Xerxes I

• 1. The Whipped Sea

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  Xerxes I, the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, is remembered for a punishment aimed at water. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, a storm destroyed the flax and papyrus cables of the first bridge Xerxes tried to build across the Hellespont. The king answered by ordering the strait whipped three hundred times and fetters thrown into its waves. Whether or not every detail is true, the image of a ruler lashing the sea became one of the most durable pictures of him in Western memory. Behind that picture stands a real man, born into a royal household and handed a vast, multi-ethnic empire. Who was he before the legend? How did he come to hold the throne, and what did he do with it when the Greek war was over? And why does so much of what we know about him come from the people who fought against him?

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• 2. A Prince Chosen

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  Around 518 BC, Atossa gave birth to Xerxes, four years after she married Darius the Great in 522 BC. Her father was Cyrus the Great, founder of the empire. Darius, by contrast, did not belong to Cyrus's family. The boy's name comes from the Old Iranian Xšaya-ṛšā, which means "ruling over heroes." Greek and Latin writers turned it into Xérxēs, and the name later became popular among Achaemenid rulers.

  The Greek dialogue First Alcibiades describes how Persian princes were raised. Eunuchs looked after them, and from the age of seven they learned to ride and hunt. At fourteen, each prince received four teachers from aristocratic backgrounds, who taught him to be "wise, just, prudent, and brave." The dialogue adds that "fear, for a Persian, is the equivalent of slavery." At 16 or 17 came ten years of national service, with archery, javelin and hunting. The historian Stoneman suggests that Xerxes likely received this kind of training. Nobody knows whether he ever learned to read or write, since Persians favored oral history. From 498 BC, he lived in the royal palace of Babylon.

  The succession itself was not simple. Persian law required a king to name an heir before leaving on a dangerous expedition. A revolt had broken out in Egypt in 486 BC over taxation and the deportation of craftsmen to build the palaces at Susa and Persepolis. Darius prepared his tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, five kilometers from Persepolis, and named Xerxes, his eldest son by Atossa. Failing health kept Darius from leading the campaign. He died in October 486 BC, at the age of 64.

  Xerxes' elder half-brother Artobazan then claimed the crown as the eldest of Darius's children. Xerxes answered that he was the son of Atossa, and that Cyrus had won the Persians their freedom. A Spartan king in exile, the Eurypontid Demaratus, backed him. Demaratus cited Spartan law, under which the first son born while his father was king inherits. The same logic applied here. Artobazan was born to "Darius the subject," with a commoner for a mother. Xerxes was the eldest son "born in the purple," after his father became king. He was crowned between October and December 486 BC, at about 32 years old. The authority of Atossa helped make the transfer smooth, and no one at court or in the provinces challenged it. The Egyptian trouble that had shadowed his father's last months was still waiting for him.

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• 3. Revolts at Home

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  In January 484 BC, Xerxes put down the Egyptian revolt, having led the army there himself. He gave the satrapy to his full brother Achaemenes, replacing Pherendates, who was reportedly killed during the uprising. The campaign also gave the new king a military opening to his reign. It came at a cost, though. The army that Darius had mobilized over three years was spent, so Xerxes needed four more years to raise another one for Greece.

  Babylon proved harder to hold. A rebel named Bel-shimanni rose there in June or July of 484 BC, but Babylonian documents dated to his rule cover only about two weeks. Two years later, a second leader, Shamash-eriba, took Babylon itself in the summer of 482 BC, along with nearby cities such as Borsippa and Dilbat. He was defeated only in March 481 BC, after a lengthy siege. The cause of the unrest is uncertain. Tax increases may have played a part.

  The consequences changed how the empire described itself. Earlier Achaemenid kings had used the titles "King of Babylon" and "King of the Lands," treating Babylonia as a distinct realm joined to Persia through the king. After the revolts, Xerxes dropped "King of Babylon" and split the huge Babylonian satrapy into smaller units.

  Classical authors claim that he took savage revenge. They say he destroyed the city's fortifications, damaged its temples including the Esagila, and removed the statue of the god Marduk, perhaps melting down its gold. The modern historian Amélie Kuhrt thinks it unlikely that he destroyed the temples. She suggests the story grew out of anti-Persian feeling among Babylonians. Some even suggest the statue he took was a golden man, not the god. Contemporary documents show the New Year's Festival continuing in some form, though its rituals may have changed after the city's elite families were replaced. Babylon would matter again before the Greek war was over.

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• 4. The March on Greece

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  The Xerxes Canal cut through the isthmus of the Mount Athos peninsula, and it was only one part of a huge logistical effort. Beginning in 483 BC, Xerxes also had provisions stored at stations along the road through Thrace. He built two pontoon bridges across the Hellespont, later known as Xerxes' Pontoon Bridges. His second attempt at bridging the strait succeeded.

  The war was inherited. Darius died while preparing a second army against the Greek mainland, leaving his son to punish Athens, Naxos and Eretria. Their offenses were helping in the Ionian Revolt, the burning of Sardis, and the Persian defeat at Marathon. Xerxes at first wanted to avoid a major war. His father's generals, led by his cousin Mardonius, accused him of timidity and talked him around.

  The army reflected the whole empire. Its soldiers included Medes, Saka, Elamites, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Jews and Arabs. Macedonians, Thracians, Paeonians, several groups of Greeks, Colchians and Sindhis also served, among many others.

  The diplomatic picture favored Persia. Carthage invaded Sicily, depriving mainland Greece of support from the powerful monarchs of Syracuse and Agrigentum. Ancient sources assume Xerxes arranged this, but modern scholarship is skeptical. Many smaller Greek states, especially Thessaly, Thebes and Argos, took the Persian side.

  Xerxes set out from Sardis in the spring of 480 BC. Herodotus estimated his fleet and army at roughly one million people, including 10,000 elite warriors called the Immortals. More recent estimates place the force at around 60,000 combatants. Its first serious obstacle was a narrow pass defended by King Leonidas of Sparta.

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• 5. Fire and Retreat

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  At Thermopylae, Leonidas and a small Greek force held back a much larger Persian army before finally falling. Herodotus says a Greek named Ephialtes betrayed his countrymen by revealing another pass around the mountains. That allowed the Persians to break the Spartan phalanx. At Artemisium, storms wrecked Greek ships, and the battle ended early. When news of Thermopylae arrived, the Greeks withdrew.

  Athens lay open. Most of its people had already fled to the island of Salamis before Xerxes arrived. A small group tried to hold the Acropolis but was defeated. Xerxes ordered the city burned, and archaeologists have found the resulting destruction layer, called the Perserschutt. Persia now controlled all of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth.

  The decisive blunder came at sea. A message from Themistocles drew Xerxes into attacking the Greek fleet in poor conditions. He did so against the advice of Artemisia of Halicarnassus, rather than sending part of his ships to the Peloponnesus and waiting for the Greek armies to break up. The Battle of Salamis, in September 480 BC, went to the Greeks. Xerxes then made a winter camp in Thessaly.

  Herodotus says the king feared the Greeks might attack the Hellespont bridges and trap his army in Europe, so he returned to Asia with most of his troops. Continued unrest in Babylon may also have demanded his attention. Mardonius, who according to Herodotus had suggested the retreat, stayed behind with a contingent. The following year, at Plataea, the combined Greek city states defeated that force. It ended the Persian offensive on Greece for good. For Xerxes, the work that remained was at home.

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• 6. Stone and Color

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  At Persepolis, Xerxes finished what his father had left half built. He oversaw the Gate of All Nations and the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the largest and most imposing structures of the palace. He also completed the Apadana, the Tachara (the Palace of Darius) and the Treasury, all begun under Darius. His own palace was twice the size of his father's. The Apadana's outer face received colorful enameled brick. His taste resembled Darius's, only on a more gigantic scale.

  At Susa he completed the Susa Gate and built a palace. He also kept up the Royal Road that Darius had built.

  His religious outlook is recorded more clearly than his schooling. Scholars have no consensus on whether Xerxes and his predecessors were influenced by Zoroastrianism. It is well established, however, that he firmly believed in Ahura Mazda as the supreme deity. Ahura Mazda was also worshipped within the wider Indo-Iranian tradition. Toward other faiths, Xerxes followed his predecessors. He consulted local religious scholars and made sacrifices to local gods. He destroyed temples in cities and countries that caused disorder. The splendid halls he built did not protect him from the men who worked inside them.

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• 7. Murder at Court

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  Sometime between the 4th and the 8th of August 465 BC, the commander of the royal bodyguard killed Xerxes. This was Artabanus, the most powerful official at court, and a eunuch named Aspamitres helped him. Artabanus was a Hyrcanian who shared his name with Xerxes' famed uncle. He rose through his popularity in religious circles at court and through harem intrigue. He placed his seven sons in key positions and planned to dethrone the Achaemenids.

  Greek writers disagree about what followed. Ctesias says Artabanus blamed the crown prince Darius, Xerxes' eldest son, for the murder. He then persuaded another son, Artaxerxes, to avenge his father by killing Darius. Aristotle says Artabanus killed Darius first and then Xerxes. In both versions, Artaxerxes eventually discovered the murder and killed Artabanus and his sons. The general Megabyzus took part in the plots, and his switch of sides probably saved the Achaemenids from losing the Persian throne. Xerxes' third son took the crown as Artaxerxes I.

  Xerxes' queen Amestris bore Darius, Hystaspes, Artaxerxes, Rhodogune and Amytis, who married Megabyzus. Hystaspes was murdered by Artaxerxes I. Other children came from unknown wives or mistresses: Artarius, Tithraustes, Parysatis and Ratashah. Artarius served as satrap of Babylon, the very province that had defied his father.

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• 8. Villain on Stage

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  Aeschylus' play The Persians was first performed in Athens in 472 BC, only seven years after the invasion. It shows Xerxes as an effeminate figure whose hubris, in trying to bring both Asia and Europe under his control, ruins himself and his kingdom. Greek and Roman sources are largely negative about him, and that set the tone for later Western portrayals.

  Herodotus wrote his Histories later in the fifth century BC, with Xerxes as a major figure. Some of his information is spurious, and Pierre Briant accuses him of a stereotyped and biased view of the Persians. Richard Stoneman reads Herodotus' Xerxes as nuanced and tragic, which he contrasts with the vilification Xerxes received from Alexander the Great.

  Xerxes is also identified with King Ahasuerus in the biblical Book of Esther. Scholars including Eduard Schwartz, William Rainey Harper and Michael V. Fox consider that book a historical romance. There is no consensus about what real event inspired it. The story reached film as Esther and the King in 1960, with Richard Egan, and The Book of Esther in 2013, with Joel Smallbone.

  On the musical stage, George Frideric Handel's opera Serse premiered at the King's Theatre in London on the 15th of April 1738. It opens with the famous aria "Ombra mai fù." Earlier, in 1730, the Italian poet Metastasio romanticized the murder of Xerxes in his libretto Artaserse, first set to music by Leonardo Vinci. Johann Adolf Hasse and Johann Christian Bach later set it too.

  In fiction, the Dutch writer Louis Couperus told the Persian Wars from Xerxes' point of view in a 1919 novel based on close study of Herodotus. Frederick H. Martens' English translation, Arrogance: The Conquests of Xerxes, appeared in 1930. Gore Vidal's 1981 novel Creation follows a half-Greek, half-Persian grandson of Zoroaster, who grows up as Xerxes' boyhood friend.

  Fascination with Sparta and Thermopylae has brought Xerxes into popular culture. David Farrar played him as a cruel, power-crazed despot in the 1962 film The 300 Spartans. Frank Miller's graphic novels 300 and Xerxes appeared, followed by the 2007 film 300 and its 2014 sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. In those films Rodrigo Santoro played him as a giant, androgynous god-king, a portrayal that attracted controversy, especially in Iran. Ken Davitian played him in the parody Meet the Spartans, and South Park mocked the 300 version in the episode "D-Yikes!"

  A few writers have imagined a different ending. In "Counting Potsherds" by Harry Turtledove and "The Craft of War" by Lois Tilton, Xerxes wins completely, and he stays offstage while later generations live with the result.

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