Matt Waters is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. He is the author of A Survey of Neo-Elamite History (2000), and his work has appeared in numerous journals, including Iran, Revue d'Assyriologie and the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Waters is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Institute for Research in the Humanities. He was awarded the Jonas C. Greenfield Prize from the American Oriental Society in 2006 for the best published article in ancient Near Eastern studies in a three-year period by a scholar under the age of forty.
1. Introduction: tracking an empire
2. Forerunners of the Achaemenids: the first half of the first millennium BCE
3. Persia rising: a new empire
4. From Cyrus to Darius I: empire in transition
5. Darius the king
6. Mechanics of empire
7. Xerxes, the expander of the realm
8. Anatomy of empire
9. Empire at large: from the death of Xerxes to Darius II
10. Maintaining empire: Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III
11. Twilight of the Achaemenids
12. Epilogue
Appendix A. Timeline
Appendix B. Chronological chart of Achaemenid Persian kings
Appendix C. Lineages (family tree) of the Achaemenid royal family
Appendix D. Further readings.
