Xerxes I

Born c. 518 BCE to Darius and Atossa, he was chosen over his elder half-brother Artobazanes (Herodotus 7.2–3); in inscription XPf he says his father made him “the greatest after himself”. Babylonian evidence shows him, as crown prince, with a residence at Babylon.

He acceded in November 486, crushed the Egyptian revolt in 486–484 and two Babylonian revolts around 484. Then came the preparations for Greece (483–481), the invasion of 480 and the defeat of 479. After that the Greek sources thin out and the Persian ones speak mostly of building: the Gate of All Nations, the Hadish, the Apadana, the start of the Hall of a Hundred Columns, and work at Susa and Van.

Around 466 Persia lost to Athens at the Eurymedon. In August 465 Xerxes was murdered by Artabanus, commander of the guard, and Artaxerxes I took the throne. A tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam is attributed to him.

Of a 21-year reign, two years of war in Greece have made almost his entire image, because the Greeks wrote and the Persians did not. Sancisi-Weerdenburg showed that Xerxes’ “personality” (wrathful, capricious, defeated) is largely a construct of Greek literature rather than of the evidence.

His murder in the palace illustrates the rule of every system that makes power a personal possession: succession becomes a hidden war inside the palace, and lawlessness at the top flows downward.

The late court: after 479 Xerxes built mostly at Persepolis and Susa. His sons were Darius (the eldest and crown prince), Hystaspes (satrap of Bactria) and Artaxerxes (the youngest, “but a boy” according to Justin); their mother was Amestris. The most powerful man at court was Artabanus, “an Hyrcanian by birth” and “captain of the royal body-guard” in Diodorus. The Persian title of this office is usually taken to be hazarapat (Greek chiliarch).

Four versions survive. Ctesias (via Photius): Artabanus and the eunuch Aspamitres killed the king and persuaded Artaxerxes that his brother Darius had done it; Darius was put to death “although he vehemently denied”. Diodorus (11.69): Artabanus, with Mithridates the eunuch and chamberlain, entered the bedchamber at night and killed the king, then turned Artaxerxes against Darius. Justin (3.1): Artabanus came “accompanied by his seven stout sons”; Darius was found asleep and killed. Aristotle (Politics 5.1311b): Artabanus had hanged Darius against Xerxes’ order and killed the king fearing the charge.

Afterwards Artabanus’ plot against Artaxerxes was betrayed and he was killed: by the cuirass trick in Justin, in a struggle in Diodorus, and in Ctesias in a battle in which three of his sons fell (Aspamitres was “exposed in the trough”). Manetho counts a reign of seven months for Artabanus. Then Hystaspes, or another satrap, revolted in Bactria and was beaten in two battles.

The date: BM 32234, an astronomical report on the lunar eclipse of 5 June 465, notes that Xerxes was murdered by “his son” in the month Ab, i.e. about 4–8 August 465 (Stolper 1988). Artaxerxes’ first regnal year in Babylonian lists begins in December 465.

All the Greek versions are late and read like court romance: the scheming eunuch, the deceived son, the cuirass trick. The only contemporary document, the Babylonian tablet, speaks of “his son” and does not fit them; it may mean Artaxerxes, the crown prince Darius, or reflect an official story. What is certain is the pattern: in a system where power and property belong to the king’s person, succession has no transparent rule and is settled by violence.

Today the murder of Xerxes is known more from plays and novels than from the Babylonian tablet. Its small lesson is one of method: before believing a gripping story, find the one contemporary document.

Herodotus (7.7) says Xerxes laid Egypt under a “much harder slavery” than Darius had and made his brother Achaemenes satrap. At Babylon, Bel-shimanni and Shamash-eriba proclaimed themselves king; documents dated by their reigns survive.

Greek tradition says Xerxes carried off the golden statue of Bel. Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) showed there is no evidence that Esagila was destroyed or the cult of Marduk stopped, and that the picture came from misreading Greek sources. Waerzeggers (2003/4) found that the archives of families tied to northern Babylonian institutions, aligned with the revolt, end abruptly while others continue.

The evidence points to targeted repression: those tied to the revolt lost estates and offices, not Babylon as a whole. That is the imperial method: property is secure only as long as political loyalty holds.

The “temple-burning Xerxes” legend shows how a story can be repeated for two thousand years. The right question is always: where is the document?

Its roots lay in the Ionian revolt (499–494) and Athens’ help to the rebels, and the defeat at Marathon (490) left the score unsettled. Xerxes prepared for three years: the Athos canal, supply depots in Thrace, and two bridges of boats over the Hellespont.

In spring 480 he marched from Sardis, crossed the Hellespont, reviewed the army at Doriscus and passed through Thrace, Macedon and Thessaly. In August/September he forced Thermopylae by turning it over the mountain while the fleet fought at Artemisium. He took an empty Athens and burned the Acropolis. In September his fleet was beaten at Salamis.

The king returned to Asia and left Mardonius behind. Mardonius fell at Plataea in August 479, and in the same days the Persian fleet burned at Mycale. The Greeks took Sestos and the war moved to Asia.

No Persian account of the war survives. The Daiva inscription lists “Yaunâ, those who dwell on this side of the sea and those who dwell across the sea” among his lands but say nothing of battle. Every detail of the narrative is Greek and has to be read through that lens.

From the Persian side the campaign answered Athens’ meddling and pushed the frontier to where the king saw himself as guardian of order. From the Greek side it was the defence of self-governing cities against a king who demanded earth and water. Both views are right by their own sources; the outcome is clear: cities whose citizens fought for their own homes and property beat a larger army of subjects.

For Europe the Greek war became a founding myth of “freedom against despotism”. For Iranians today it is more useful to know the story without the myth: a capable king, an organised army, and a defeat that came not from Persian weakness but from narrows, storms and the motivation of defenders.

Herodotus’ claim: a land army of 1,700,000 (7.60) and a fleet of 1,207 warships (7.89); with crews and followers, those brought as far as Thermopylae numbered 5,283,220 (7.186). Aeschylus likewise sets twelve hundred-odd Persian ships against roughly three hundred Greek at Salamis.

Modern view: no serious scholar accepts Herodotus’ figure. The main argument is logistics: water, fodder and bread for millions were impossible in mountainous Greece. Scholars such as Lazenby, Cawkwell, Briant and Kuhrt each give much lower estimates by different methods, and they do not agree; we do not print a single “right” number. Some treat the fleet figure as closer to reality, since ships could be counted from city contingents.

The huge figures had a literary function: the bigger the enemy, the more glorious the victory of free citizens. The real Achaemenid army, with a Persian and Median core and contingents of subject peoples, was the tool of a taxing state; its size came from its capacity to collect tribute.

Learning the difference between a source’s claim and a scholar’s estimate may be the most important historical lesson of this war.

Xerxes kept Darius’ tribute system. The Persepolis Fortification and Treasury tablets show the ration and payment machine working into his reign. The Daiva inscription says the lands “bore me tribute”. The Greek campaign was a huge expense met from that tribute, from compulsory labour (the Athos canal) and from ships levied on subject cities.

Fixed tribute beats arbitrary plunder, but it is still a forced transfer of property. When a distant war is funded by forced labour and requisitioned ships, millions pay for one man’s decision.

A state that can tax without consent can also go to war without consent. The link still holds.

The Royal Road and its stations worked throughout his reign. Herodotus describes the royal post that carried the news of Salamis to Susa (8.98). The daric and siglos coins introduced by Darius circulated in the west of the empire.

Roads and coins were built for the king, but merchants benefited too. A safe road is a public good that even a tribute state can supply.

Herodotus’ sentence on the Persian couriers is carved over the New York post office: an Iranian legacy few Iranians know.

Inscription XPh, known from stone slabs from Persepolis and Pasargadae, is his main religious text. It names neither the rebel land nor the sanctuary. In the same period the Persepolis tablets show the royal administration issuing rations for Elamite and other gods as well.

There are two readings. One takes the text as a report of a real event and Xerxes as less tolerant than Cyrus or Darius. The other (Sancisi-Weerdenburg) reads it as formal royal rhetoric that equates rebellion with “the Lie” and daiva worship, as Darius did at Bisotun. The tablets, which show plural cults, support the second reading.

Even on the second reading, the text shows political power claiming to decide which worship is legitimate. Freedom of conscience means no king has that right.

XPh uses the word data (law): “my law, that held them”. Inscription XPl, almost a copy of Darius’ Naqsh-e Rostam text (DNb), presents the king as lover of what is right, enemy of the Lie, and one who does not wish the strong to wrong the weak nor the weak the strong. The Van inscription uses the same language of continuity with his father.

The ideal that neither the strong wrong the weak nor the weak the strong approaches the rule of law. But a law that is “my law”, flowing from the king’s will, can change with that will. That is the line between rule by law and the rule of law.

A constitution that binds the ruler too is exactly what these inscriptions lack.

Within the empire, private property, contracts and markets continued (for instance in Babylonian archives), and cities and communities kept their own laws and cults. Against this stood forced labour, levies and tribute, and anyone associated with revolt risked property and life. The sources say nothing of individual liberty against the king.

Freedom in the Achaemenid empire was freedom “while loyal”: broad in daily life but unguaranteed against the state. The Greeks were running another experiment at the time: citizens who voted in assembly and fought for their own homes. That experiment too excluded slaves and women.

A fair comparison is not “Greek freedom versus Persian slavery” but a question of guarantees: what separates a person’s property and conscience from the will of power?

Aeschylus’ Persians (472 BCE) staged the defeat from the Persian court; Herodotus (c. 430) made Xerxes a great king undone by hubris and bad advisers. Ctesias offers court stories of little reliability.

Jewish and Christian tradition identifies the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther with Xerxes; the name match is accepted, but most scholars do not take the Esther story as history. The film 300 (2006) made Xerxes a giant and the Persians monsters, a distortion that matches neither Herodotus nor the Persian evidence.

Every story needed Xerxes for something: Aeschylus to warn Athens, Herodotus to teach about hubris, the Esther tradition for a tale of deliverance, Hollywood for an Eastern “other”. His own inscriptions present him only as his father’s continuator.

An Iranian today can see Xerxes as neither hero nor monster, but a real king who built, fought, lost and was murdered in his palace; and seeing him that way is itself an exercise in free thought.