La 'legge della conquista' achemenide e i preparativi militari dei Persiani. Necessità documentaria, necessità regia e necessità sul campo

From the time of the burst of Persian conquests under Cyrus the Great until the Asian expedition of Alexander more than two centuries later, the Achaemenid dynasty ruled over the vast stretches of lands and peoples comprised between the Indus River and the Mediterranean Sea, and even beyond. The conceptualization of universal rulership, combined with typical symbolic and religious devices of legitimation, was at the base of the Great Kings’ claim to extend their authority over the whole inhabited world. The deep roots of Achaemenid engagement in the ancient models of a royal ‘law of conquest’ appeared in their actuality particularly in the event of the mobilizations of Persian military forces. The vastness and capillarity of war preparations, even if often exaggerated or schematized by the Greek writers (de facto representing the main sources available about Persian war preparation, in Greek 'paraskeue'), were intended as a way to demonstrate the might and magnitude of the universal kingship. However, as a matter of fact the needs imposed by the circumstances in which the mobilizations took place often affected the practice of Persian 'paraskeue' as thoroughly as the ideological backgrounds. The reliance on Greek and classical sources for the understanding and plausible reconstruction of these issues (geography, timings, logistics, etc.) will show how the needs imposed by the state of the documentation always accompany and contribute to define the actual needs of the historical Persian military preparations.