Today we're going to learn about the horrible totalitarian Persians and the saintly, democracy-loving Greeks. But of course, we already know this story. There were some wars in which no one wore any shirts and everyone was reasonably fit. The Persians were bad, the Greeks were good, Socrates and Plato are awesome, the Persians didn't even philosophize, the West is the best, go team! Yeah, well, no. Let's start with the Persian Empire, which became the model for pretty much all land-based empires throughout the world, except for, wait for it, the Mongols. Much of what we know about the Persians and their empire comes from an outsider writing about them, which is something we now call history.