Ancient Empires

A poor attempt at rewriting modern views of historical figures in a negative light while completely ignoring what the societal context and norms of their respective ages were. It seems like the attempt here was to eliminate the generally accepted views of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra, and rewrite them by portraying each of these historical figures in a negative light, while downplaying their historical importance and achievements. As an example, in many cases they speak of their military conquests in terms how violent these leaders were to their enemies, while completely ignoring that their enemies would have been no kinder had they been victorious. It's all ads up to bad attempt to erase the history we know and replace it with a slanted negative view of very well known historical figures. Not worth the time to watch.

I know not why Americans insist on this mania for just inserting talking heads into their documentaries. In the first few minutes of the first episode on Alexander we had a sequence of 5 talking heads each uttering sentence or half a sentence and then passing onto another talking head which just plain spoiled the whole show. The intro could could easily have been done by the narrator or even better, if you must, have the guest expert just talk his lines and bring up his name and use the time to show images of the land, maps, monuments or whatever-we just don't need to see these half baked "experts", a lot of the time giving social commentary.

So, the narrative is completely spoiled because you with each talking head you have a different presentation and set of mannerisms that should not be in play during a documentary. We should be watching the footage related to Alexander and the history not trying to interpret what each talking head is saying.

And if you think I am exaggerating, have a look at the list of "selfs" in the cast list on IMDB. There are over 40 - really???

To see how it's done the directors or producers look no further than Apollo 11. A monumental documentary told without a single talking head and it was an outstanding and one to best documentaries I have ever seen - you almost felt that you were reliving the moon landing.

Anyway, back to this awful thing - I gave up about 10 minutes in and have not been back to it. The review could have been "How to take a great subject and tear it to shreds..."

It's such a shame When in 539 BC the very first modern human rights was written by "Cyrus The Great", when He freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality, cyrus also considered all nations and peoples to be equal in terms of their rights But every single time western media, movies and TV shows try to change the reality and say "Persians were barbaric" and start the history right after the great persian empire!

No matter how many "300" how many "ancient empires" and etc you make, you can't change the history! Cyrus the great was a liberator of people and not as your favorite alexander who was conqueror!

The first and biggest civilization started from Persia (Iran) The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire,also known as the First Persian Empire Old Persian, was the ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the largest empire by that point in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles). The empire spanned from the Balkans and Egypt in the west, West Asia as the base, the majority of Central Asia to the northeast, and the Indus Valley to the southeast.

In the modern era, the Achaemenid 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, including its possession of a large, professional army. Its advancements inspired the implementation of similar styles of governance by a variety of later empires. And you call this barbaric Persian!

I really enjoyed and liked this series. It contains a lot of information about these ancient figures in a new light. I have read and watched some books and movies about them. However, there is new information in these series which I never read or heard. The cinematography is good, and the fact that they have dramatized this series adds to its attraction.

There are some gripes about the series which I believe come from a dislike some viewers harbor towards some of the experts for the comments they have made previously on a historical TV series.

I believe, we have to watch and look at this series with a mind that needs to know new information about these ancient characters, not who the experts are.

It is a good series and I recommend it.