section_path: History/Relations with Persians
section_name: Relations with Persians
paragraph_text: Relations with Persians
  
  Herodotus says: "before Darius reached the Danube, the first people he subdued were the Getae, who believed that they never die". A persian clay tablet found at Gherla mentions Darius and although the Persian army probably did not reach the modern findspot of the tablet, the object is probably evidence of the Persian campaign to Dacia.
  
  It is possible that the Persian expedition and the subsequent occupation may have altered the way in which the Getae expressed the immortality belief. The influence of thirty years of Achaemenid presence may be detected in the emergence of an explicit iconography of the "Royal Hunt" that influenced Dacian and Thracian metalworkers, and of the practice of hawking by their upper class.