Rolf Strootman is associate professor of History at the University of Utrecht. His research focuses on empire, monarchy and cultural encounters in the ancient Mediterranean, Iran and Central Asia. He is the author of Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires (2014), The Birdcage of the Muses: Cultural and Scientific Patronage at the Ptolemaic Imperial Court (2017), and together with M.J. Versluys edited the volume Persianism in Antiquity (2017).