By the middle of the third century A.D. the Roman Empire ... from a woman, Aurelian redoubled his efforts to take the city. In desperation, the queen tried to flee eastward to Persia but was ...

The first great Persian empire, which is the subject of this book, also has a name that’s hard for many readers to pronounce: “Achaemenid” (ah-KHEM-eh-nid, or ah-khem-EH-nid.) The standard treatment ...