Xerxes I of Persia

Persia and the rest of the Middle East would never recover from these two losses. After the Battle of Marathon, the great Persian Empire went into a long decline, marking a turning point in the scheme of power in the world. “Although the Persian invasion was ended by the battles at Plataea and Mycale, fighting between Greece and Persia continued for another 30 years. Led by the Athenians, the newly formed Delian League went on the offensive to free the Ionian city-states on the Anatolian coast.” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1). The eventual fall of the Persian Empire sent echoes throughout the world. No other Middle East based empire would reach the height or length of the Persians. This would leave the Middle East out of the running as a world power for a great length of time, while it's rival, Europe, began to…

Focusing on my own interpretation of a film is easy; however, determining whether the facts that I collected and the opinions I formed based on those facts is correct, is harder to complete on my own. Our group discussion of the film One Night With the King was collaborative in that we agreed with one another on several aspects of the film, which many of us had detailed in our essays. I also found our group discussion beneficial in that it helped me understand the context of the film better. I…

Edin Palmar ENC1102 (TR 8:25-9:40am) Prof. Minchener 7 April 2015 The Reign of Xerxes I and the Greco-Persian Wars Xerxes I was born in 519 BC to King Darius and Queen Atossa of the Persia Empire, the strongest and most feared empire in all the land at that point. Due to the Persian kings always being greatly involved in the wars, the king was to appoint an heir to succeed him in case he dies in battle. Questions immediately arose about who would be the next king of the Persia. Two candidates,…

Long ago, around 550 BCE(GeaCron) what would become the biggest empire was born. This empire had many rulers, like any empire, but the first ruler’s tactics of ruling were oddly similar. From Cyrus, the “great king of persia”, to Xerxes, the feared ruler of Persia you can see lots of similarities and differences between these ruler’s tactics. One example of how the Persian ruler’s tactics were similar were between the first ruler, Cyrus, and one of the later rulers, Darius. When it comes to…

Xerxes was born in 519 B.C. to Darius I the Persian king and Atossa. “When Darius ascended to the Persian throne, he took a number of the previous king's wives as his property. One of them was Atossa, daughter of Cyrus I” (abc-clio). Atossa wanted her son, Xerxes, to become king. To get her son to be king she enlisted the help of Greek exile Demaratus to convince the king that his elder sons, that he had before he became king, were not his children. That the had a different father. This seemed…

Josef Weisehofer. Ancient Persia. London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 1996. This book discusses the progression of Persian culture through three different reigning families. The main point of the book is to address the ways that these periods are currently taught and remembered, and to point out inaccuracies in the popular western descriptions, or to reaffirm the ideas via critical analysis and comparison to primary sources such as relics. Weisehofer accomplishes this by dividing the book into 3 main…

Convinced by members of his court and his brother-in-law, Xerxes started to plan revenge on the Greeks for his father’s defeat at Marathon. Since he wanted a full-scale invasion, preparations for the upcoming campaign took three years. As Xerxes prepared to march, his subjects finished bridging Hellespont. Before he could use the bridge, a great storm wrecked the bridge sending Xerxes into a rage. He ordered that the designers of the bridges be executed and that the Hellespont be given 300…

In his work, The Histories, the Greek historian Herodotus gives an account of Darius and Xerxes, who were two members of the Achaemenidai family, and ruled as Kings during the Greco-Persian Wars. Persian kingship was different from earlier Greek kingship. I believe, however, that if we examine the virtues that Darius and Xerxes had, we could see they shared similar values than the Greeks. In this essay, I will argue that Herodotus does indeed provide us with a narrative that indicates that…

places within the empire into a type of unified economy with a standardized medium of exchange. Communication was also an important feature of the economy as it was essential to get messages across the vast empire and distanced satrapies. The Persepolis tablets refer to a “Royal Road” which stretched from Persepolis to Susa and from Susa to Sardis. Official royal mail and couriers travelled quickly along this road as described by Herodotus, nothing mortal travels as fast as Persian couriers.”…

The Persian Wars came about as a Greek resistance to the ever growing Persian empire. After Darius I took control of the Persian empire in 521 BCE from Cambyses, he divided the entire empire into different satrapies and continued conquering westward (Pom 209). After the Persians conquered Lydia, the Ionian city states in that region were also forced under Persian rule; discontented with being ruled by “barbarians” and the increase in taxes, the Ionian Greeks began the Ionian revolt (Pom 209,…