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Emma Bridges
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
www.bloomsbury.com
Emma Bridges has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
ISBN: 978-1-47251-137-9
Bibliography 201
Index 227
List of Illustrations and Photographs
Illustrations
Plate 1: Xerxes’ army crosses the Hellespont xii
Plate 2: Atossa’s dream. Based on a 1778 sketch by George Romney 10
Plate 3: Xerxes contemplates the brevity of human existence44
Plate 4: Darius and his crown prince. Detail of Persepolis treasury sculpture 72
Plate 5: Xerxes rebuking the sea. Based on a nineteenth-century Spanish
lithograph illustrating La Civilisación (1881) by Don Pelegrin Casabó y Pagés 97
Plate 6: Esther at the court of Xerxes. Based on an illustration from Harold
Copping’s Women of the Bible (1937)126
Plate 7: Xerxes’ return to Persia. Adapted from a lithograph illustrating Jacob
Abbott’s History of Xerxes the Great (1878) 155
Plate 8: A Xerxes for the twenty-first century. Based on the depiction of Xerxes in
Zack Snyder’s movie 300 (2007) 190
Photographs
Figure 1: Council Hall: South jamb of east doorway of main hall depicting
enthroned Darius with crown prince behind him 84
Figure 2: Persepolis treasury: South portico of Courtyard 17 depicting audience
scene with king and crown prince 85
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Note on Translations, Illustrations
and Abbreviations
This book started life as a doctoral thesis written at the University of Durham
and funded with the support of a Durham University Research Studentship
and the Ralph Lindsay Scholarship. My doctoral supervisors, Edith Hall and
Peter Rhodes, have continued to show their unfailing generosity in sharing
their time and their wisdom, as well as in providing moral support and advice.
I am especially grateful that both accepted and supported my decision to
prioritize family life over academic pursuits for a time during the decade since
the completion of the thesis, and yet unquestioningly resumed their roles as
mentors when I was ready to take up the challenge of writing this volume.
Edith’s gentle yet firm encouragement inspired my decision to resume research;
for this, and much else, it is no exaggeration to say that I will be forever in her
debt. Both she and Peter offered comments on a complete draft of the finished
work; as ever, I have benefited enormously from their combined expertise and
their differing yet complementary approaches to the study of the ancient world.
The final version of the book has also been shaped along the way by the
input of several other individuals and institutions. My examiners, Chris Pelling
and Peter Heslin, offered invaluable insights which led me to think about the
material in new ways; Chris has since then been a continuing source of support,
and provided incisive comments upon Chapters 2 and 6. At the proposal stage
Bloomsbury’s anonymous referees offered detailed feedback and pertinent
suggestions which enabled me to refine my thinking, and as the manuscript
neared completion I was most grateful for the attention to detail exercised by
a meticulous peer reviewer, who saved me from numerous errors. Charlotte
Loveridge at Bloomsbury was a patient and enthusiastic supporter of the project
from the outset, and Anna MacDiarmid provided invaluable assistance as the
work went into production. As a part-time Associate Lecturer at the Open
University, I have been fortunate to be able to indulge my love of things classical
while still devoting time to raising a young family under sometimes challenging
circumstances; the enthusiasm of my student cohorts continues to inspire
me and to enrich my appreciation and understanding of the ancient world.
Meanwhile I have also benefited greatly from the expertise and good humour
of the staff at the British Library Document Supply Centre at Boston Spa;
Acknowledgements xi
When in 480 bc Xerxes crossed the Hellespont from Asia into Greece, he
stepped simultaneously into the imagination of the Greeks whose homeland
he endeavoured to conquer. The bridge of boats across which his vast army
marched (Plate 1) would become an enduring symbol of the transgression of
a boundary – both physical and moral – by an arrogant king who dared to
defy the will of the gods in his attempt to join two continents. The course of
events which followed – first documented at length by Herodotus and retold
in abbreviated form by successive generations of Greek writers – is familiar to
those with even a passing acquaintance of Greek history of the period, although
the precise details are often the source of scholarly conjecture. Although many
Greeks surrendered to the invaders, the advance of the Persian hordes through
Greece was blocked at the pass of Thermopylae by a small band of troops
led by the Spartans under their king, Leonidas, and vastly outnumbered by
Xerxes’ army; the Spartans who fought there were assured of immortality in
commemorative traditions which would portray their defeat at the hands of the
Persians as a heroic stand for Greek freedom. A simultaneous naval engagement
at Artemisium proved indecisive when storms beset the fleet, but the ensuing
clash at Salamis was to be the battle in which the Greeks – under the leadership
of the Athenian general Themistocles – achieved their most celebrated naval
victory against Xerxes’ fleet. That was not before the king’s army had ransacked
an abandoned Athens and torched the Acropolis, however; this particular act
of irreverence – repeated in 479 by the remnants of the king’s army – would
live long in the collective memory. After his failure at Salamis the king himself
withdrew to Persia, leaving behind his general Mardonius in charge of an army
which would suffer its final defeat at the hands of a Greek force at Plataea in 479
bc. Plataea marked the end of Xerxes’ attempts to gain military domination over
2 Imagining Xerxes
Greece; for the victorious Greeks, however, their defeat of Xerxes would become
a defining moment in their history, and the memory of this glorious triumph
would endure for centuries.1
Their struggle against Xerxes was not the mainland Greeks’ first encounter
with a mighty Asiatic foe; ten years previously, the Athenians and their Plataean
allies had secured at Marathon a decisive victory over the Persian force sent to
Greece by Xerxes’ father Darius. Yet, where Xerxes set foot on the Hellenic soil
which he intended to claim as his own – and in the course of his expedition
committed the ultimate act of desecration in burning the sacred buildings
of Athens – Darius had remained in Persia and instead sent his generals to
carry out his campaign. As a result it was Xerxes, not his father, who subse-
quently entered into the Greek cultural encyclopaedia both as the archetypal
destructive and enslaving eastern king and as a symbol of the exotic decadence,
wealth and power of the Persian court. The narratives of his exploits are rich
in motifs and episodes with which he came to be associated: the whipping
and branding of the sacred Hellespont which mirrored both his mission as
would-be enslaver and his brutal treatment of subordinates; his awe-inspiring
army which was said to have drunk dry the rivers on its journey to Greece; the
elaborate throne from which he observed his troops in battle; and the sexual
politics of his palace, to name a few. The king himself, whose defeat at Salamis
would be for the Greeks a lasting cause for celebration, was a figure who could
inspire both fear and hatred, and whose image would at the same time become
a source of enduring fascination in a literary tradition whose echoes would
continue to resonate for centuries. The central concern of this volume is to
explore the richness and variety of Xerxes’ afterlives within the ancient literary
tradition.
The historical encounter between Xerxes and the Greeks has been the focus
for several recent scholarly endeavours, with attention being paid to particular
texts2 or episodes3 in which Xerxes features; meanwhile other works have
unpicked the sources to evaluate the historical accuracy of the accounts of
1
On the broader traditions relating to the commemoration of the Persian Wars as a whole see Clough
(2003), pp. 25–32. Bridges, Hall and Rhodes (2007) provide a series of case studies which demon-
strate the richness and diversity of responses to the Persian invasions since antiquity.
2
For example, recent editions of Aeschylus’ Persians (Garvie, 2009) and Ctesias’ Persica (Stronk,
2010; Llewellyn-Jones and Robson, 2010) and recent commentaries upon books of Herodotus
dealing with Xerxes’ expedition (Flower and Marincola, 2002, on Book 9; A. M. Bowie, 2007, on
Book 8) as well as a new English translation of his work (Holland and Cartledge, 2013).
3
On Salamis, see Strauss (2004); on Thermopylae, Cartledge (2006).
Introduction: Encountering Xerxes 3
his invasion,4 collated and analysed the sources for Achaemenid Persia,5 or
provided an insight into scholarly analysis of Persian history.6 While the process
of disentangling the ancient testimonies in order to establish a narrative of
Xerxes’ reign and his invasion of his Greece is a rich field for study, however,
my concern here is not to produce a biographical account or a cohesive picture
of the ‘real’ historical king who spearheaded the second Persian invasion of
Greece. Instead it is to draw together for comparative analysis the range of
literary approaches to the figure of this king with a view to considering the ways
in which these adaptations and deformations of the Xerxes-traditions – from
the earliest appearance of Xerxes on the tragic stage in 472 bc and the portrayal
of his character in Herodotus’ fifth-century historiographical narrative to the
biographical works of the Roman tradition and the moralizing texts of the
Second Sophistic – were shaped by the diverse contexts within which they
were produced. These successive re-imaginings from a variety of cultural and
historical perspectives demonstrate that the figure of the king who played such
a key role in events of the fifth century bc inspired an astonishing array of
responses; in this sense the ‘real’ historical Xerxes has become inseparable from
the literary character(s) who developed in his wake.
The earliest surviving cultural response to the figure of Xerxes is that seen in
Aeschylus’ Persians, his tragic drama of 472 bc which envisaged the reaction at
the Persian court to the news of the defeat at Salamis and culminated with the
return of the king himself, in rags and with a mere fraction of his vast army, to
Susa. The reversal of fortune of this theatrical Xerxes and his transformation
from intimidating aggressor to wretched failure acted as a reminder to the
Athenians of their celebrated achievement in driving back the Persian foe.
My first chapter investigates the ways in which Aeschylus’ text assimilated the
Persian king into this extraordinary piece of tragic theatre – the only extant
Athenian tragedy based on a historical, rather than a mythical, theme – within
which an actor was called upon to assume the guise of Athens’ great barbarian
adversary. While Aeschylus’ text begins with the Chorus’ remembered image
of Xerxes as terrifying invader in the parodos, this picture is gradually eroded
throughout the course of the play as the scale of the disaster at Salamis
is revealed. Aeschylus uses the perspectives of the other characters in his
4
Wallinga (2005).
5
Briant’s monumental 2002 work on Achaemenid Persia remains the most comprehensive study of
the sources for Xerxes’ reign. Kuhrt (2007) provides an exhaustive collection of the ancient sources
in English translation.
6
Harrison (2011). On the evolution of Achaemenid scholarship since the advent of the Achaemenid
History Workshops in the late 1970s see further p. 75 below.
4 Imagining Xerxes
drama – the Queen, the messenger and the ghost of Darius – to build up the
spectators’ anticipation of the eventual appearance of the king himself. In doing
so he draws on a series of striking images: the Queen’s dream, which allego-
rizes Xerxes’ failed mission and foreshadows his desolation upon his return
to Susa; the messenger’s report of the scene at Salamis, in which he describes
the watching king’s reaction to the defeat; and the rich and exotic appearance
of the ghost of Darius, who represents here a contrasting model of successful
Persian kingship against which Xerxes’ failure is measured. The arrival of Xerxes
himself, distraught and in rags, is the play’s climactic moment, in which the king
performs a sung lament; the full spectacle of his humiliation is thus played out
on stage before the audience. A sung lament by the king would also feature in
a later poetic and performative response to Xerxes; Timotheus of Miletus’ late
fifth-/early fourth-century bc citharodic nome was also entitled Persians, but
represented an art form very different from the tragic drama of Aeschylus. This
interpretation of the aftermath of the Persian defeat at Salamis – by a poet who
in his time was thought of as a musical revolutionary – demanded a performer’s
sung impersonation of the imagined words of Xerxes in his melodramatic
response to the destruction of his fleet. Chapter 1 also looks at the relationship
between Timotheus’ composition and Aeschylus’ play, as well as considering
the possible influence of the Xerxes-image upon the comic barbarians of
Aristophanes’ plays.
While the negative image of Xerxes as marauding invader would come to
dominate many later interpretations of the king’s persona, it is also possible to
find strands of the Xerxes-tradition which look beyond this image of an irascible
and impious despot in order to reflect upon other elements of his imagined
character. As early as the Histories of Herodotus we encounter him as a more
human figure, one susceptible to the vacillations of fortune and at the mercy
of the course of history as well as deeply conscious of his position within the
Persian royal dynasty. This Xerxes is epitomized in the scene early in Herodotus’
seventh book which takes place at Abydus before the invasion of Greece: having
surveyed the scale of the huge military force under his command, the king at
first congratulates himself on this affirmation of his power but then, in a flash of
insight which encapsulates a key theme of Herodotus’ text and transcends any
notion of a polarity between Greeks and barbarians, weeps as he acknowledges
the transient nature of human existence. Chapter 2 considers the ways in which
Herodotus’ narrative weaves a complex picture of Xerxes and utilizes this king
in order to exemplify one of the underlying ethical premises of his work – that
human fortune does not reside for long in one place – as well as considering
Introduction: Encountering Xerxes 5
how the Histories might use the story of Xerxes as a way of reflecting upon the
political realities of Herodotus’ own day. It is also in Herodotus’ text that we
find the beginnings of a strand of the Xerxes-tradition which looks beyond his
invasion of Greece and ventures behind the closed doors of the Persian court
to explore the personal rivalries, sexual scandal and political intrigue within
the king’s harem. This interest in Persian ‘harem politics’ was to inspire a whole
swathe of later texts and demonstrates that the boundary between historio-
graphy and what we might now describe as ‘romantic fiction’ was far from
clear-cut in the ancient literary tradition.
Although these earliest Greek traditions and many of their literary
descendants were inspired by Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, it is striking that
no surviving source from Persia itself makes any reference to this military
campaign which took place on what was the western fringe of the Persian
empire. This omission acts as a reminder that the dominant verdict upon the
king, as pronounced by western society, is largely coloured by the response of
that society to his military campaign. An analysis of the contemporary Persian
sources for Xerxes thus allows us to unearth an entirely different perspective
upon his reign; it is this perspective which is the subject of Chapter 3. The
Achaemenid Persian sources differ from the Greek texts in both their emphasis
and their form; here we find not literary narratives but instead material evidence
in the shape of boastful official inscriptions and the sculptural decoration which
adorned the royal palaces of Persepolis and Susa. An analysis of this source
material provides a picture of the way in which the projected ideology of the
Achaemenid kings – developed during Darius’ reign and appropriated by his
son and later successors – shaped the image of Xerxes which was communicated
to his subjects and to posterity. Here the emphasis is overwhelmingly upon
continuity with the past and the eternal tenets of Persian kingship rather than
upon the specific character traits of the individual monarchs. This imagining of
the king’s character emerges as having been as much a construct, and a product
of its cultural and political backdrop, as the western retellings of his story.
My fourth chapter returns to the Greek tradition, moving forward in time
to the fourth century bc and a Greece which was increasingly fragmented
in political terms. Within the body of extant Athenian literature from this
period the Persian Wars are still a pervasive presence – forming in particular a
significant part of the catalogue of Athenian exploits in the epitaphioi (funeral
orations) – as a result, at least in part, of the presence of Persia as a player on
the Greek political stage from the late fifth century onwards. We also detect here
an interest in developing ideas about kingship; references to the government of
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