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Persianisms: The Achaemenid Court in Greek Art, 380–330 BCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Abstract

The Persians held sway over the Greek imagination for more than 200 years. The image of Persia shifted in that time from xenophobic hostility, caused through fear of the encroaching presence of the Persian empire, through to curious acceptance of its dominance. Much study has been given to the formative decades of the construction of the Persian “Other” in Greek art, but the fourth-century image of Persia has remained relatively unexplored. This paper demonstrates how Greek artists of the period 380–330 BCE fixated on the life and accomplishments of the court of the Achaemenid Great Kings and argues that instead of offering an orientalist clichéd view of Persian life, it attempted to understand and disseminate bone fide Iranian images of court society.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 6: Visualizing Iran: From Antiquity to the Present , November 2017 , pp. 765 - 786
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2017

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