ShalmaneserIII t1_ivmnp88 wrote
Reply to comment by Jokerang in TIL that the Persian King Xerxes was so enraged after a storm destroyed his bridges that he ordered the sea be given 300 whiplashes, and branded it with red-hot irons as the soldiers shouted at the water by LethalPoopstain
Herodotus was born around 484 BC. During the Achaemenid dynasty, around that time, the Persian empire had 44% of the world's population.
The Greek poleis were scrappy little states on the outside of the largest empire (relatively to share of global population) the world has ever seen. It's inevitable that a lot of what they did and thought was going to be done in relation to that huge empire just to the East. "Yeah, Persia's basically what civilization is, we should acknowledge that and imitate parts of it" or "Yeah, Persia kind of sucks, look at all this bad stuff they do, we should do our own thing in contrast to them."
You see how this works nowadays, too.
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