First Greek reference to Persepolis

[jona]

Dear friends,Does anybody know the oldest Greek reference to Persepolis? If I remember correctly, it is not attested in our sources before the reign of Alexander, and it has been suggested that the existence of Persepolis was a discovery made after the battle of Issus. Until then, the Greeks thought that the most important city in the Achaemenid empire was Susa.The point is relevant because there is a little treatise called *De mundo* (The Cosmos) in the Corpus Aristotelicum, which mentions Ecbatana and Susa as capitals of Persia; it may be relevant for the dating of this treatise. In my view, calling Susa capital of the Persian Empire after the capture of Persepolis is something like today calling Bonn the capital of Germany.If, as I believe, *De Mundo* is indeed written by Aristotle, it is our first solid evidence for the education of Alexander. More about that later.Anyone any thoughts?Jona

[a spiropoulos]

about persopolis, the old greek biography states
starting chapter6, "having disposed of darius murders
by hanging them over darius body, he arranged a great wedding to roxanna in persopolis,greek and persian empires were now bound by blood,as well as the sword.in order to further the union of greeks and macedonians,he ordered all macedonian to wear persian armor,and the persian greek armor.
alexander ordered the treasure in persopolis to be counted,
they found twenty storehouses filled with silver,
twelve wells of uncoined gold, twelve coloumns of minted gold,
one thousand stallions,one thousand trained lions trained
to kill in combat.
when alexander heard of this,he stated truly this city of
persopolis is a store house of treasure.
alexander remained in persopolis one year, regrouped
his fousatta, and counted 4 million
starting towards king croosus of lydia."the treasure was there, roxanna was there, darius body was there,
he married roxanna there,
and he ruled persia one year from there,
i think you can call it the capital of
ancient persia under alexander empire.as

[marcus]

Hi Jona,I'm certainly not aware of any mention before our sources - of course, as Arrian, Plutarch and Diodorus were writing relatively late by "sources" we must assume that it *was* mentioned by Callisthenes et al! :-)I've never read The Persians (Aeschylus?) where it might be mentioned, of course; and it would be excellent to have Ctesias' Persika, where I would have assumed it got a mention. But those two are post-Herodotus, so at the earliest I would *assume* that they didn't know about it, or at least its importance, before the late 5th century or 4th century.All the bestMarcus

[smittysmitty]

I have a footnote in my Penguin edition of Paussanius that states that Persepolis was built by an Athenian exiled family - the Alkmaionid family - sometime between 530 and 510 BC.Unfortunately, I don't know where they got this information from, but assuming it true, I would imagine the Greeks may have had some knowledge of its existance, having been built by Greeks.cheers!

[Cyrus]

Persepolis was larger than that just an Athenian exiled family want to build it but it is obvious that Greeks also worked at Persepolis, there is already a large Greek inscription from 6th centuries BC on the Rahmat mountain near Persepolis.

[jona]

Perhaps there's some confusion here. The Alcmeonids have reconstructed the shrine of Delphi, and Greek artists seem to have worked at the Persepolis reliefs.Jona