King Xerxes I: The Life and Legacy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire's Most Notorious Ruler

*Includes pictures*Includes excerpts of ancient accounts*Includes a bibliography for further readingOne of the Persian Empire’s most famous figures is King Xerxes I, if only because he led the Second Persian War against the Greeks. Thanks to legendary clashes at Thermopylae and Salamis, the Persian leader has remained legendary, and the war was a veritable clash of civilizations. Had the Persians triumphed, the Golden Age of Athens would have been snuffed out, and Greece would never have formed the backbone of Roman and Western culture. Simply put, the West as it is today might never have existed.Not surprisingly, the majority of surviving sources regarding Xerxes are the product of Greek writers, so it was inevitable that the Persian king has been depicted in unflattering terms for thousands of years. The details of his invasion of Greece cast him as the villain in the dramatic Greek retelling of the tragic 300 Spartans holding the pass at Thermopylae, and focus on the loss at Salamis that solidified his reputation as a failure despite another 15 years of successful rule after withdrawing from the Greek mainland. Although Herodotus’s Histories offer a less biased account than some later sources, he still depicted Xerxes as a figure of tragic failings, listening too often to the wrong councilors and eventually collapsing on the weight of his own hubris. This classic appearance as a tragic hero figure gives some pause for doubt, as the literary stereotype is almost too perfect and suggests a lack of depth and nuance that characterizes all accurate investigations of historical individuals.