The Persian Wars are the origin of history in Europe. Herodotus, the father of history, wrote his work on the wars between Greece and Persia. He recounted the battles of Marathon (490 BC, led by Mitiades of Athens), Thermopylae (480 BC, led by king Leonidas of Sparta), Salamis (480 BC, led by Eurybiadas of Sparta), Artemision (480 BC, led by Eurybiadas of Sparta), Platea (479 BC, led by king Pausanias of Sparta). These battles and this war have shaped European history.
There is almost no contemporary historical source in Persian comparable to Herodotus. The most celebrated historic narrative in Persian is the poem by Ferdwosi in the 12th century.
Persia’s invasion of Greece in 490 BC created a new word: μηδισμá½¹ς ‘medism’. It refers to those people who supported the Persians. In Athens, it fell under the category of ‘treason’ (προδá½¹ντες τá½´ν á¼™λλá½±δα ‘who had betrayed Greece’ Hdt. 6.49).
The other side was represented by Greeks who fought against Persia.
On March 4th, Greece sent two ships to protect Cyprus from the drone attacks of Iran. One of the ships, the ‘Cimon’, was named after the Athenian general who led an expedition to Cyprus to repel a Persian invasion in 450 BC (Thuc. 1.112).
The hostility between Greece and Persia is inbuilt in European culture. The term medism refers to helping an invading army, what is now termed being a ‘collaborationist’.
With the adoption of Christianity, the continent saw positively the role of Persia and its sheltering of the Jewish communities, as well as their return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. This was decided by a decree of the Persian king Cyrus (559-530 BC) described by the Bible (Ezra 1.1-4). It is confirmed by the Cylinder of Cyrus (ca 539 BC):
‘I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there, to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings.’
King Cyrus had a good reputation in ancient Greece as well. Xenophon wrote a biography of Cyrus, the Cyropaedia (ca. 370 BC), which is one of the main sources of information about this ruler.
After a period of turmoil and a revolution, Darius became king in 522 BC. He set out to invade the Indus valley in 516 BC and Greece in 490 BC. Athens was hostile also because the Persians occupied Athens and burned down the Acropolis. A few decades after the invasion, the Parthenon was rebuilt by Pericles in the golden age of Athenian democracy.
Medism is collaboration with those Persians who attack and invade the West.
If Iran does not attack the West, it remains simply a highly admired and somehow distant culture. This is the instinctive attitude expressed by the West ever since it was forged by Herodotus.