Persia and Greece Quiz-Making Bits

Asia

Khorasan Road: begins in the Assyrian realm of Babylon, moves over the Zagros mountains to Ecbatana, home of the Medes, then NNE out towards the Caspian Sea, into Bactria, and into the East. Ancient trade route. Assyrians taxed anything that touched it.
Nineveh: Capitol of the Assyrians
Babylon: Assyrian then Median then Persian city of power in Mesopotamia, between slow Tigris and fast flowing Euphrates.
Ecbatana: ringed capitol city of the Medes, up in the Zagros. Great temperature, meeting spot of the differing peoples of the ancient world. Center for horse trading. Medes were the world’s best horsemen and trainers.
Pasargadae and Persepolis: Persian centers. The Parsua came from Pasargadae—the chief region of the Pars or Persian people. Cyrus the Great was from the chief clan from this chief city in the chief region of the Parsua. Persepolis, the capitol city.
610 BCE, the Medians defeat their overlords, the Assyrians. Take over their empire.
550 BCE. Cyrus defeats the Median Astyages. Takes over Median empire. Expands.
Cyrus the great—benevolent, mighty, believing in the divine right of the Parsua to govern the world. Became King of the World in 559 BCE, and then died fighting to extend the empire beyond Bactria in the NNW, in 529 BCE, thirty years later, age 70.
The “Yauna,” or Ionians: Greek people who had emigrated from mainland Greece to the coast of Asia-minor centuries before recorded history. Stubborn, tough to govern.

Pelopponesus

Lacedaemonians (Sparta) in the SE; Messenians over the mountains, to the SW; Tegeans, central; Argives, to the north.
Lycurgus 700-630 BCE. Great law bringer to Lacedaemon. The Spartans were a defunct people, ages different from those who fought at Troy under Menelaus. Lycurgus brought them together under law, and under the Spartan code of militarism. Preached self denial and suffering as a means to become strong. Purportedly starved himself to death to be a model of toughness.
Hoplites: Spartan foot soldiers. Gained prominence because of all the military groups, they alone were able to prevail against the Messenians, their neighbors over the mountains. Thus all Spartans became Hoplites, and since farmer may fight beside aristocrat beside tanner beside shepherd, Spartan society became egalitarian. All classes were equalized by the line of battle. Named after their long oblong shields, or hoopla, which formed walls behind which the line moved and from which it defended.
Helots: the rest of the Pelopponesus conquered and then enslaved by Sparta to be their lackeys. If Spartans gained strength from self-denial, they encouraged libertinism amongst the helots, whom they also culled to eliminate anyone with leadership potential. Every Spartan who graduated from the Cryptea, or special forces, had to sneak into helot-land and kill an identified leader or problem person, so that they had familiarity with murder, drawing blood. Helots used and abused to extreme degrees, so that Sparta could maintain a state entirely dedicated to military prowess.

Mainland Greece

Athens
Eleusis and Eleusianian Mysteries
Delphi and Oracle of Delphi
Thermopylae
Marathon
Solon: 638-558 BCE: Great constitutional leader of Athenians (Attica). Believed that all Athenians or Atticans should be free. Bought them out of slavery. Gave them legal protection, right to assemble, vote. Set society in order, then left it.
Cleisthenes: in 508 BCE, a powermove by aristocratic clans in league with Cleomenes, a Spartan King, sought to overrun Athens. Cleisthenes, in a bid for power, recalled Solon, and asserted that the people, or demes, should have all freedom, all say, all power. So when Cleomenes invaded Athens, and took residence in the Acropolis, he was surprised when the masses of Athenians attacked him and his small contingent of men. Escaped back to Sparta. Birth of democracy.