If Americans know anything at all about Cyrus II, it’s usually positive. The founder of the Persian Empire earned praise then and now for inaugurating a new way to rule: with respect — respect for differences of religion, respect for the wisdom of individual communities, respect (i.e. fair pay) for honest work… and all this over 2500 years ago. But digging a little deeper, it wasn’t all revolution and roses throughout the vast empire. Slavery continued to be an acceptable “institution.” People were branded and mutilated, eunuchs made and witches tracked for the crime of a neighbor’s illness. Were Cyrus’s Persians better than the Assyrians and Babylonians before them, who flayed enemies alive (see pic… and a child watching?!), 
cut off noses and ears, the thumbs of vanquished kings? In many ways, yes. And I am learning more. Yet immersed in this history and excavating especially the lives of women, I’m struck by how far we’ve come, not least by the security and respect that I have simply taken for granted as a basic human right. And I’m less cynical (or pessimistic, as John Horgan might say in his Slate.com article) about the premise of Steven Pinker‘s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Gosh, maybe we are getting better. Now, about that pesky environment thing…
