Xerxes (Khshayarsha, Ahasuerus) (ca. 519–465
b.c.) king of Persia
Xerxes—whose Persian name is Khshayarsha and who is
referred to in the Bible as Ahasuerus—was born about
the year 519 b.c., the son of King darius i of Persia
and his second wife Atossa, who herself was the daugh-
ter of cyrus the great. Although Xerxes had an older
brother, Artabazanes, his father passed him over to make
Xerxes his heir apparent. However, it was not until 485
b.c., when Darius died, that Xerxes became the king of
Persia at the age of about 35. He had served as the gov-
ernor of the province of Babylonia and now ruled the
Persian empire, then at the height of its power. His first
action was to suppress a revolt in Egypt and install his
brother Achaemenes as ruler there, and he successfully
put down two more rebellions in Babylonia in 484 and
479 b.c. After doing so, he began his preparations to
conquer Greece. In 490 b.c., his father had conducted
a similar invasion but was defeated at Marathon. Now, a
decade later, Darius’s son Xerxes planned to avenge him.
Xerxes crossed the Hellespont (the Dardanelles)
using a pontoon bridge made from a large armada of
boats and constructed a canal through the isthmus of
Athos. He then marched through Thrace and Macedo-
nia but was checked by the Spartans at the narrow defile
of Thermopylae (480 b.c.). In the most heroic action
in the history of warfare, some 300 Spartans and 1,000
Thespians and Thebans, led by Leonidas, fought to the
death to resist an army 50 times their size to give the
Greeks time to gather an army behind them. Xerxes was
now free to march on Athens, which he sacked, but as
his enormous fleet sailed in to support him, the Greeks
defeated them at Salamis (29 September 480 b.c.). With
370 ships commanded by their general Themistocles,
the Greeks were assaulted by a numerically superior Per-
sian force of 1,200 ships, but they had lured the Persians
into fighting in a narrow bay where they were unable
to maneuver. As historian George Bruce explains, “an
Athenian trireme [a war galley with three banks of oars]
commanded by Aminias dashed in, followed by the rest
of the Athenians and the Æginetans in good order, and
the Persians were, after a hard struggle, totally defeated
with the loss of more than half their fleet. Xerxes and his
army witnessed the rout from the shores of Salamis.”
Humiliated by the defeat, Xerxes left Greece and re-
turned to his palace at Persepolis. His land forces, com-
manded by his general Mardonius, were soon quickly
conquered by the Grecians at Plataea (479 b.c.), and
Xerxes’ dreams of vengeance on the Greeks were de-
stroyed. Herodotus writes in his history of the period
that Xerxes thereafter concentrated on “the intrigues of
the harem.” In 465 b.c., he was murdered by one of his
palace bodyguards, initiated by his minister, Artabanus.
He was succeeded by his son, Artaxerxes I, who some