Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, reported a plot to assassinate her. Diana documented her concerns in a letter that she entrusted to the former Royal Butler,
Mr Paul Burrell. She identified the man behind the plot. Diana was warned about a conspiracy against her by a sympathetic insider. A member of the Royal Family warned the princess: ‘You need to be discreet, even in your own home, because “they” are listening aH the time.’ (Daily Mirror, 20 October 2003)
The Persian court was the locale of intrigue, subterfuge, cruelty, and danger as Achaemenid kings and queens plotted against their opponents and murdered their rivals, or else were out-manoeuvred and assassinated first. And yet the court was also a place of sophistication, culture, pleasure, and delight - although for the royalty and nobility who inhabited this rarefied world, the pleasures of court were a serious business too - as the Greeks well understood:
Tyrants and kings, being in control of the good things of life, and having had experience of them all, put pleasure in the first place, since pleasure makes men’s natures more kingly. All persons, at any rate, who pay court to pleasure and choose a life of luxury are lordly and magnificent, like the Persians and the Medes. For more than any other men in the world they seek pleasure and luxury, yet they are the bravest and most noble barbarians. Indeed, to have pleasure and luxury is a mark of the freeborn; it eases their minds and exalts them. (Athenaeus 12.512a-b)
The unknown Achaemenid-style Israelite prince who, allegedly, and at some point in the Persian period, composed the Hebrew Biblical book now familiarly called Ecclesiastes, reflected on the meaning of princely pleasure and his musings give us an insight into what Achaemenid royalty thought, and valued as, pleasurable:
I did great things. I built residences for myself and I planted my vineyards. . ., gardens, and parks. . . . I acquired slaves, both male and female, and I had servants who were born to the house. I also had a flock of cattle and sheep, more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. I gathered for myself silver and gold, the wealth of kings and provinces. I had for myself singers, male and female, and the delights of mankind: many women. . . nothing that my eyes desired did I keep from them; I did not refuse my heart any joy. (Ecclesiastes 2:4-6)
Building and planting projects, the accumulation of animals, slaves, and women, and the display of conspicuous leisure through hunting, feasting, drinking, and celebrating had a major part to play in defining and consolidating royal identity. Kings and nobles were united by the refinements of court arts, the thrill of the chase, and the delights of the banqueting table, while codes of hierarchy and the demands of selfworth simultaneously pressurised courtiers to demand of one another recognition of the intimate favour they enjoyed with the king as individuals. At the Achaemenid court pleasure had a political significance.
World History
