Lecture “The Persian-Greek Conflict: Propaganda and Reality”

For centuries, we’ve discussed the Persian-Greek wars and their relations — but we’ve done so almost exclusively through Greek texts, created within what we would today call state propaganda. Over time, the image of the "barbaric Persia" became part of the European cultural code, and only in recent decades have we begun to realize that the real Persian perspective was almost completely lost or suppressed.

During the lecture, we will explore:

• How the Greek tradition shaped our perception of Persia

• Why we lost the first-person Persian narrative

• What we can restore about the real politics and culture of the Achaemenid Empire

• We will also discuss how to free ourselves from one-sided interpretations of the past