Chapter 1: Who was Xerxes the Great and why is he significant?
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Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters and the legend of Thermopylae, this Persian king of kings is remembered by many first and foremost for his ill-fated war against the likes of Athens and Sparta. But... There is so much more to this man's story. Xerxes ruled the Supreme Persian Empire for over two decades.
And in this episode, we're going to explore what we know about his life and reign from beginning to end. Just who was the real Xerxes? This is the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And this is the story of Xerxes the Great.
Our guest today is fan favourite, the Reverend Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University and the author of Persians, The Age of Great Kings. Lloyd, great to have you back on the show. It's so nice to be back with you. It really is. It really is the case, isn't it?
We think when the name Xerxes gets thrown about, you might think of Zack Snyder's 300 or the Persian invasion of Greece. But there is so much more to his story.
Absolutely. He's one of the most fascinating kings of antiquity, I think. You know, yeah, his legacy is there. I mean, he still lives with us in a way. He's one of those kings that was written about in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in the 19th century. I mean, you know, he still has a cachet about him, I think.
Can we talk about his name, first of all? Because it seems such a peculiar name today. Xerxes, really recognisable.
Was it weird at the time? Not necessarily. I doubt very much if it was his birth name, his given name. It's a throne name. Most of, I think, all of the Achaemenid kings, actually, when they came to the throne, they adopted a A symbolic name. Of course, we know him by his Latinized name. His real name in ancient Persian, in old Persian, was Khashashatha. Khashashasha.
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Chapter 2: What was the political landscape of the Persian Empire during Xerxes' reign?
It means something like ruling over the heroes, something like that.
Wow.
So it's quite a grand... It's quite a strong name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It said something about him, and he chose that for himself. So it says something about his self-perception, doesn't it, as well?
So has he left many sources behind, not just the Greek historians like Herodotus? Do we have a lot of different sources for learning about his life?
We do, yes. Now, I can say that with a caveat. Most of them are royal inscriptions, so written in cuneiform letters, They tend to be trilingual, so they tend to be in Old Persian, Babylonian or Akkadian, and also in Elamite. They are on the whole ahistorical.
And what I mean by that is they tend to be very repetitive and they tend to say the same thing like, I am Xerxes, king of kings, king of all lands, king of all countries, son of Darius, who was the son of Hystapses, an Archimened. You know, doesn't give us a lot to play with. But as we'll go on to talk about, there are one or two inscriptions absolutely unique to Xerxes.
So I think we'd be really hard pushed to write a biography of Xerxes given just the Persian material. So we have to look at the Greek material. But we have to look at the Greek material with a kind of new set of eyes. You know, I'm always after the Persian version of something. So what I'll try to like to do is to strip away Xerxes
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Chapter 3: How did Xerxes' upbringing influence his leadership style?
We've covered in a previous episode.
We have indeed, absolutely. And so he is ruling the biggest empire the world had ever seen. And here we're talking about the center of the empire, of course, is southwestern Iran, around the ancient sites of Persepolis and Susa and Pasargadae. It's reaching out to Babylon as well, one of the main centers of Achaemenid life. But it stretches then to the west.
It goes all the way to the deserts of Libya, right the way down the Nile to Ethiopia, north to the Crimea, and then in the east, right the way across the east to Afghanistan, Pakistan, to northern India. I mean, this is vast, vast territories. And Darius the Great had kind of secured this. Darius was one of those kind of born bureaucrats.
You know, he just had like red tape, you know, running in his veins. And he was the one who kind of, you know, set up the satrapy systems, the system of governors, usually members of the royal family. So by the time Xerxes come to the throne, what we have there is a mature and safe system.
essentially, you know, Darius has really set the rules, the king's law, the data of the king is flourishing in every part of the realm, all of which are linked together with incredible communication systems. Amazing, amazing roads that crisscross the whole empire.
And we know that people are traveling enormous distances because we've got these little sort of travel rations, you know, in these Persepolis fortification tablets, which we spoke about a long time ago. Some of my favorite things. You'd think they're going to be as dry as the dust they're written on, but, you know, they're absolutely packed full of detail.
And we get, you know, accounts of people traveling from Memphis in Egypt all the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan and being supplied with food and drink and translators and all of that as they go. I mean, it's a really remarkable system. So that's the world that Darius leaves behind him.
It is an amazing set-the-scene moment, isn't it? Darius... He doesn't just leave one son, does he? No. There always seems to be a bit of a succession crisis as the Persian Empire goes on.
So at the time of his death, we know that Darius had had at least six wives. I mean, concurrently, Persian kings were polygynous. plus any number of concubines as well.
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Chapter 4: What monumental building projects did Xerxes undertake?
So the harems of his palaces were packed with women and with children. Now, one of the, I think, the real failures of the Persian royal system was that they never adopted women. primogeniture as a go-to means of the succession. So that meant essentially that when a king died, unless he appointed an heir, it was an open game. Anybody could do it. Now, I think there's a rationale for that.
You know, we shouldn't dismiss it. And I think we have to remember in antiquity, the mortality rate was very high for children. And even to live into your adulthood, into your teens, was a perilous thing. You just didn't know if you were ever going to get there.
So I think kings were prepared to hedge their bets and almost play this kind of game of Russian roulette with their prospective heirs, holding off on appointing one until they were secure that they'd reached their maturity, things looked okay.
Also, I think there's something in the non-primogeniture system which allows a king to choose the son that most appeals to him, who has the right qualities to be a king as well.
So this idea of not having a favourite today is very much out the window with the Persian case.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely, completely. No, no, they needed their favourites, you know. Now, the other thing that we get, and I think I would not want to dismiss this, although some scholars, you know, are a bit more apprehensive about saying this, but I think it's right. That's the power that... the mothers of these boys had as well.
Within the imperial system, nobody could get closer to the king than one of his women in bed with him. What happens between the sheets takes away the mystique of monarchy in a way. Herodotus says, interestingly, that Darius had many sons. But in his opinion, Xerxes was a dead ringer for the crown because his mother, Atossa, was all-powerful. Which is really, really fascinating. Why then?
Why is this woman, why does she have this kind of cachet? Well, of course, Darius had had several wives before he became king. and he had sons from these wives. But once he became king, and you'll remember that he grabs the crown in a kind of coup d'etat, He marries all the available Persian royal women and brings them into his harem and begets children on them straight away.
And Atossa, Xerxes' mother, is the eldest daughter of Cyrus the Great. Ah, very prestigious. Very prestigious. So Xerxes is the first son born to Darius after he comes into his own as king and has the blood of Cyrus the Great flowing in his veins. So I think what we have there is a case of what we can call porphogeniture.
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Chapter 5: How did Xerxes handle succession and family dynamics?
So he acknowledges this. that there could have been a succession crisis. And maybe there really was, you know, which he overwrites, of course, you know. But then this statement, I was the greatest mathishta, you know, that really puts his seal on what's going on. And what we find throughout the early part of Xerxes' reign in all of his inscriptions
He makes a real play at being the son of Darius all the time, as though he can't emphasize that enough. He needs people to recognize his legitimacy as king through his ancestry in particular. So this is a real motif of Xerxes' earliest inscriptions, constantly, son of Darius, an Achaemenid, son of Darius, an Achaemenid. He keeps on saying this all the time.
And he builds on his father's reputation quite literally. So around about 519 BC, we know that Darius started the big, big building project at Persepolis.
Right, yes.
Okay. So, you know, this becomes one of the sort of state palaces, a kind of ceremonial center for the empire. This is Darius's baby. It comes from his mind, and he buildsā¦ Like the famous Apadana today, I think. That's right, exactly, exactly. So Apadana is one of Darius's buildings. And this is all on a platform, a tacht, which is sort of 30 metres off the ground.
I mean, it's one of the most spectacular ruins of antiquity. It's an incredible sight to walk. Originally, during Xerxes' lifetime, the entranceway to that platform was in the south of the Tacht. Xerxes decided that he was going to enlarge that, and he changes the access.
He blocks off the old access of his father, and he builds a new gateway with a double staircase on the eastern side, which goes up to this most enormous gateway, which he calls the Gate of All Lands or the Gate of All Peoples. and it's flanked with two bulls on one side and two human-headed winged bulls on the other side, very Assyrian in its look.
And this becomes the portal through which all of these dignitaries and diplomats come every year in the springtime to give their offerings to the great king, to give him their gifts, their diplomatic exchanges, to hear the king's speeches, to show their loyalty to him. So you get... with the creation of that, a kind of real sense of confidence
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.
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Chapter 6: What were the key events of Xerxes' military campaigns?
On his way back from Egypt, in fact, he puts down another rebellion in Babylon. These are always the kind of litmus tests for kings.
Babylon and Egypt.
Babylon and Egypt. Can you hold them? And again, he does a good job of putting down the Babylonian rebellion too. So we can see in the very first year of his reign, He's a very active individual, you know, and he stamps his mark on the empire, always in the shadow of his father. But nevertheless, you know, he's there and he says, you know, I am king now. OK, I know I'm in the same line as Darius.
You remember how he ruled you? I will rule you the same. And I think that's that's kind of an interesting thing.
And is that how Xerxes portrays himself during this period? You know, this idea that he's a young, active, energetic ruler. Yes, the great old Darius is dead, but rejoice, we've got a young, new ruler on the throne now and he's going to continue it.
And I think he can say that with... genuine honesty because he's been trained for governance by his father. So about 14 years ago, we discovered amidst the archive from Persepolis, a tablet that hadn't been translated before. And it's a document which talks about reserves of food and drink being sent to the Satrapal Palace in Parthia, in northeastern Iran, from central Iran.
And that's where Xerxes is serving his time as a governor. So I think that what the great kings tended to do was to test their sons by giving them important satrapies to look after. So we see Xerxes going through this period of I suppose, an apprenticeship, really, you know, governing a large and important province. So we know that he has that kind of background.
The other thing I think he does, you know, after his father's death is to provide his father with a fitting funeral as well. And that's a very important thing to do is to bury, you know, your ancestor, your father in particular. And we know that Darius's cortege travelled from Susa to Persepolis where he's buried. in this great kind of catafalque.
And there was sort of a period of mourning declared across the empire. And we know that Xerxes establishes a cult for the worship of his father as well. Persian kings weren't gods. They didn't see themselves as gods. 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...
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Chapter 7: How did Xerxes' religious beliefs impact his rule?
And also, of course, the other woman important in his life is his one known...
one named consort he must have had many more and that is a woman called a mistress which is um based on the persian word meaning strength which says something about her as well so here we have you know this ideal couple both you know ruling over heroes and a woman of strength that's the way they want to project their image you know and she is the daughter of a very very high ranking khan
sort of a tribal leader indeed. And so it's a great match between these two kind of tribal houses. And she gives him a whole brood of sons and daughters as well. And they're already born by the time Xerxes becomes king. And so he comes with a ready-made family The throne is set to continue. And he must have had many other consorts and concubines as well, of course.
So again, another packed harem. And of course, we should remember that Xerxes appears in the Hebrew Bible, just in a guise, that's all. So in the book of Esther, which was probably written in the 4th century, so about 100 years after Xerxes' death. It's set during the reign of Xerxes. So according to the Hebrew scribes, Esther is a wife of Xerxes as well.
It's just that in the Bible he's called Ahasuerus, which is the Hebraised version of Xerxes, essentially.
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Do we know much about the harem of Persian rulers, including Xerxes? Do we know much about its composition?
Yes, I think that the best way to see it, as in any kind of high-level court society, it must have had a real strict hierarchy to it, where clearly you have the mother of the king holding the prime position. Since a king could have many wives, but he could only ever have one mother, of course, so she holds that principal position. Then he can have numerous consorts.
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Chapter 8: What legacy did Xerxes leave behind in history?
So Xerxes did use eunuchs in his court, and these are castrated men, of course. And the importance of them, I suppose, is that, well, there are several things going on here. First of all, As castrates, they were thought of as being more loyal. They didn't have families of their own. So they weren't going to, you know, try to work for the betterment of their own family at all.
So they're tied to the king.
Yeah, precisely. There's all this Greek philosophizing on Persian eunuchs. The Greeks really find it very problematic. So they say, oh, Cyrus the Great probably started this trend. He didn't. They were much, much older than that. You know, eunuchs have been in the Near East since the fourth millennium BCE. But the Greeks say, you know, oh, he castrated men to make them more like docile dogs.
If you castrate a dog, you know, or if you castrate a horse, it becomes more docile. So it makes these men docile. I don't think there's any necessary truth in that, but the Greeks try to justify it in that kind of way. What it really meant is that these castrated individuals become really kind of like a third sex.
So it means that they can easily go between the inner world of the central court or the inner court, which includes the harem, of course, into the outer court of men, you know, of governance as well. So this is why they're very often used as messengers, as go-betweeners. And we find that in, you know, in the Hebrew Bible, in Herodotus, they understand that that's the kind of idea about them.
But they could also be very important counselors, counselors of state, officers of state, and important individuals in the army as well. We have unit generals. So they're omnipresent in a way. Why would you put yourself through castration? Well, I think there's two forms that go on. We have eunuchs who are castrated before puberty and therefore they stay essentially like boys.
You know, they don't really develop and their voices stay high and so forth. And then we have individuals who will have themselves castrated post, I know, post-youth. And therefore, you know, the testosterone has developed and, you know, to all intents and purposes, they look like real men, you know. It gave these individuals access into the very heart of of Persian royalty.
And that's the way it's always been. You know, if you think about the forbidden city in China in the 18th, early 19th centuries, you know, these men had extraordinarily access to power.
And we hear them with Xerxes, do we? Yes, we do.
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