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Imagine a thousand years from now, someone makes a movie portraying the nazis a heroic defenders of civilization & the Soviets as a bloodthirsty barbaric horde. That's this movie. In reality, the Persians were the good guys of the ancient world & the Greeks were the villains 
The Achaemenid Persian Empire of Cyrus, Darius & Xersxes was by far the most progressive society of the era. The Persians did more than any other society to advance the well-being & freedom for people in antiquity. Certainly far more than the Ancient Greeks.
The Persians outlawed slavery & freed all the slaves in every society they conquered, while in many Greek cities, Sparta included, slaves outnumbered free Greeks & were routinely subjected to wanton violence. The Spartans engage in yearly mass slaughter of the Helots for sport
Persians were the first society in recorded history to write a bill of rights, guaranteeing freedom of religion & equality under the law. They also declared that all conquered people under Persian rule had the same rights as Persian citizens.
The Greeks, on the other hand, were a very stratified culture with a caste system that treated all non-Greeks as second-class citizens & regarded them as inferior.
The Greeks also practiced human sacrifice, while Persians outlawed human sacrifice.
The Greeks also practiced human sacrifice, while Persians outlawed human sacrifice.
Persians had freedom of religion for all people. They returned the Jews to Judea & built for them a new temple after the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. Even later, in the Roman period, whenever Persia & Rome would go to war, Roman Jews would side with Persians
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