Tom Holland

And he topples a succession of famous and ancient empires.

So the first empire that he topples is the empire of the Medes, and they occupy kind of north,

west iran so tehran would be um in what was media um and the persians had been subjects to the medes so the persians actually see the medes as cousins and when they conquer the medes they essentially incorporate the medes in as kind of junior partners in the entire enterprise of running this empire

And to the Greeks, the Persians and the Medes are indistinguishable.

They're likely to refer to the Persians as Medes.

So if you hear Medes in this, it's kind of Medes and Persians.

So Cyrus, he's now got the Medes on board.

Then he marches eastwards into what is now Turkey, so Anatolia.

And he attacks a city we've already heard of, Sardis.

And this is the capital of the Lydians.

And the Lydians are a very prosperous, wealthy power.

They have subjected the Ionian Greeks on the Aegean shore to their rule.

And the source of their power is their ability to monetize their power.

And they've literally monetized it because they've invented money.

And this is why the last king, Croesus, who gets defeated by Cyrus.

overthrown by him.

You know, he's still a byword.

You're rich as Croesus.

You know, you're fabulously, fabulously rich.

So now the Lydians have been toppled.