UCR Department of History and  the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program Presents Professor John W.I. Lee UCSB:

This talk examines intimate opposite-sex relationships—including marriage and “concubinage”—between Persians and non-Persians in the far western regions of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BC).  In regions such as Hellespontine Phrygia, people of mixed Persian and non-Persian descent could play key roles as political and cultural mediators between the broader world of imperial Persia and the many small worlds of Greek cities.  They could also become flashpoints for concerns about preserving local identities and communities in the face of imperial influence.  For the Achaemenid Persian Empire, mixing was both integrative and centrifugal: intimate relations helped bind together local networks that ruled the empire, but too many local network connections led to fraying of control at the margins of empire.