Empire and Violence from the Achaemenid-Persian Perspective

Empire and Violence from the Achaemenid-Persian Perspective

The lecture deals with acts of violence within the Achaemenid-Persian empire by developing a larger perspective on the topic. First, it addresses the general question of the relationship between violence and state formation on the one hand and violence and empire on the other hand. Second, it concentrates on the phenomenon by focussing on the Achaemenid-Persian empire and the specific forms of violence that we encounter in our sources. Thereby, it will become evident that the topic of “violence” does not only bear a dimension of “fact”, i.e. what happened and which crime had been committed by whom and in which form, but also a dimension of “social construction” and, speaking in modern terms, propaganda, i.e. who is to be blamed or sometimes even praised for whatever kind of atrocities which had taken place. Especially in the last case “reality” and “invention” start to get blurred and are not always easy to separate.

Moderation
Dominik Markl (Department of Biblical Studies and Historical Theology)

Response
Silvia Balatti (Kiel University, Ancient History Department)

Organization
Dominik Markl (Department of Biblical Studies and Historical Theology) and Juliane Prade-Weiss (LMU Munich, Department of Comparative Literature) on behalf of “Discourses of Mass Violence in Comparative Perspective”