Xerxes I

Xerxes I invaded Greece with the largest force the ancient world had assembled and lost. Born around 518 BC, the son of Darius I and of Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great, he was chosen as heir over elder half-brothers because of that descent, and succeeded in 486 BC. He began by suppressing revolts in Egypt and Babylon, the second with severity — Herodotus says he removed the statue of Marduk, and he dropped the title king of Babylon. He spent four years preparing the Greek expedition. Herodotus gives 1.7 million men, which is impossible; modern estimates run from about 100,000 to 300,000, still far beyond anything Greece could field. A canal was cut through the Athos peninsula to avoid the cape where Darius's fleet had been wrecked, and two pontoon bridges of boats were built across the Hellespont. When a storm destroyed the first pair, Herodotus says he had the sea whipped and branded. He forced the pass at Thermopylae in 480 BC after three days, when a local man showed his troops a mountain path, and took and burned Athens, whose population had been evacuated. Themistocles then drew the Persian fleet into the strait at Salamis, where numbers counted against it. Xerxes watched the defeat from a throne on the shore and withdrew to Asia with much of the army, leaving Mardonius, who was destroyed at Plataea in 479 BC. He built extensively at Persepolis, and was assassinated in 465 BC by his own commander of the guard.

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