114: The Age of Heroes

Humay Chehrzad, the Kayanian Queen, illustration by Jalal al-Din Mirza Jelveh Yazdi, 19th Century

After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the history of the Achaemenids slipped into legend, myth, and obscurity. By the 6th Century CE, the likes of Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes had been all but forgotten in Iran. Instead, the Sassanid Persian Empire remembered the stories of great heroes from the Avesta, occupying the equivalent of the Achaemenids’ place in history.
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113: Alexander – King of the Monsters

Iskandar (Alexander) comforts the dying Dara (Darius III-ish), illustrated Shahnameh 1604

In the centuries following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, Iranian cultural memory changed and shifted, often in strange and unexpected ways. Alexandros Megas ton Makedon was remembered as Gizistag Iskandar-i Rhomiyag – the Accursed Alexander of Rome.
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