Xerxes

Xerxes

XERXES I THE GREAT (519-465 BC)

SHAHANSHAH OF THE PERSIAN ACHAEMENID EMPIRE, GOD-KING OF THE 1000 NATIONS OF PERSIA

Xerxes possibly the most powerful Zoroastrian Shahanshah (Emperor) of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Historians are uncertain what the name Xerxes means with the most widely accepted translation being "Hero among rulers". He was born in 519 as the son of Darius the Great and his wife Atossa, the daughter of legendary Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Darius was an active emperor, busy with building programs in Persepolis, Susa, Egypt, and elsewhere. In 486, toward the end of his reign, he moved to punish Attica for the slaughter of Persian troops during the Battle of Marathon (490 BC). Under Persian law, the Achaemenian kings were required to choose a successor before setting out on such serious expeditions. Xerxes was not the oldest son of Darius and according to old Iranian traditions should not have succeeded the King. Xerxes was, however, the oldest son of Darius and Atossa hence descendent of Cyrus. This made Xerxes the chosen King of Persia upon Darius' decision to leave. Although the Persians were aided by a basilisk, they were ultimately defeated by the Greek defenders as they were led by Kratos, the most powerful Greek warrior in history, who claimed the throne of Ares thus becoming the Greek god of war. After a gruesome battle, Darius was brutally killed by Kratos. After the message of the emperor's death reached Xerxes, the newly minted emperor swore an oath of avenging his fathers death by fulfilling his plans of conquering all of Greece.

Almost immediately, he suppressed the revolts in Egypt and Babylon that had broken out the year before, and appointed his brother Arsamene as governor or satrap over Egypt. In 484 BC, he outraged the Babylonians by violently confiscating and melting down the golden statue of Marduk, the hands of which the rightful King of Babylon had to clasp each New Year's Day. This sacrilege led the Babylonians to rebel in 484 BC and 482 BC, so that in contemporary Babylonian documents, Xerxes refused his father's title of King of Babylon, calling himself 'God-King of the 1000 Nations of Persia' from now on. Only one year later the Zoroastrian supreme deity Ahura Mazda appeared in Xerxes' dreams in the shape of a phantom. The god demanded from the emperor to invade Greece since its gods, the Olympians, were banished when the betrayer Kratos unleashed the Titans from Tartarus, leading to the invasion of Olympus and the Third Titanomachy (War of the Titans). After Kratos and the Titans murdered several gods, they were defeated by the "Hero of Helos" followed by the Olympian gods cutting the connection between Olympus and Earth. Without protection from its deities, Greece was an easy victim in the eyes of Xerxes.

Soon Xerxes gathered a vast army of more than one million soldiers from all of the nations of Persia, such as Median spearmen (Sparabaras), Bactrian cavalry, tamed rhinoceroses, the "Ten Thousand Immortals" and enough archers to literally blot out the sun. After a brief but bloody encounter with the Lydian ruler Pythius who tried to get his first born son out of the Persian army, Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BC. While at first some of the Greek city-states such as Thessaly, Thebes and Argos agreed to ally themselves with the God-King others such as Athens and Sparta denied the Persians their "tribute of earth and water" as the Persian ambassadors called the submission to their God-King. Shortly after the Persian messenger at the court of Sparta was kicked down a well, King Leonidas of Sparta led an army of merely 300 Spartans eastwards to repel the numerically superior invaders by using the terrain of Thermopylae (the Hot Gates).

At first the Persians understandably saw the Spartans as a harmless group of madmen. But already the first day of battle (September 8, 480 BC) would proof them wrong: wave after wave of Xerxes' men were slaughtered by the Spartans who used their well trained phalanx formation as well as the narrow pass between the rocks and the sea for their benefit. At the beginning of the second day of the Battle of Termophylae, Xerxes personally approached Leonidas to persuade him to surrender, offering Leonidas wealth and power in exchange for his loyalty. But Leonidas declined, promising instead to make the God-King bleed. Outraged, Xerxes send his elite guard, the Immortals. While the Immortals had always been the most powerful fighters of Persia, Xerxes' elite guard was additionally known for its ruthlessness as they were recruited from strange Eastasian creatures wearing metal masks and a pair of swords closely resembling Japanese wakizashis. Nevertheless, the Immortals were dispatched by the Spartans. Now the Persian emperor realized that the battle could not be won with strength but only with cunning. Thus he bribed Ephialtes of Trachis, a hunchbacked Spartan whose parents fled Sparta to spare him certain infanticide. With Ephialtes' help the Persian troops surrounded the Spartans using a secret goat path. As the Persian soldiers massacred the remaining Spartans, Leonidas hurled his spear at Xerxes, cutting the God-King on the cheek, thus making good on his promise to make "the God-King bleed." Disturbed by this reminder of his own mortality, Xerxes returned to Persia leaving his troops to pillage the area and to march for Athens. While the Battle of Termophylae had been a clear victory for Persia it was a victory with devastating cost delaying the Persian invasion of mainland Greece.

Upon returning home Xerxes turned his attention away from warfare and ordered his generals to lead the invasion of Greece - which would ultimately end with the Battle of Plataea in 479 - in his name. Instead, Xerxes fixed his attention to much more peaceful aspects of his reign. He completed the many construction projects left unfinished by his father at Susa and Persepolis such as the Gate of all Nations, the Hall of a Hundred Columns and the Apadana as well as building his own palace which was twice the size of his father's. Furthermore, he made up his mind to find a woman worthy of becoming his queen. He fell in love with Romilda, the daughter of his vassal Ariodate. However Romilda and Xerxes' brother, Arsamene, loved each other while Romilda's sister, Atalanta, was also determined to make Arsamene hers. At first Xerxes banished Arsamene and determined to marry Arsamene off to Atalanta and even planned to kill his brother after he kissed Romilda, until a plot of Amastre, his former consort forsaken by him for Romilda, was succesfull at winning back Xerxes' heart. Thus Amastre became the queen of Persia and Romilda and Xerxes' brother Arsamene married, too.

After the sudden death of Queen Amastre in 465, Xerxes married a woman named Vashti. To celebrate their wedding the God-King held a 180-day feast in Susa to display the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty. But as Vashti refused to attend the feast, she was banished by her outraged husband. To find a new suitable queen, it was decreed that beautiful young virgins be gathered to the palace from every province of his kingdom. Four years after Queen Vashti was banished, Xerxes chose Esther, an orphaned Jewish child, for his wife and queen, because he was captivated by her beauty and intelligence. Shortly afterward, the king granted Haman the Agagite, one of the most prominent princes of the realm, supreme authority over the kingdom. But Haman schemed to massacre all Jews of Persia. Esther told the king of Haman's plan and acknowledged her own Jewish ethnicity. The emperor was enraged and ordered Haman to be hanged and followed in the footsteps of Cyrus the Great, in showing mercy to the Jews of Persia: As a result Jews lived in the Persian Empire for 2400 years thereafter. But this liberalism attracted the attention of the Assassins. This ancient of order of killers striving for protection of the balance of the world regarded the emancipation of Jews sceptically, fearing the outbreak of a religious war in Persia. Following the Assassin's Creed they arranged the assassination of King Xerxes by his very own son, Darius of Mede. But death would not be the end for Xerxes. The Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda cursed Xerxes for his failure during the invasion of Greece: the dead king was transformed into the flying eel familiar of the young evil sorcerer and necromancer Mozenrath.