Talk:Persian Empire

It is interesting how "Persian Empire" in translations from the Greek renders simple "Persia" or "the Persians". The idea of imperium is a Roman one, and only the Romans came up with the term of imperium Persarum. This is significantly connected to the influential idea of translatio imperii, which remained current throughout the Middle Ages. Only an understanding of this idea enables an understanding of the apparently loose usage of "Persian Empire": medieval scholars were trying to "enumerate empires", and saying "Persian Empire" implies that the Persian empire was considered a member of the chain of translatio imperii. This is the origin of this usage, obviously modern use of "Persian Empire" is unrelated to subscription to the medieval idea of "imperium". The point is that the medieval scholar wants a clean list, Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar), Persia (Darius), Greece (Alexander), Rome (Caesar), Francia (Charlemagne). It is far too fiddly to account for various overlapping dynasties, "Persia (Achaemenids), Greeks (Seleucids, Ptolemaeans, etc.), yeah, then things fell apart a bit, then we had the Parthians together with the Romans, then West Rome collapsed, but there was East Rome, and also the Sassanids". Such a 'messy' account of history is horrible to the medieval mind. They wanted reduction to a clean list of major items. --Dbachmann 07:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)