The Greco-Persian Wars

Hackett's Passages: Key Moments in History series titles include original-source documents in accessible editions, intended for the student-user or general audience. This edition, The Greco-Persian Wars, taps our knowledge of the Persian Empire and its interactions with the Greek world. The sources examined were created in different times and places, for different purposes, and with different intended audiences. Using these sources effectively requires recognizing their distinct characteristics. A general introduction about the Greco-Persian wars is included to provide historical background and an overview of the information contained in the original-source documents. Also included are a glossary of terms, a chronology, insightful headnotes to each document, and an index. 

Reviews:

"Erik Jensen's The Greco-Persian Wars offers a refreshing introduction to a critical (but often misunderstood) historical event in world history. Rejecting dated models of East-West confrontation, this book usefully frames the Persian invasions of Greece in terms of imperial expansion and frontier development, and also considers the long-term evolution of Greco-Persian relations after 480–479 BC. The source selections draw on both Achaemenid documents as well as Greek narratives to contextualize the conflict."
      —John Hyland, Christopher Newport University

"I like Jensen’s book very much. This 'key moment' in world history has traditionally been read almost exclusively through Greek eyes, and having these translations of the Persian sources provides the opportunity and impetus for a fresh interpretation of this classic encounter. . . . The Introduction provides an excellent background to the Persian sources and sheds invaluable light on the people and society that produced them."
      —Robert Garland, Colgate University

"Jensen's short book . . . is welcome because in addition to the 'usual' Greek sources he gives us a range of non-Greek ones in translation—Akkadian, Aramaic, Egyptian, Elamite, Hebrew, and Old Persian–allowing us to consider both sides of the story.
      "The bulk of the book comprises translated sources, briefly introduced and with short contextual comments. This is the real strength of the book. The sources take us chronologically through the period of Persian expansion and the wars themselves and then very usefully their aftermath down to the King's Peace of 387. This last selection shows . . . the ripple effect of the Wars, that a century after them the motives of individuals and states—Greeks and Persians—still dominated relations between the two powers. In effect, then, as Jensen argues, the Persian Wars do not exist in a vacuum of their own time. Further, the contrasting sources highlight that non-Greek sources could be as biased as Greek ones, impact our views of the Persian Empire and even Persian kingship, and tell us that the Persians were as much 'players' in the period as Greeks were—something we often overlook."
      —Ian Worthington, Macquarie University, in The Middle Ground Journal

About the Author:

Erik Jensen is AssociateProfessor of History, Salem State University, and author of Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World (Hackett, 2018).