page_title: Atossa
section_title: Literary references
hierarchical_section_title: Atossa / Literary references
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing by George Romney: The Ghost of Darius Appearing to Atossa (The Persians by Aeschylus)
context_page_description: Atossa was an Achaemenid empress and daughter of Cyrus the Great. She lived from 550 BC to 475 BC and was a sister-wife of the Persian king of kings Cambyses II and wife of Darius I.
context_section_description: Aeschylus included her as a central character in his tragedy The Persians. Atossa is also one of the major characters in the Gore Vidal novel Creation.
  Atossa is also included in Herodotus' The Histories and is shown to be a strong woman with a lot of influence. He even goes as far as to suggest that her wanting a Greek maiden was a reason for why Darius the Great decided to begin his campaign to Greece.
  In his history of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee imagines Atossa traveling through time, encountering different diagnoses and treatments for her breast cancer. Atossa becomes emblematic of cancer sufferers through history.
caption: The ghost of Darius appears to Atossa in a scene from The Persians.
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