A phrase I have grown used to seeing in this series:
Because this post has turned out to run rather longer than I expected
He needs to adjust his expectation to length.
I would also suggest:
Briant’s vision of Darius III, Alexander’s opponent, is hardly flattering, though I’d note it sure seems like there is an effort underway to rehabilitate Darius III and try to make a capable Great King out him. This side of the movement in the scholarship has, however, been slow because doing it well requires a lot of language expertise: not just Greek and Latin, but perhaps also Babylonian, Old Persian and Egyptian. Not a lot of scholars have that kind of language expertise, both because it’s hard to learn that many languages, but also because it is hard to learn those eastern languages at all because they’re simply not taught in many universities. Indeed, the number shrinks over time, as language programs are often under siege at universities.
is Americo-Eurocentric: the Persians are probably doing work to restore Darius' status for political reasons. Persian nationalism is tolerated if not encouraged in Iran. Language competency in the Arabic/Parsi tertiary education and research space cannot be assumed to be lacking.
The issue with iranian, egyptian, and so on scholarship is that it is not purely academic andtherefore it has little value for the interested unless they are studying propaganda tools in the XXI century. Additional issue is that even this research is worthy, it should reach the wider audience and not be published only in arabic or farsi.
Because this post has turned out to run rather longer than I expected
He needs to adjust his expectation to length.
I would also suggest:
Briant’s vision of Darius III, Alexander’s opponent, is hardly flattering, though I’d note it sure seems like there is an effort underway to rehabilitate Darius III and try to make a capable Great King out him. This side of the movement in the scholarship has, however, been slow because doing it well requires a lot of language expertise: not just Greek and Latin, but perhaps also Babylonian, Old Persian and Egyptian. Not a lot of scholars have that kind of language expertise, both because it’s hard to learn that many languages, but also because it is hard to learn those eastern languages at all because they’re simply not taught in many universities. Indeed, the number shrinks over time, as language programs are often under siege at universities.
is Americo-Eurocentric: the Persians are probably doing work to restore Darius' status for political reasons. Persian nationalism is tolerated if not encouraged in Iran. Language competency in the Arabic/Parsi tertiary education and research space cannot be assumed to be lacking.