the Medes, and the Persian’s religion got twisted and distorted over time. But remnants of right belief linger in these aspects we see like an uncreated God who created all things and created man out of the dust of the Earth. 

But what about the Arta? The Truth. The Light. That sounds like Jesus Christ who came way later.

Remember John 1:1-5. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The Word is the second person of the triune God. The Word is the pre-incarnate Christ. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). 

So Christ is there from the beginning. He created everything that exists including mankind and the Medes and the Persians. So it makes sense that their religion would remember something that resembles him. 

The similarities we see among religions do not point to an evolution of the concept of religion in the human species over time. The similarities point to the fact that we all come from the same God-believing parents. 

When I read books about ancient history I’m always on the lookout for origin stories. Not only origins of people but of ideas and things. For example in this book I learned the word ostracism comes from the Greek “ostraka” which meant pottery shards. One of the first forms of voting was when the Greeks chose a prominent politician to exile from their community. They would write the name of the person they wanted ousted on the back of the pottery shards, the “ostraka” and that was how they voted to kick out of the community. This is where we get our word ostracize from. 

Sometimes we look back on ancient cultures and are shocked at the barbarity in which they lived. But then we look at our culture today and see that we’ve not only continued on the barbarity but we’ve streamlined it. Made it more efficient. 

A Spartan newborn baby would undergo a physical examination by the elders and if it was deemed too sickly or weak and showing no potential for becoming a great warrior (a newborn baby!) then it was required that the baby be thrown out immediately. It was sent to the designated baby dumping grounds called Apothetae for the infanticide. 

Today the baby doesn’t even have to be born. We can see from the womb if the baby will be Lebensunwertes Leben. That’s Nazi German for “life unworthy of life.” 

It’s safe to say that Sparta had eradicated downs syndrome and any other unproductive birth defects. But it didn’t even have to be an obvious birth defect. It was completely up to the elders eye-balling judgement of whether or not the baby lived or not. 

The main reason the infanticide took place was the economy. Everything was paid for by the state and raising a child cost a lot so to save money they would discard babies at will. We see the same thing in our time. China only recently ended their one-child policy which saw the state-forced abortion of the second child. Currently they’re allowed to have three children because of China’s devastating population crisis. Who could’ve saw that coming? 

Things aren’t much better in the West. When a woman in America or Europe gets pregnant and wants an abortion, what’s the main motivating factor? Economy. She can’t afford to have children at that moment in her life. Or she’s still in college and doesn’t want to be hindered by a baby. So she has it killed. 

The death rates are at an even higher level today because it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” We don’t have to wait to hold the baby in our hands for an evaluation anymore. It can be done in utero. It’s much harder on the conscious to look someone in the eye and kill them.  

The point is things don’t change. The condition of the human heart has not gotten any better or worse over time. We’re still just as sinfully human as the Spartans. 

The only difference between us and the Spartans is pretense. The Spartans would see no problem, in fact they’d see it as appropriate to kill an unsatisfactory baby. Since Christ came the world has been Christianized to the point that we would uphold the laws against post-birth infanticide. At least for now. What we do now is merely call abortion healthcare. We use phrases like women’s rights and bodily autonomy because we value those things. The Spartans didn’t need to play such word games. 

As Americans it’s easy to think we’ll be around forever. We have the best economy, the best military. Everyone else is either copying us or trying to live here. 

But we have to face the reality, like the Persians and the Greeks, that we could just be blip on the timeline of human history. We might not say it out loud but there is this underlying assumption that we are some kind of chosen people, that America is a promised land. But that’s not true. The only chosen people is the Christian Church. And the only promised land is the City of God. That City can stand with our without America. 

I’d recommend this book to lovers of classical history. It’s a dense read and honestly I think Holland bites off a little more than he can chew. It’s a sprawling account of the Greeks and Persians and their wars. It’s a lot. But it’s still good. I look forward to reading more from Holland. 

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Notable Quotables 

“”””

It was an article of faith to Darius’ countrymen that they were the most honest people in the world. Three things were taught them, it was said: “to ride, to fire a bow and to tell the truth. 

when Ahura Mazda, greatest of the gods, had summoned time and creation into being, he had engendered Arta, who was Truth, 

Just as fire, when it rises to the heavens, is accompanied by black smoke, so Arta, the Persians knew, was shadowed by Drauga, the Lie. Two orders one of perfection, the other of falsehood, each the image of the other— were coiled in a conflict as ancient as time. (p32) 

“””” 

“The twin destinies of the Liar and of the Righteous Man”: not Darius’ words but those of that most fabled of visionaries, Zoroaster, the prophet of the Aryans. the man who had first revealed to a startled world that it was the battleground in a relentless war between good and evil. 

a universal apocalypse in which Truth would annihilate all falsehoods, and establish on their ruin an eternal reign of peace. Presiding over this final and decisive victory would be the Lord of Life, Wisdom and Light, Ahura Mazda himself— not, as other Iranians had always believed, one among a multitude of divinities, but the supreme, the all-powerful, the only uncreated god. (p34) 

“””” 

The empire founded by Cyrus was certainly no theocracy; it was never, in any real sense, “Zoroastrian” at all. The Persians continued to worship their ancient gods, to honor mountains and flowing streams, and to sacrifice horses before the tombs of their kings. (p35) 

“””” 

Who precisely God might be, however, whether the Ahura Mazda of his ancestors’ pantheon, or the one supreme being proclaimed by Zoroaster, the new king was content to leave unclear. (p37) 

“””” 

Back in the beginning, when all the earth had been ocean, Lord Marduk, king of the gods, had built a raft of reeds, covered it with dust, mingled it with water to form a primordial slime and out of this raised a home for himself, the Esagila, the first building in the world. 

“I will take blood,” Marduk had announced, in the earliest days of the world, “and I will sculpt flesh and I will form the first man.”‘ As good as his word, he had duly mixed dust with the gore of a slaughtered rival, and fashioned humanity out of the sticky compound. (p39) 

“””” 

Even through the darkest back alleys, it was said, Ishtar, the goddess of love, might be seen gliding, visiting her favorites in taverns and on the open streets, 

prostitution was regarded as a sacred duty, and daughters would be joyously pimped by their own fathers. Not so much a city, Babylon was rather a veritable world unto itself.  (p47) 

“””” 

Elamites rose again in revolt. Darius, infuriated, promptly anathematized them in new and startling terms. “Those Elamites were faithless,” he thundered. “They failed to worship Ahura Mazda.” l& This, the condemnation of a people for their neglect of a religion not their own, was something wholly remarkable. 

Conversely, those sent to war against them might expect “divine blessings both in their lives, and after death.”‘ Glory on earth and an eternity in heaven: these were the assurances given by Darius to his men. The manifesto proved an inspiring one. When Gobryas, Darius’ father-in-law, led an army into Elam, he was able to crush the revolt there with a peremptory, almost dismissive, speed Never again would the Elamites dare to challenge the awful might of the Persian king. Such was the effect of the world’s first holy war. For there had been, in this otherwise obscure and unmemorable campaign, the hint of something fateful. Darius, testing the potential of his religion to its limits, had promoted a dramatic innovation. Contained within it were the seeds of some radical notions: that foreign foes might be crushed as infidels; that warriors might be promised paradise; that conquest in the name of a god might become a moral duty. (p56) 

“””” 

This was not a nook in Sparta, not a cranny, but bony fingers would intrude there. Even the newest-born baby was subjected to the proddings of old men. Should an infant be judged too sickly or deformed to make a future contribution to the city, then the elders would order its immediate termination. Since the investment required from the state to raise a citizen was considerable, this was regarded by most Spartans as only proper. 

A cleft beside the road which wound over the mountains to Messenia, the Apothetae, or “Dumping Ground,” provided the setting for the infanticide. (p81) 

“””” 

This had a role quite without precedent elsewhere in Greece, or indeed beyond. For the Spartans, in their concern to mold the perfect citizen, had developed a truly bizarre and radical notion: the world’s first universal, state-run education system. (p82) 

“””” 

When, at the age of seven, a young Spartan left his home to live communally with other boys, it was more than his sense of family that was being fractured and reset: the very notion that he possessed a private identity was, from that moment on, to be placed under continuous assault. Spartans termed his training the “agoge,” a word more conventionally applied to the raising of cattle. His supervisor was a “paidonomos” literally, a “herder of boys.” (p84) 

“””” 

Pederasty was widely practiced elsewhere in Greece, but only in Sparta was it institutionalized even, it is said, with fines for boys who refused to take a lover. Girls too, it was rumored, if not married, might expect to be sodomized repeatedly during their adolescence. In both cases, the justification was surely the same: nowhere was so private, so intimate, but the state had the right to intrude there. (p85) 

“””” 

The Persians were rich beyond the dreams of avarice; they were perfumed and effeminate; why, “they even fought in trousers.” (p157) 

“”””” 

The ultimate basis of Persian greatness, then, was not its bureaucracy, nor even its armies, but its roads. Precious filaments of dust and packed dirt, these provided the immensity of the empire’s body with its nervous system, 

A truly urgent message, one brought at a gallop through storms and the dead of night, might arrive in Persepolis from the Aegean in under two weeks. This was an incredible, almost magical, degree of speed. Nothing to equal it had ever been known before. (p173) 

“””” 

That countries where daivas were worshipped should be attacked and brought low; that their sanctuaries should be obliterated; that territories once given over to the Lie should be reconsecrated to the cause of Truth: this, throughout Xerxes’ reign, was to be the guiding manifesto of the Persian people. (p208) 

“””” 

Ephialtes, a native of the plain on which the Persian army was camped, and he it was who revealed to his interrogators that Callidromus did indeed possess a secret. “In the hope of a rich reward, he told the king about the trail which led over the mountain to Thermopylae” and even offered, in the truly fatal act of treachery, to serve the invaders as their guide. (p288) 

“””” 

The sacred serpent, whose presence beside the tomb of Erechtheus had served generations of Athenians as an assurance that their city would never fall, was reported by its attendants to have left its honey cake uneaten, and disappeared. 

“””” 

There stood, two thousand feet above Corinth, on the summit of the city’s steepling acropolis, a temple dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Here, complementing the marble statuary, could be found an altogether less chilly brand of votive offering: prostitutes. Donated to the goddess by grateful Olympic champions and other such luminaries, these had a reputation so superlative that in Greek “Krinthiazein” — “to do a Corinthian” meant to fuck. (p332-333) 

“”””” 

Everything about Xerxes’ invasion which had struck the Greeks as so terrifying at the time-the teeming numbers of the Great King’s hordes, the limitless resources at his fingertips, the wealth, the show, the spectacle, the extravagance of his train-all, in hindsight, appeared merely to have marked him out as effete. Conquerors of Asia the Persians may have been; but they might as well have been women when measured against the freeborn, bronze-clad men of Greece. (p359)