The Ancients - Xerxes the Great

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

He is one of the most famous rulers of the ancient world, remembered for leading a vast Persian invasion of Greece. Yet Xerxes the Great was far more than just a battlefield king.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by friend of the show Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to explore the life and reign of the Persias most revered king who ruled the largest empire the world had yet seen. From his royal upbringing and court politics to religion, monumental building projects and imperial power, this episode goes beyond Greek battle narratives to uncover who Xerxes really was — and how the Achaemenid empire functioned at the height of his power.MOREDarius the Great: Persian King of KingsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and SalamisListen on AppleListen on SpotifyWatch this episode on our NEW YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcastPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here:https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. He is the most well-known of all Persian kings, the ruler who launched a massive invasion of Greece, who fought against the likes of Leonidas and the mysticles. Xerxes. Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters and the legend of Thermopylai, 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 favorite, 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 Zach Snyder's 300, or the Persian invasion of Greece, but there is so much more to his story. Absolutely. It'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 and 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 recognizable. 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 adopt a symbolic name. Of course, we know him by his Latinized name.

His real name in ancient Persian, in old Persian, was Khashah Shatha. Chasha Shasha. Yeah. We're not calling that the name of this podcast. And it's got a good, good meaning to it. It means something like ruling over the heroes, something like that. So it's quite a grand... It's quite a strong name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it said something about him, and he chose that for himself. So it says something about his self-perception, doesn't it, as well, you know? 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.

They tend to be trilingual, so they tend to be in old Persian, Babylonian or Acadian, and also in Elamite. They are on the whole a historical, 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 Archimeneid, 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 push 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 the kind of Greek writings and see if there isn't sitting underneath that, you know, something which is more indigenous Persian. So let me give you a story, a very famous story that's told by several Greek historians. Eelian, I suppose, is the one that we know the best. It's this account that when Xerxes goes on his expedition to Greece, he comes across this beautiful plain tree, okay? And this, you know, gives him shade and everything. And according to the Greeks, he falls in love with this tree, okay? You know, sort of passionately in love with it and sort of gives it necklaces and earrings, as he would a mistress, okay?

And of course, you know, this has been picked up and, you know, Handel in his opera Xerxes, the 1750s, you know, that very famous Lago, Ombra, my foo, under your shade, is, you know, all to do with this. Well, I think what the Greeks are doing there is obviously kind of making a mockery on something they don't quite understand, because remarkably we have found a little seal, little cylinder seal, with the name of Xerxes on it,

and it shows Xerxes in front of a tree. And what he's doing is he's giving, gold offerings to this tree because trees were kind of semi-sacred to the Persians. So it's part of a tree cult. So the Greeks are misremembering or deliberately twisting part of a Persian theological way of life that Xerxes would have been very familiar with. So that's what I mean when we can look for a Persian version that sits beneath the kind of Greek gloss that goes on top of it.

It's searching for the historical basis of one of these more far-fetched. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think we should always be alert to the possibility that there's something sitting beneath it. You know, it doesn't work all the time, but, you know, every now and there, and something emerges. So let's get the background sorted straight away. What does the Persian world look like in the early 5th century BC just before Xerxes takes the throne? Okay. So his father has been on the throne, Darius the Great, for some 30 years at this point. We've covered in a previous episode together. We have indeed, absolutely. And so he is ruling that, 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 Sousa

and Pasagadai. 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. This is 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, and safe empire essentially. 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. They can travel. 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 lot. long time ago, some of my favorite things.

They, they, 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?

Darias, he doesn't just leave one son, does he? No. There always seems to be a bit of a succession crisis as Persians as the Persian Empire goes on. Yeah. So at the time of his death, we know that Darias had had at least six wives. I mean, concurrently, Persian kings were polygynous, plus any number of concubines as well. So the Harim's 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 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 open game. Anybody could do it. 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 it. children and even to live into your adulthood, into your teens, was a perilous thing. You know, 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 perspective airs, holding off on appointing one until, you know, they were secure that they'd reached their maturity, you know, 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 kings. 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.

You know, within the imperial system, nobody could get closer to the king than one of his women, you know, in bed with him. You know, what happens between the sheets, takes away the mystique of monarchy in a way. Herodotta says, interestingly, that Darius had many sons. But in his opinion, Xerxes was a dead ringer for the crown

because his mother, a tosser, was all-powerful. Right. Which is really, really fascinating. Why then? Why is this woman? Why does she have this kind of cachet? Well, of course, Darias 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's mother, is the eldest daughter of Cyrus the Great. Ah, very prestigious. Very prestigious. So Xerxes is the first son born to Darias 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 porthogeniture. That means born into the purple blood, you know, the royal blood is in his veins. And so this is why he's chosen as king. And I don't want to dismiss this idea that Atossa herself pushed this idea constantly, of course, as well. It's to her advantage, you know, because if Xerxes became king, she would become queen mother, and there was nobody to touch the queen mother, whereas wives and concubines of kings can drop from status, you know, depending on the favor that the king shows them. the queen mother, who is the link between the two generations of kings,

she can reign supreme in the harem. She has the rank of the highest woman in the empire. So I think Atossa has a very important role to play in this. It's good to mention that as well. I mean, so Darias dies in the mid-48es. That's great. And he's not assassinated. He dies old age.

He dies, yeah, absolutely. Of natural causes, as far as we know, absolutely. And almost straight away, we have a series of inscriptions set up by Xerxes, stamping his authority on the empire. And the first one is an inscription that we know as the Harim inscription because of where it was found at Persepolis.

And there, Xerxes makes a very bold statement. And he says, my father had many sons, but of his sons, I was the greatest. And the word there is Mathishta. That's a power play, isn't it? Really is, absolutely.

So he acknowledges that there could have been a succession, And maybe there really was, you know, which he overwrites, of course, you know. But then this statement, I was the greatest, 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. So as though we can't emphasize that enough, you know.

He needs people to recognize his legitimacy as king through his ancestry, through his ancestry, in particular. So this is a real motif of Xerxes's earliest inscriptions, constantly. Son of Darius, Anakimini, it's son of Dariah, Anakimid, 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 Darias started the big, big building project at Persepolis. Right, yes. So, you know, this becomes one of the sort of state palaces, kind of ceremonial center for the empire.

This is Darius's baby. It comes from his mind and he builds... By the famous Apidana today. That's right. Exactly, exactly. So Apidana is one of Darius's buildings. And this is all on a platform, a tacht, which is sort of 30 meters off the ground. I mean, it's one of the most spectacular ruins of antiquity.

It's an incredible site to walk. Originally, during Xerxes's lifetime, the entrance way to that platform was in the south, of the 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 Ahosians and Qasemians and Yonah and all of this. We get actually to the number of 33, 33 peoples under Xerxes, which is actually bigger than Darius's province county. And Yowna are the Greeks, are they? Yon are the Greeks, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Same word in modern Persian today, actually, for Greece, Yonah. It remains the same.

So, yeah, we get, 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. I was going to ask, I mean, do we know anything about his relationship with all of these half-brothers? this. Well, yes, we do, mainly from Herodotus, Cateus, 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. You know, maybe like Darius's very first-born son, who was a son of a woman who came from a very, very high-ranking Persian noble family, the family of Gobrius. I can't see that he would have, you know, given up his potential so easily. So while the sources are silent, I think it's quite feasible to think there must have been a bit of a clash with a few of the brothers or half-brothers.

But of bigger concern to Xerxes was the fact that Egypt erupted into rebellion immediately at the death of Darius. And so we see that Xerxes heads and army goes off to Egypt, quells the revolt. And that's a really great thing. This is in the first year of his accession. So that's, you know, immediately saying, look, I'm. I'm serious here, you know. It also shows us that he's a good military man as well. You know, we shouldn't dismiss him at all.

On his way back from Egypt, in fact, he puts down another rebellion in Babylon. These are always the kind of, you know, litmus tests for kings. Babylon and Egypt. Babylon and Egypt, can you hold them, you know? 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 an very active individual, you know, and he stamps his mark on the empire, always in the shadow of his father,

but nevertheless, he's there, and he says, you know, I am king now, okay? I'm in the same line as Darias. You remember how he ruled you, I will rule you the same. And I think 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 Satrappel 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 king's 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, 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 traveled from Sousa to Persepolis where he's buried in this great kind of catafluck, you know, 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, you know, 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 honour and he shows himself to be a warrior king and this is what his father himself puts on his tomb facade You know, we are, you know, 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 straight away, this boy king who can't quite live up to his father, I don't think stands at all.

No, it seems like he really does succeed in that potentially, troublesome, immediate years taking the throne in that succession time. During that time, do we know who was closest to him? I mean, is his mother still around and influencing him? Yes, and in fact, a tosser 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 text. Suddenly, with her accession to the role of Queen Mother, she's everywhere. You know, I mean, she's the principal lady in the land, you know. So, yes, absolutely. She really sort of swells in appearance. 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 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 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 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. So, and they're already born by the time Xerxes becomes king. And so, you know, 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 Pact Harim. And of course, we should remember that Xerxes appears in the Hebrew Bible. Ah, in a kind of, just in a guise at soul. So in the book of Esther, which was probably written in the fourth 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 Aesiris, which. is the Hebraised version of Xerxes, essentially. Do we know much about the Harim 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, you know, so she holds that principal position. Then he can have a numerous consorts. Now we know that in Persia, the queens, the wives of kings,

only come from Persian families. So they never marry outside of the Persian blood, okay? Is that the blue blood idea? Yeah, I suppose. Well, it's to keep these family lines, these great noble alliances with the great households of the Persian tribes to keep them going. But then he could take foreign,

concubines, many, many foreign concubines. And these came in so many different forms so they could be given as gifts, diplomatic gifts. They can be taken as war captives, war booty. Basically what we're dealing there, of course, is with sex trafficking.

But these women, you know, these women who become concubines, they are not insignificant because we have several occasions when the sons of concubines become king. And so a concubine from the lowest rung of the Harim suddenly finds herself,

for the next generation as the queen mother, you know? So there's a political game going on in the harem all the time. Now, some colleagues feel, you know, this is all a Greek fantasy. I don't think so at all. The harem is a feature of many ancient courts and in courts ever since. You know, think of the Qing in China. Think of the moguls in India. You know, these are important aspects of the politicking of a royal family.

So, you know, we find exactly the same thing in Persia. And how important were eunuchs to Xerxes's rule and indeed to Persian rule? That's interesting. 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 try to work for the best. betterment of their own family at all.

They're tied to the king eyes. 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. Unix had 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 necessarily 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 Harim, 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-between. 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 counsellors, councillors of state, officers of state, and important individuals in the army as well. We have unit generals as well. 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-you- 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 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, absolutely. And in fact, Cetis, who is one of our chief sources for this period. He's a Greek from Knidos and lived in the Persian court for 17 years. He automatically kind of lists the influential eunuchs every time he talks about a new succession of a king. Interesting.

So he'll say Xerxes became king. The eunuchs who were influential under him were blah, blah, blah, blah. And he will name him in that way. So yes, there was definitely a reliance on these men who were advisors, civil servants, military men, all of these things wrapped into one. You mentioned Canidas there in passing, so that's part of the Greek world, but it's on the western coast of Turkey, isn't it? That's right, yeah, not too far from Bodrum, modern-day Bodrum.

So it's within the sphere of Persian Empire. And of course, the biggest thing many people remember with Xerxes is his massive, ultimately, failed invasion of Greece. We're not going to cover that in detail on today's chat, because we've done. done an episode, a detailed episode with Dr. Rulkaneroyne and Dyke as well. Two episodes, in fact, two episodes on both the invasion of Greece by his dad, DeRyes, and by Xerxes too. So we'll kind of cover it quickly, but I think an overarching question to cover it will be how much of Xerxes reign? I mean, how much attention does he really give to the Greeks?

How much would you argue? Not as much as the Greek sources suggest, but the Greeks are not irrelevant to him either. And I think that's chiefly because, you know, during Xerxes's early reign, he's still looking at the idea of expanding the empire, both east and west. You know, that's still something that, you know, his father had done and he'd like to do. And that's the kind of thing that's reflected in these empire lists as well. For the satraps on the western borders of the empire, so that is, you know, in modern day Turkey, in these kind of Greek-speaking city states, like Myelitus, Ephesus, Sardis, this kind of thing. Then obviously what went on in the Aegean and across the Aegean in the Greek mainland

was of importance to them, of course, you know. And I think it's because of that that really Xerxes was kind of encouraged to think about bringing the Greek mainland under his control. Don't forget, many of the Greek city states of northern Greece, Macedon, Beosha, Thebes, were already kind of, you know, Persian friendly, Persian allies. Some of them had even been satrapies. So there wasn't this sharp divide between Greece and Persia that the kind of, you know, the traditional histories have portrayed.

It wasn't really like that. But I think that Xerxes really wanted control of the Aegean more than anything else. because the Aegean obviously bleeds into the Mediterranean, Mediterranean gives you access to the Nile. His father, Darias, had dug a canal, which went from the River Nile across the desert to the Red Sea. Can you believe it? It's amazing. And that meant that, you know, a trade ship could go right the way down

through the Nile, the Red Sea, around Arabia into the Persian Gulf. I mean, you know, so I think the access there to the Aegean is something that really appealed to Xerxes. and not made much of in the sources because Herodotus and the others want to make this an ideological war more than anything else. I don't think it was for Xerxes. And I think if we could put ourselves in Xerxes' shoes for a moment,

I think that for him, you see, the Persian wars were a success. You know, what did he accomplish? Well, he accomplished two things that he set out to do. The first was the sack of Athens. Great, perfect. That's what he wanted. It burns down the wooden necropolis, isn't it? complete thing. I mean, it's, it's devastated. And the second thing is he takes the head of Leonidas,

the king of Sparta. And for Xerxes, Leonidas would have represented chaos. This is their victory at the best of the Thumopolis, isn't it? The Spartheid. Exactly, you know. So that's hailed as, you know, a great tragedy for the Greeks, but also a moment of sort of ideological triumph where Greece comes into its own and Xerxes loses out on something. I don't see that at all. I think Xerxes would have seen this. I have taken the head of a liar king. Zirxes believed in Arta, this concept of Arta, which means truth. And this concept comes from his chief god, Ahura Mazda, the wise lord. And Ahuramazda is a creator god. He is a god of everything light and good. And the Persians believed that when the world was created, when Ahurah Mazda formed the universe, he formed the king at the same time as well. So the king is set in his place to, rule naturally the world. So anybody who rebels against the Persian king doesn't follow Arta is not following the truth at all. And therefore they call these rebels liar kings. So Xerxes would have identified Leonidas and all of the Greeks as adherence of Drauga, the lie. So Themistocles

as well. Yes, absolutely. The man who wins the Battle of Salamis. That's right, absolutely. So all of these are labeled in that way. And I think that's a really interesting concept for us, you know. So I think as far as Xerxes is concerned, he came back from Greece, not with his tail between his legs, but actually quite triumphantist. And he returns from Greece personally, not because he's ashamed of what's gone on, but he goes back to put down another rebellion in Babylon. But it is coincidental, isn't it, that his decision to return to Asia does happen right after the Athenian victory at the best of Sanamis, the naval victory. I mean, so I was going to ask, is this idea of Xerxes back in Asia and he's a defeated monarch?

But what you were saying there sounds like it's not. No, it's not. It's a pragmatic return. Babylon is far too important to lose. You know, if Xerxes has a choice of a Babylon or Athens, it would 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, for a, you know, and he would have installed, I think, a Persian satrap, plus I think a Greek, an Athenian, maybe, governor, maybe even Themisticallyes himself, you know, because one thing that the Persians didn't do was to kind of completely overturn local systems. 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. Well, shall we elaborate on this Themistically, Xerxes, Link, because we do think, of Themistically fighting the Persians, which he did.

You know, he's the great admiral who wins the Bastardos. In the film 300, of course. He actually kills Derrhymes, doesn't he? Oh, yeah, yeah, please. We won't go down that route anymore. We won't delve more into the Greco-Persian wars for now. We very much know your allegiance, Lloyd. But can we explore this relationship between Xerxes and the Mystical Lees

because it doesn't end with them fighting? I mean, how does this actually become a bit of a friendship as time goes on? Well, it's bizarre, isn't it? You know, people say never burn your bridges, right? So, like, what happens to Themistically is it kind of typical of any Athenian politician who's been there for too long. He gets ostracized, right? You know, he's literally voted out of office and has to go into exile, which I think is a really good idea. And that any politician should always be under the threat of ostracism.

So, you know, this happens numerous times in Athenian democracy. And so he becomes, themistically, he's become. Themistocles becomes this kind of vagabond, really, and he goes, sort of bounces around different city-states and even goes to the island of Thassos to see if he can't, like, you know, stay there. He finally ends up in the Persian Empire, in Asia Minor, close to the city of Daski-Leon, which is a satrapal capital there. And he actually goes and sees the satrap and says,

look, do you think I could, you know, do you think I could appeal to the king and he could give me a home or something? Could I live here? And so the sat-trap says, okay, I'll write on your behalf, you know, he writes to Xerxes. And Xerxies invites him to Sousa. And not only invites him to Souser, but gives him a house there, gives him a pension. And Themistically, he becomes completely Persianized.

He learns Persian to fluency, and he lives out the rest of his life as a guest of state. Beyond Xerxes reign, into the reign of his son as well. So isn't it strange? Does Prutop mention that as well? Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. makes a big thing of that, absolutely. Isn't it incredible? Yes.

You don't hear about that part of the story. No, no, these sworn enemies, you know? They find a way. It's really quite nice. I like it. So what do we know about Xerxes' rule after he returns to Persia, to Asia? So he puts down the Babylonian revolt

and then how does he promote himself? Well, it's kind of interesting. This is when we get a change in the tone of these royal inscriptions. So what we get now is an area that we've been, uncharted by Persian kings before. So in the 1930s, when Hertzfeld and his team were excavating Persepolis, they discovered these really elegantly carved cuneiform blocks, okay, trilingual.

And in it, Xerxes says something really strange. So he says, you know, the usual I am Xerxes, great king, son of Darius and all of that. And then he says, it's kind of come to my notice that in my empire, there are people who worship the divers, the divers. And they do not worship a Huramazda in the right way and at the right time. And Huramazda is the chief Persian god. There's this wise lord, this creator god. And he said, you know, some of the, there are some peoples who reject him altogether, right?

So you've got to read between the lines and all of this. these some peoples who are rejecting. Is his experience of Greece on his mind, you know, or is it Babylon that he's still thinking about? But somehow he's aligning, of course, theology to politics here, okay? But what about this word divers then, divers? Well, diver comes from an Indo-European word, which is linked to things like the Latin Deus, the Welsh dew, the French deer. So it's a word for God. But within its Persian context,

Daiva can also be linked to a modern Persian and modern Arabic word div, div, which means like a wicked spirit. So we could call it something which is like something satanic or something evil, something dark. So they are worshipping evil god. Mesopotamian demons, I do? Possibly, possibly, okay. So he's not...

Lilith and stuff like that. I don't think you need to do that. I think he's applying this word to mean gods who are not Persian. Ah, okay, okay. So, you know, this is really odd in a world of polytheism. Nobody ever gets really bothered by other gods. You know, people just recognize different countries have different gods. The Jews in antiquity, you know,

they get worked up about this, okay? Because, you know, by the second temple period, they've got their monotheistic god. Xerxes is kind of preempt in that idea, I think, in this thing which we call the diver inscription. You should be worshipping Ahura Mazda in the proper ways and at the proper times, she says, which suggests then that there is a kind of codified system of worshipping this god with certain rituals and certain festivals or certain times. of the week or the day or whatever it might be. So this is the only time we get this idea that the Persians are imposing a religious ideology

on their empire. It is completely out of touch with Cyrus the Great, who was happily worship, you know, whatever gods were available, and likewise, Darius as well. In Darius, you know, when he conquers or goes into Egypt as a pharaoh, you know, he worships Egyptian gods. It's no problem. Xerxes suddenly seems to have almost this kind of zealot-like attachment to Ahura Mazda. Given the amounts of different cultures within the Persian Empire at that time, the superpower, such an inscription, if they try and enforce it and dare they try and do persecutions almost,

that is going to cause his reputation to absolutely plummet. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is so unlike. the Persians, you know. So something strange is going on here. And that strangeness is emphasized by the fact that Hertzfeld and his team discovered these, and they are beautifully made inscriptions. They really are. But they found them in the most unlikely context. They found them taken off the walls. Hacked off the walls. And they were actually in the latrines and the drainage channels underneath Persepolis. So somebody has chosen. to, you know, to decry these things

by literally putting them in their place and doing their business over them. The question is, who was it? Who was it? Now, we know that towards the end, there are tensions among Xerxes, many sons. So just, you know, this is history repeating itself, okay?

So Xerxes has a long reign, and long rains tend to be dangerous for kings towards the end. So how long long? are we talking? What are we saying here? We're talking about 30 odd years on the throne. So 20 years or so after the invasion of Greece? Yes. Maybe 15, something like that. We start, you know, but here he's got a family of sons who are already, you know, in their 20s. You know, some of them actually early 30s as well. And so they're all sort of chomping at the bits to have a

go at being king. And there's one in particular boy who is known as Ocus. He seems to be, particularly sort of ambitious for the crown. And if we pull together all of the different classical versions that we have of what happens next, it seems that Ocus starts working with a group of courtiers, in particular a group of influential eunuchs, in order to plot perhaps the overthrow of his father, Xerxes. Now, this might sound again, you know, like a kind of. of orientalist fantasy. But we have a Babylonian text, which becomes so important for us, because the Babylonians,

of course, were great astronomers, skywatchers, okay? So they were always looking at for omens. And in the Babylonian star charts, which is essentially like a diary of what goes on in the sky every day. Or the astronomical diaries. Yeah, exactly. Some Babylonian astrologer simply writes down, you know, there was an eclipse of the moon, a normal happening.

nothing incredible on this particular date. And then the entry ends, Xerxes, as it were, comma, his son killed him. It's really amazing. They're really iconic, aren't they, those entries? Very, very. So this is the only extra classical source to talk about Xerxes assassination. But, of course, frustratingly, we don't know which of his sons did it, okay? But my money has to be on Ocus, I think, who wasn't the eldest of the sons.

And in fact, what Ocus manages to do in the last months of Zerxes's life before he is killed, he manages to instigate a plot against his eldest brother, Darius, and has the boy executed, the man executed. So he's gotten rid of his chief rifle already. This man is, this Ocus is really a mover and shaker. And what we get from the Greek historiography is that Xerxes personal life is in chaos, right? And, you know, I don't know how much emphasis we really should put on it. But, you know, well, the Greeks are certainly interested in it.

So for instance, this is for another example. Yeah, yeah. So there's this great story that Xerxes, with all of these women in the Hary, I mean, I could choose any woman in the empire as a lover, he decides to have an affair with his daughter-in-law, who is Darius's, this Prince Darias's wife. And there's a very interesting tale that's told about this. So the king's wife, a mistress,

she makes the king with her own hands, this beautiful robe, a sort of riding coat, and she gives it to him, and it's, you know, a great gift, obviously, you know, a great pride to a mistress that she's done this. But this mistress of Xerxes, a girl called Arta Yinti,

his daughter-in-law and his niece at the same time, his brother's daughter, she says to the king, oh, I'd really like that, please can I have it, you know? And the king says, well, no, my wife made it for me.

But anyway, she keeps on and on and on. And so he gives it to the girl. But the girl doesn't keep it for herself. She sends this robe to her father, whose name is my cysties, and he is Xerxes's full brother. Now, this is one of those moments where you have to look for the Persian version, okay? Because if you just think, oh, well, you know, that's a bit of an insult, isn't it?

You know, to a mistress and all of this. No, it's more than that. Because a robe worn by the king in ancient Persian thought kind of took on his far, took on his power. Okay. So a king sometimes would gift a robe of his to a favoured courtier, and the courtier would wear it just on his shoulders. and this would be a huge mark of honour. Xerxes has not gifted this to his brother. It's gone via his mistress to his brother.

And basically what Artieinti and her father are doing is they are claiming the kingship through him wearing this robe. Oh, right. So this is treason, really, okay? Now Xerxes, who's always portrayed in Neurogitus, you know, as hubristic and stupid, Let's put it that way, okay.

Doesn't see any of this, but a mistress does. So what does a mistress do? Well, interestingly, she doesn't punish the girl because she's the mistress of Xerxes and kind of untouchable, but instead she brings the girl's mother, My Sistie's wife, to court, and she has her guards mutilate her.

Chops off her nose, her lips, her years, cuts off her breasts, and throws those to the dogs, and then sends this poor woman in this mutilated state back to My Sistis house. And of course the woman dies thereafter. But My Sistis has seen what has happened. And then there's an open rebellion between these two brothers

in which My Sistis is then killed. So this is the background to Xerxes's final years. Chaos within the royal family equals chaos within the empire. You know, things will only decline sharply. And maybe it's because of this that Ocus and this group of eunuchs, do what they do. Zerxes is murdered in his in his bed. That's where he is and actually Xenophon writes you know about the the frequency of assassination in Persia. He says you know and nowhere is a king more susceptible to the knife than when he's in his bed in his bath or drunk you know and this

is the way that Xerxes great Xerxes is killed in his bed. And I find it interesting however the cause of Xerxes reign. You see his extent. extended family get cut down one way or another. Oh, constantly, absolutely. Either by Greek troops. Yes, there's Mardonius, isn't his brother who's killed at the end of the Persian wars?

Absolutely. Yeah, they're the shadow of their former cells. And what's interesting, you know, when he is succeeded by Ocus, who takes the throne name Arctic Xerxes, becomes Attexerxes the first, okay? Ocus actually goes to a whole progrom of Xerxes courtiers.

So all the old guard, who used to, you know, look after Xerxes advise him. They're all. They're all executed, you know. So this is a fresh start. And I think that those incredible diver inscriptions were probably hacked off the walls under Attaxerxes the first instructions.

And there's also a very interesting thing as well because at the center of the two staircases in the great Apodana at Persepolis, there were once this big relief of a king and his crown prince standing together. And that was probably meant to be Xerxes and Prince Darius, that they were hacked off the wall too. They weren't destroyed,

but they were put away in the treasury, out of sight, out of mind. And I think that, again, is on the order of Atik Xerxes, trying to get rid of his father. So we have a complete change around, don't we, of this idea that Xerxes was so reliant on his link with his father, but Atik Xerxes wants to kind of distance himself from his father, In his official inscriptions, Atig Xerxes will say, I am the son of Xerxes, the son of Darius, the son of Hystapsis.

So he gives the line there, but he'd rather get back to, you know, being an ekeminid and just using that title really than lingering with his father. So he doesn't stop to stop at I am the son of Xerxes. And that could potentially be, of course, the infamous end, but maybe Xerxes' policies later on, which maybe were looked upon very unfavorably. I think there's something in that, you know, because what we find in these next lot of Achaemenid kings, Atik Xerxes the First, Darius the Second, Attic Xerxes the second, is far more evidence of them worshipping other Persian gods, such as Anahita, Mithra. So was Xerxes trying to get rid of all deities apart from Ahura Mazda? You know, was there really a kind of religious revolution? was an Akinartan-a-esque movement. Yeah, absolutely. You know, was something like that going. Interesting. Going on.

Yeah, so, you know, there's a lot more to Xerxes than meets the eye and a lot more than, you know, we just see in the Greek historians. Lloyd, this has been such a fantastic, Chad. I mean, how would you say, how should we view Xerxes today? I think we should see him as a very able king, who during the heights of his power, was an active politician, a good military commander. a good leader, somebody who was very aware of the empire that he created. However, as he got older, there seems to be in this religious, nagging pull that he's trying to deal with as well. That's not unusual, again, in long reigns, you know, for people to, you know, take different approaches that have become obsessed with other things. So I think there is a slight change in the personality of Xerxes towards the end.

end. But I think by and large, we should judge him far more favourably than historians have usually given him justice. We've covered a lot of his story, but is there anything you feel we should briefly mention before we wrap up any other achievements that we should highlight? I think more than anything, it's the kind of legacy that he's left behind for us, because he is one of the best known Persian kings. He has been written about constantly. He's been portrayed on stage, on screen in opera. And I think it's lovely that he's there. There's only been one attempt, however,

to write a biography of him by the late Richard Stoneman, a really fine classical historian who went to Iran about 10 years ago, fell in love with the place like we all do and we go there, you know, and attempted to write this story of Xerxes. I would love to see more people attempting that

with more Persian great kings anyway, because we can do it, if only we look for the Persian version. Well, Lloyd, this has been such a fantastic chat. You have, of course, written a book about the Persian Empire, which focuses also on Xerxes's life. That's right, absolutely, called Persians, the Age of the Great Kings. Well, as always, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Thank you so much for coming back on. Thanks so much, Trition. Bye. Well, there you go. There was the fantastic Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones returning to the show to talk through the story of Xerxes the Great, It's showing how there is so much more to that Persian king's story than just his ill-fated invasion of Greece. If you want to learn more about that invasion, well, you can listen to Lloyd and Dr. Rul Kainerdike talking through that campaign in an episode that we did about this time last year. We'll put a link to that in the description.

But thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us, and you'll be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.