Xerxes

Family: Persian · Role: king · First appears: Book 1 · §183–189

As heir to Dareios, Xerxes disputed the succession with his elder brother, Artobazanes, and, advised by Demaratos to point to his birth after Dareios had become king, was designated by his father. When Dareios died, the kingdom passed to Xerxes. He subdued Egypt and entrusted its government to his brother Achaimenes; later, persuaded by Mardonios, he resolved to campaign against Hellas. Though he first accepted Artabanos’s counsel to withdraw the plan, dreams led him to reverse course and proceed with the expedition.

During four years of preparations, Xerxes ordered a channel cut through Athos, bridges built, and supplies stored along the route. At Kelainai, Pythios offered money for the war, and Xerxes made him his guest-friend and gave him seven thousand staters. But when Pythios asked that his eldest son be spared from the army, Xerxes ordered the son cut in two. Xerxes marched through Thrace with his army, assigning its divisions to commanders including Mardonios, Masistes, Tritantaichmes, and Smerdomenes. At Thermopylai, he sent successive forces against the Hellenes; Epialtes showed him the mountain path, and Xerxes sent Hydarnes and his men along it. After the battle, he ordered Leonidas’s head cut off and his corpse crucified.

Xerxes then led his army into Boeotia and Athens, which his forces took and burned. At Phaleron he rejected Artemisia’s advice against a sea battle, but later sought her counsel and accepted her recommendation to withdraw, sending her to conduct his sons to Ephesos. As he retreated, Thorax of Larissa escorted him. In Susa, Xerxes arranged his son Dareios’s betrothal to Masistes’ daughter, then took Dareios’s wife, Artaÿnte, as his lover. He later ordered Masistes to leave his wife and offered him another marriage; after Masistes refused and set out toward Bactria, Xerxes sent an army that killed him, his sons, and his followers.