Ancient Greece and Ancient Iran: Cross-Cultural Encounters

The extraordinary feats of conquest of Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great have left a lasting imprint in the annals of world history. Successive Persian and Greek rule over vast stretches of territory from the Indus to the eastern Mediterranean also created an international environment in which people, commodities, technological innovations, as well as intellectual, political, and artistic ideas could circulate across the ancient world unhindered by ethno-cultural and territorial barriers, bringing about cross-fertilization between East and West. These broad patterns of cultural phenomena are illustrated in twenty-four contributions to the first international conference on ancient Greek-Iranian interactions, which was organized as a joint Greek and Iranian initiative. Contents: - Stephen Tracy, "Europe and Asia: Aeschylus' Persians and Homer's Iliad" - Angeliki Petropoulou, "The Death of Masistios and the Mourning for his Loss" - Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou, "Magi in Athens in the Fifth Century BC?" - Massoud Azarnoush, "Hajiabad and the Dialogue of Civilizations" - Sara Aunia, "Zoroastrianism and Christianity in the Sasanian Empire (Fourth Century AD) - Evangelos Venetis, "Greco-Persian Literary Interactions in Classical Persian Literature" - Garth Fowden, "Pseudo-Aristotelian Politics and Theology in Universal Islam" - Michael N. Weiskopf, "The System Artaphernes-Mardonius as an Example of Imperial Nostalgia - Askold I. Ivantchik, "Greeks and Iranians in the Cimmerian Bosporus in the Second/First Century BC: New Epigraphic Data from Tanais" - Christopher Tuplin, "The Seleucids and Their Achaemenid Predecessors: A Persian Inheritance?" - G. G. Aperghis, "Managing an Empire - Teacher and Pupil" - David Stronach, "The Building Program of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae and the Date of the Fall of Sardis" - Mohammad Hassan Talebian, "Persia and Greece: The Role of Cultural Interactions, in the Architecture of Persepolis-Pasargadae" - Margaret Cool Root, "Reading Persepolis in Greek - Part Two: Marriage Metaphors and Unmanly Virtues" - Olga Palagia, "The Marble of the Penelope from Persepolis and Its Historical Implications" - Antigoni Zournatzi, "Cultural Interconnections in the Achaemenid West: A Few Reflections on the Testimony of the Cypriot Archaeological Record" - Yannick Lintz, "Greek, Anatolian, and Persian Iconography in Asia Minor: Material Sources, Method, and Perspectives" - Latife Summerer, "Imaging a Tomb Chamber: The Iconographic Program of the Tatarll Wall Paintings" With an Appendix by Alexander von Kienlin Tatarll Project: Reconstructing a Wooden Tomb Chamber - Stavros A. Paspalas, "The Achaemenid Lion-Griffin on a Macedonian Tomb Painting and on a Sicyonian Mosaic - Despina Ignatiadou, "Psychotropic Plants on Achaemenid Style Vessels" - Athanasios Sideris, "Achaemenid Toreutics in the Greek Periphery" - Pavlos Triantafyllidis, "Achaemenid Influences on Rhodian Minor Arts and Crafts" - Mehdi Rahbar, "Historical Iranian and Greek Relations in Retrospect" - Shahrokh Razmjou, "Persia and Greece: A Forgotten History of Cultural Relations"