Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones > Quotes

“Had he not been caught between the two giants of Persian history, Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, Cambyses might now be better remembered for playing a significant part in Persia’s history.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“But it must be conceded that as Persia grew in power and status, it exponentially required and desired slaves to make the imperial system work.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“His empire was founded on bloodshed, as all empires invariably are.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“For most Westerners, 'harem' is a word which conjures up a heady image of some kind of closely guarded Oriental pleasure palace, filled with scantily clad nubile virgins, stretched out on pillows in languid preparation for nights of sexual adventure in a sultan's bed. It is a world of scatter cushions, jewels in the belly button, gyrating hips, and fluttering eyelashes set above gauzy yashmak (face veils). These cliches find their most vivid expression in nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings and in popular movies. This vision of Eastern sensual excess has often led scholarship to dismiss the notion of the harem as a Western fabrication, an open sesame to an Arabian Nights fantasy world. If we want to utilise the word 'harem' in its correct context and use it to consolidate some legitimate facts about royal women in the Persian empire, we must dispense with the Orientalist cliches entirely and understand what, in historical terms, a 'harem' was all about.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

“A king waited to see which of his sons showed the most potential for rulership, or displayed characteristics which he himself recognised as desirable.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“Westerners saw themselves as the direct heirs of the miracle of Greek civilisation.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“Persians, Babylonians, and Assyrians comprehended their past in terms of their myths, especially creation stories, and the grand tales of gods, heroes, and kings.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“Persepolis,”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of The Great Kings

“It was the Great Kings of Persia who freed the Jews from their Babylonian exile and allowed them to return home to build a new (second) temple in Jerusalem on the site of King Solomon’s original place of worship.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“If we regard ourselves today as free-thinking people, it is the Greeks who created the condition for this.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“In 538 bce he decreed that the temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt at his own expense and that the treasures plundered from the sacred sanctuary by Nebuchadnezzar should be returned to the house of God. The captive Jews (like all other foreign deportees) were free to go home.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings

“Truth in war is an illusion, a deception made to bolster one side and denigrate the other.”
― Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings