[ TT ] The 300 Spartans failed to hold the line at Battle of Thermopylae , Greek Democracy was obliterated from History

Farhad, the son of Greek slaves, enjoyed the Mediterranean sunshine as he took his morning walk towards the library. His parents had renamed him for their jubilation at the Persian conquest of the city-states, for they freed all slaves and gave them the land of the slain Greek warriors. In a few short months, his family became free and converted to Zoroastrianism. 
 
 Though he did not always agree with the rather autocratic system of government, it was to the Persians that he owed his pursuit of his dreams, and so he wanted to be a historian, to fully and rigorously document the fall of his former oppressors. He taught himself how to read and write both Greek and Aramaic, and caught the eye of the Persian literati that had settled in his area. Being fluently bilingual, he helped them translate texts; being liked, he was taken along to surveys of the battlefields at Thermopylae and Plataea. At Thermopylae he documented the foolishness of the Greek failure to retreat, despite overwhelming losses; at Plataea, he documented their last stand - valiant, but uncoordinated and ultimately doomed by the low morale arising from their disorganized loss at Salamis. 
 
 Farhad found it deeply ironic that the Greeks, once a loose conglomerate of city-states, was now a unified satrap under Persian rule. Being bilingual, he interviewed elderly Greeks about their recollections and opinions. The upper class were understandably bitter at the loss of power or status in the world, but the middle and lower classes were generally indifferent - life had not changed much under Persian rule, as the Persian government was content to rule satraps by proxy kings. Indeed, some were even pleased at the outcome. Merchants applauded the construction of trade infrastructure between city-states, and many grew rich at breaking into the new markets in Persia. 
 
 All told, the more Farhad studied, the more he grew proud of his name and the country he had come to call his own. He would write them a praise-filled epic, a history that would last through the ages.
