But what about the cats?

[selenak]

I've just finished reading Persian Fire by Tom Holland, an entertainingly written non-fiction book about the Persian wars (that's Greek city states versus Persians, not Alexander versus Persians years later, if you're less familiar with ancient history). As advertised, he tells this without glorifying or demonizing anyone, and points out right at the start that the accounts we have are of course nearly exclusively Greek in origin. Which means we know far more about the individual players on the Greek side than on the Persian side, though he brings across the various kings from Kyros to Xerxes vividly, and makes me wonder, not for the first time, about Atossa.

However. Never mind the Termophylae, Spartans and all: one detail very early on in the story made me say THIS IS NOT ON, PERSIANS. My history teachers at school over two decades ago must have forgotten that, and afterwards this wasn't my period, so I hadn't come across it before, but: one of the means by which the Persians conquered Egypt was by binding cats on their shields which supposedly froze the Egyptian archers into non-action, cats being sacred to them. Tom Holland doesn't tell me what became of the cats afterwards, though.

Clearly those cats deserve an epic of their own. Preferably written by Neil Gaiman.

Comments

[dorothy1901]

According to Wikipedia, the Persians had the image of a cat on their shields, not a real flesh-and-blood cat.

By 525 BC, Egypt was essentially the only empire not conquered by the Persians. At that point Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, set out to do just that. Cambyses and his army crossed the fifty-six mile stretch of desert to the Egyptian outpost of Pelesium on camelback; they then clashed down upon the Egyptian army who were reluctant to strike back at the sacred symbol of the cat upon the Persian shields.

[selenak]

Then Tom Holland lied to me. Or maybe his German translator did?