Tonight, we’ll read about the Persian empire at the zenith of its expansion from the book “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” by Carl Witt, published in 1896.

The ancient Persian or Iranian empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time, spanning from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east.

In the modern era, this empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration; its multicultural policy; building complex infrastructure, such as road systems and an organized postal system; the use of official languages across its territories; and the development of civil services.

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