Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Babylon is far too important to lose.

you know, if Xerxes has a choice over Babylon or Athens, it will be Babylon every time.

Okay.

So that's what takes him back.

It's so easy then to put the spin on it, isn't it?

You know, that he goes back a defeated man.

It's not true at all.

I think there's a great what if.

You know, what if the Persians hadn't had to deal with Babylon at this time?

What if Xerxes had stayed around in Athens?

You know, what would have happened?

In my opinion, I think he would have marched into the Peloponnese.

I think he would have crushed Sparta.

I think Sparta would have disappeared.

So there would have been no Peloponnesian war.

And I think that probably Xerxes would have chosen Athens to be the new satrapal capital for Greece.

And he would have installed, I think, a Persian satrap plus, I think, a Greek, an Athenian maybe, governor, maybe even Themistocles himself.

Because one thing that the Persians didn't do was to kind of completely overturn local systems and

And so if Themistocles had already been seen as a good thing for the government in Athens, then I wouldn't be surprised if Xerxes would have left him there.

In the film 300, of course, he actually kills Darius, doesn't he?