Xerxes

Xerxes is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: the geography and extent of the Persian empire; the Achaemenid kings from Cyrus to Darius; kingship, religion (Ahuramazda), the satrapies and the army.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family; his selection as heir; his accession.
• Career: his response to revolts; the invasion of Greece; his building program; his religious policy; relations with the court; his death.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC. He reigned 486–465.

The Achaemenid empire was founded by Cyrus the Great (died 530), who conquered Media, Lydia and Babylon. His son Cambyses added Egypt. Darius I (522–486) seized power after a crisis, crushed rebellions (recorded at Behistun), organised the empire into satrapies (provinces under governors called satraps) paying tribute, built roads such as the Royal Road, founded Persepolis and expanded the palace at Susa.

• Kingship: the king ruled by the favour of Ahuramazda, the great god who created the world. His duty was to uphold truth (arta) against the Lie (drauga). Royal inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian proclaim this ideology.
• Greeks: Darius' first attempts against Greece failed: a fleet was wrecked off Mount Athos in 492, and his army was defeated at Marathon in 490.

• Parents: Darius I and Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great. Born about 518, after Darius became king.
• Selection: Darius had an elder son, Artobazanes, by an earlier wife (a daughter of the noble Gobryas). Herodotus (7.2–3) says Xerxes won because he was born after Darius became king and was Cyrus' grandson — an argument suggested, he claims, by the Spartan exile Demaratus — and that Atossa's influence would have secured it anyway. In an inscription Xerxes says Darius ‘made me the greatest after himself’.
• Crown prince: he appears to have had a residence at Babylon.
• Accession (486): peaceful, on Darius' death.
• Family: his wife Amestris; sons included Darius (killed in 465) and Artaxerxes I, who succeeded him.

• Egypt: in revolt at his accession; reconquered about 485–484. His brother Achaemenes was made satrap.
• Babylon: two revolts (under Bel-shimanni and Shamash-eriba), dated by most recent scholarship to 484, were crushed. Control was tightened and rebel families lost property. Greek claims that he removed or destroyed the statue of Marduk and damaged its temple are debated; many historians think the damage has been exaggerated.

• Preparations: a canal (about 2 km) dug across the Athos peninsula; bridges of boats across the Hellespont; supply depots in Thrace; a review of the forces at Doriscus. Herodotus' huge figures for the army are impossible; modern estimates are far lower.
• The Hellespont story: when a storm wrecked the first bridges, Herodotus says Xerxes ordered the sea whipped and the engineers beheaded (7.35) — a key part of his image of Persian hubris.
• 480: victory over Leonidas at Thermopylae; the indecisive sea battle of Artemisium; the capture and burning of Athens and its Acropolis; defeat at Salamis (September), which, Herodotus says, Xerxes watched from the shore. He returned to Asia with much of the army.
• 479: Mardonius, left in Greece, was defeated and killed at Plataea; the Persian fleet was destroyed at Mycale in Ionia.
• Consequences: the Ionian Greeks broke away and joined the Athenian-led Delian League; in the 460s the Persians were defeated again at the Eurymedon. The empire as a whole was not seriously weakened, and no surviving Persian source mentions the campaign.

• The Gate of All Nations (Gate of All Lands), with colossal bull-men and his inscription.
• Completion of the Apadana, the great audience hall begun by Darius, whose staircase reliefs show delegations from the subject peoples bringing gifts.
• His own palace (the Hadish), an enlarged Treasury, and the Hall of a Hundred Columns, completed by Artaxerxes I.
• Work at Susa. His tomb is usually identified as one of the rock-cut royal tombs at Naqsh-i Rustam, near that of Darius.

The Persepolis Fortification tablets (about 509–493, Darius' reign) and Treasury tablets (about 492–457, running into Xerxes' reign), mostly in Elamite, show an efficient administration: the Fortification tablets record rations, and the Treasury tablets payments to skilled workers from many lands.

• His inscriptions begin with Ahuramazda, ‘who made Xerxes king’.
• The daiva inscription from Persepolis says that he put down a land ‘in turmoil’, destroyed a sanctuary of the daivas (false gods) and proclaimed that they should not be worshipped. It names no place or god. Some historians link it to Babylon or Athens; others see it as royal ideology rather than a record of a single event.
• The Fortification tablets show that under Darius the crown supported offerings to Elamite and other gods, and local cults continued in Babylon and Egypt under Xerxes, so he is unlikely to have been a general persecutor of other religions.

• Herodotus (Book 9) tells a lurid story of Xerxes' passion for his brother Masistes' family and the cruelty of Queen Amestris — an example of the Greek image of the Persian court as a world of harem intrigue.
• In 465 Xerxes was murdered. According to Greek writers the plot was led by Artabanus, a powerful courtier and commander of the guard; a Babylonian tablet says his son killed him. Artaxerxes I became king after his brother Darius was killed.
• The biblical Book of Esther is set at the court of ‘Ahasuerus’, usually identified with Xerxes; most historians read it as a literary tale rather than a record of his reign.

Modern views: the older picture of Xerxes as a weak, decadent king who began Persia's decline came mostly from Greek sources. Historians such as Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Amélie Kuhrt and Pierre Briant challenged this, arguing that the empire under Xerxes was stable and well run. Richard Stoneman (2015) offers a biography that sets the Greek tradition against the Persian evidence.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Achievements: a peaceful succession; Egypt and Babylon restored to obedience; a working administration; monumental building at Persepolis; impressive logistics and engineering for the invasion; the capture of Athens.
• Failures: defeat at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale; the loss of the Aegean and Ionia; an assassination that showed the dangers of court politics.
• Legacy: in Greek memory, the arrogant tyrant defeated by free Greeks; in Persian evidence, a king who maintained the empire. The contrast is the key to most evaluation questions.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on Persepolis, not one of our bank questions):

‘Xerxes' building at Persepolis undermines the Greek picture of a king who began Persia's decline. He completed the Apadana begun by his father, whose staircase reliefs show delegations from across the empire bringing gifts to the king, and built the Gate of All Nations through which they would enter. The Treasury tablets record payments to skilled workers from many lands at Persepolis in his reign. A ruler who could organise such works in the years after Salamis was clearly still in command of vast resources, which suggests that the defeat in Greece did not shake the heart of the empire.’

• Judging Xerxes only by the invasion of Greece.
• Accepting Herodotus' numbers or anecdotes (whipping the sea) without comment.
• Using the daiva inscription as proof of general religious persecution.
• Confusing Xerxes' building with Darius' (Darius founded Persepolis and built the Tachara; Xerxes completed and expanded it).
• Thinking Xerxes died in Greece. He returned to Asia in 480 and ruled until 465.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his accession, revolts, the invasion of Greece, his building or his religious policy.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess or evaluate his achievements, reign or image. Balance Greek and Persian evidence.
• Name the perspective of each source: Greek writers after a Greek victory, or Persian royal propaganda.
• Useful terms: satrapy, Ahuramazda, arta and drauga, hubris, daiva, Hellenic League, propaganda, Achaemenid.

• Persian society at the time of Darius and Xerxes: the society, economy and religion behind the reign.
• Athenian society in the time of Pericles: the Delian League and Athenian empire grew out of the Persian Wars.
• Sennacherib: another Near Eastern king seen mainly through his enemies' writings.