for miles, peasants living in windowless mud huts work dusty, stubble fields with sickles and oxcarts;
a galloping royal messenger kills a chicken;
trotting lancers with baggy pants, scaly armor, spiked or plumed helmets and striped cloaks are dusty, sweaty and coarse;
the economy supports a few aristocratic estates with large, adobe houses and beautiful gardens;
Pasargadae is twisting streets, hovels, bazaars, beggars invoking Mithras, traders, dogs, offal and tavern music;
entering a square of four mansions and seeking hospitality from some great man for a foreign traveler, Everard addresses a guard who calls a slave who gets a majordomo who sends another slave to invite in the stranger who is now to be a guest of "'...Croesus the Lydian, servant of the Great King.'" -Time Patrol, p. 69.
Thus, it is possible for a suitably attired, horse-riding, armed Greek, "Meander from Athens," (p. 69) to enter the highest level of Persian society.
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