Dominic Sandbrook

She wouldn't take any prisoners, though, to be fair.

She'd definitely impale rebels.

She absolutely would.

And what about this other guy, this guy from Media?

So the Medes come up with a pretender of their own, don't they?

And he doesn't come to a very happy end at all.

A very skilled impaler.

will impale you in such a way that none of your vital organs are pierced, so that you just sort of sit there, as it were, for hours or days at a time when people came and looked at you.

I mean, I think that's a terrible way to die, frankly.

I was about to say I respect it.

I don't necessarily approve it, but I respect it.

And he's not just, I mean, he's not just fearsome and he's not just good at weaponizing religion.

I mean, he's also just very good at running empires, right?

He does what needs to be done.

The administrative legwork, you know, he gets up and he does his paperwork, basically.

But the real genius is that he allies that with this sort of moral ideological vision, isn't it?

That you basically combine somebody who's brilliant at actually extracting money from people and who's... You're a great practical empire builder with somebody who creates an ideological justification for empire where his empire is a reflection of divine order.

And to challenge it makes you a rebel against...

So is the implication that the Persian Empire, you know, is it absolutely explicit that the Persian Empire will effectively become universal?

Because if this is about divine order, surely there can be nowhere on earth that is beyond the reach of the divine order, right?