Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

in the empire and what he's inherited from his father.

And in fact, we have several empire lists from Xerxes' reign where he enumerates, you know, we have Medes and Elamites and Achoseans and Chosameans and Jauner and all of this.

We get actually to the number of 33, 33 peoples under Xerxes, which is actually bigger than Darius' province count.

Iona are the Greeks, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Same word in modern Persian today, actually, for Greece, Iona.

It remains the same.

So, yeah, I think a sense of real confidence about him in that respect.

And maybe that is a reaction...

to some of the political problems that he faced in reality at his succession.

Now, I dare say there must have been skirmishes with some of his brothers.

Well, yes, we do.

mainly from Herodotus, Ctesias, and some other Greek sources as well.

He had a load of full brothers, sons of Atossa, and, of course, many, many more half-brothers.

And by and large, you know,

his relationships with his brothers were pretty good, not bad at all.

Many of them fought in the Persian Wars alongside him, for instance.

Some of them even lost their lives, you know, for him.

And he appointed many of them as satraps in different parts of the empire as well, these kind of regents acting on his behalf.

But I think there must have been

some kind of antagonism at the beginning.