Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

But certainly now we have more understanding that they took on a kind of divine essence after their deaths.

And despite of what Herodotus tells us, they didn't have...

these kind of cults or temples or statues.

We know now that they really did have these.

And we have found recently in Babylon, from the archives there, reference to a cult of Darius and to offerings being given to Darius and to his statue as well.

So I think Xerxes did all the right things

in the first year of his accession.

He buries his father with great dignity and great honor, and he shows himself to be a warrior king.

And this is what his father himself puts on his tomb facade.

I am a Persian man.

The spear of the Persian man has gone far.

As a horseman, I'm a good horseman.

As a spearman, I'm a good spearman.

As a bowman, I'm a good bowman.

And Xerxes lives up to all of those ideas that his father has.

So, you know,

That image that we have of straightaway this boy king who can't quite live up to his father, I don't think stands at all.

Yes, and in fact, Tossa comes into her own in the indigenous Iranian sources of this period.

So whereas during the lifetime of her husband Darius, we only get like six mentions of her in the Persepolis fortification texts,

Suddenly, with her accession to the role of Queen Mother, she's everywhere.