Xerxes the Great

He is one of the most famous rulers of the ancient world, remembered for leading a vast Persian invasion of Greece. Yet Xerxes the Great was far more than just a battlefield king. In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by friend of the show Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to explore the life and reign of the Persias most revered king who ruled the largest empire the world had yet seen. From his royal upbringing and court politics to religion, monumental building projects and imperial power, this episode goes beyond Greek battle narratives to uncover who Xerxes really was — and how the Achaemenid empire functioned at the height of his power. MORE Darius the Great: Persian King of Kings Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000671652676 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/67RZ7yVB4vhyaUQIsYkYSa?si=152d12cd2a5a4a93 The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000695929043 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2jgBbWwNQQiK0Hj2v3E09I?si=d550a2059cbc4159 Watch this episode on our NEW YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:17Tristan Hughes?

  He is the most well-known of all Persian kings. The ruler who launched a massive invasion of Greece. Who fought against the likes of Leonidas and Themistocles. Xerxes. Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters and the legend of Thermopylae, this Persian king of kings is remembered by many first and foremost for his ill-fated war against the likes of Athens and Sparta. But there is so much more to this man's story. Xerxes ruled the supreme Persian empire for over two decades. And in this episode, we're going to explore what we know about his life and reign from beginning to end.

• 2:01Tristan Hughes?

  Just who was the real Xerxes? This is The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of Xerxes the Great. Our guest today is fan favorite, the Reverend Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, professor of ancient history at Cardiff University, and the author of Persians: The Age of Great Kings.

• 2:31Tristan Hughes?

  Lloyd, great to have you back on the show.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Hello, it's so nice to be back with you, it really is.

• 2:35Tristan Hughes?

  It really is the case, isn't it? We think when the name Xerxes gets thrown about, you might think of Zack Snyder's 300, or the Persian invasion of Greece, but there is so much more to his story.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely, he's one of the most fascinating kings of antiquity, I think, you know. Yeah, his legacy is there, I mean, he still lives with us in a way. He's one of those kings that was written about in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the 19th century, I mean, you know, he still has a cachet about him, I think.

• 3:02Tristan Hughes?

  Can we talk about his name first of all? Because it seems such a peculiar name today, Xerxes, really recognisable. Was it weird at the time?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Not necessarily. I doubt very much if it was his birth name, his given name, it's a throne name. Most of, I think, all of the Akkermanid kings actually, when they came to the throne, they adopt a symbolic name. Of course, we know him by his Latinized name. His real name in ancient Persian, in old Persian, was Khshath Shatha, Khshah Shasha.

• 3:35Tristan Hughes?

  We're not calling that the name of this podcast.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  And it's got a good, it's got a good meaning to it. It means something like ruling over the heroes, something like that. So it's quite a grand.

• 3:45Tristan Hughes?

  Quite a strong name, isn't it?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, you know, it said something about him and he chose that for himself. So it says something about his self-perception, doesn't it, as well, you know?

• 3:53Tristan Hughes?

  So has he left many sources behind? Not just the Greek historians like Herodotus, do we have a lot of different sources for learning about his life?

• 4:01Speaker 03

  We do, yes. Now, I can say that with a caveat, most of them are royal inscriptions, so written in cuneiform. They tend to be trilingual, so they tend to be in old Persian, Babylonian or Akkadian, and also in Elamite. They are, on the whole, ahistorical, and what I mean by that is, they tend to be very repetitive and they tend to say the same thing, like, "I am Xerxes, king of kings, king of all lands, king of all countries, son of Darius, who was the son of Hystapsis, an Archimened," you know? Doesn't give us a lot to play with, but, as we'll go on to talk about, there are one or two inscriptions absolutely unique to Xerxes.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  So I think we'd be really hard pushed to write a biography of Xerxes, given just the Persian material, so we have to look at the Greek material. But we have to look at the Greek material. With a kind of new set of eyes, you know, you know, I'm always after the Persian version of something. So what I'll try to like to do is to to strip away the kind of Greek writings and see if there isn't sitting underneath that, you know, something which is more indigenous Persian. So let me give you a story, a very famous story that's told by several Greek historians, Elian, I suppose, is the one that we know the best. It's this this account that when Xerxes goes on his expedition to Greece,

• 5:26Speaker 03

  he comes across this beautiful plane tree. Okay. And this this, you know, gives him shade and everything. And according to the Greeks, he falls in love with this tree. Okay, you know, sort of passionately in love with it and and sort of gives it necklaces and earrings and as he would a mistress. Okay. And of course, you know, this has been picked up and handled in his opera Xerxes of the 1750s, you know, that very famous lago omra maifu under your shade is, you know, all to do with this. Well, I think what the Greeks are doing there is obviously kind of making a mockery on something they don't quite understand. Because remarkably, we have found a little seal, little cylinder

• 6:07Speaker 03

  seal, with the name of Xerxes on it. And it shows Xerxes in front of a tree. And what he's doing is he's giving gold offerings to this tree because trees were kind of semi sacred to the Persians. So it's part of a tree cult. So the Greeks are misremembering or deliberately twisting part of a Persian theological way of life, you know, that Xerxes would have been very familiar with. So that's what I mean when we can look for a Persian version that sits beneath the kind of Greek gloss that goes on top of it.

• 6:40Tristan Hughes?

  It's searching for the historical basis.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  If it's there, absolutely.

• 6:44Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think we should always be alert to the possibility that there's something sitting beneath it, you know, not all it doesn't work all the time. But, you know, every now and then something emerges.

• 6:55Tristan Hughes?

  So let's get the background sorted straight away. What does the Persian world look like in the early fifth century B.C. just before Xerxes takes the throne?

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Okay, so his father has been on on the throne, Darius the Great. For some thirty years at this point.

• 7:10Tristan Hughes?

  We've covered in a previous.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  We have indeed, absolutely. And so he is ruling the the biggest empire the world had ever seen. And here we're talking about the centre of the empire, of course, is southwestern Iran, around the ancient sites of Persepolis and Susa and Passagadi. It's reaching out to Babylon as well, one of the main centres of Achaemenid life. But it stretches then to the the west. It goes all the way to the deserts of Libya, right the way down the Nile to Ethiopia, north to the Crimea. And then in the east, right the way across the east to Afghanistan, Pakistan, to northern India. I mean, this is vast, vast territories. And Darius the Great had kind of secured this.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Darius was one of those kind of born bureaucrats, you know, he just had like red tape, you know, running in his veins. And he was the one who kind of, you know, set up the satraps systems, this is a system of governors, usually members of the royal family. So by the time Xerxes come to the throne, what we have there is a mature and safe empire, essentially, you know, Darius has really set the rules, the king's law, the the data of the king is flourishing in every part of of of the realm, all of which are linked together with incredible communication systems.

• 8:29Tristan Hughes?

  They can travel, can't they?

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Amazing, amazing roads that crisscross the whole empire. And we know that people are travelling enormous distances because we've got these little sort of travel rations, you know, in these Persepolis fortification tablets, which we spoke about a long time ago, some of my favourite things. They they you you'd think they're going to be as dry as the dust they're written on, but, you know, they're absolutely packed, full of detail. And we get, you know, accounts of people travelling from Memphis in Egypt all the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan and being supplied with food and drink and translators and all of that as they go. I mean, that it's a really remarkable system. So that's the world that Darius leaves behind him.

• 9:10Tristan Hughes?

  It is an amazing set the scene moment, isn't it? Darius. He doesn't just leave one son, does he?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 9:18Tristan Hughes?

  There's always seems to be a bit of a succession crisis as Persians, as the Persian Empire goes on.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so at the time of his death, we know that Darius had had at least six wives. I mean concurrently, Persian kings were polygynous, plus any number of concubines as well. So the harem's of his palaces were packed with women and with children. Now, one of the, I think, the real failures of the Persian royal system was that they never adopted primogeniture as a, as a go to means of the succession. So that meant essentially that when a king died, unless he appointed an heir, it was, it was open game, anybody could, could do it. Now, I, I think there's a rationale for that, you know, we shouldn't dismiss it.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  And I think we have to remember in antiquity, the mortality rate was very high for children. And even to live into your adulthood, into your teens was a perilous thing, you know, you just didn't know if you were ever going to get there. So I think kings were prepared to hedge their bets and almost play this kind of game of Russian roulette with their prospective heirs, holding off on appointing one until, you know, they were secure that they'd reached their maturity, you know, things looked okay. Also, I think there's something in the, in the non primogeniture system, which allows a king to choose the son that most appeals to him, who has the right qualities to be a king as well.

• 10:46Tristan Hughes?

  So this idea of not having a favorite today is very much out the window with the Persian kings.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely, completely. No, no, they, they needed their favorites, you know. Now, the other thing that we get, and I think I, I would not want to dismiss this, although some scholars, you know, are, are a bit more apprehensive about saying this, but I think it's right. That's the power that. The mothers of these boys had as well. You know, within the, within the imperial system, nobody could get closer to the king than one of his women, you know, in bed with him, you know, what happens between the sheets takes away the mystique of monarchy in a way. Herodotus says, interestingly, that Darius had many sons, but in his opinion, Xerxes was a dead ringer for the, for the crown because his mother, Atossa, was all powerful.

• 11:35Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Which is really, really fascinating. Why then? Why is this woman? Why does she have this kind of cachet? Well, of course, Darius had had several wives before he became king and he had sons from these wives. But once he became king, and you'll remember that he grabs the crown in a kind of coup d'etat, he marries all the available Persian royal women and brings them into his harem and begets children of them straight away. And Atossa, Xerxes' mother, is the eldest daughter of Cyrus the Great.

• 12:08Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, very prestigious.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Very prestigious. So Xerxes is the first son born to Darius after he comes into his own as king and has the blood of Cyrus the Great flowing in his veins. So I think what we have there is a case of what we can call porphageniture. That means born into the purple blood, you know, the royal blood is in his veins. And so this is why he's chosen as, as king. And I don't want to dismiss this idea that Atossa herself pushed this idea constantly, of course, as well. It's to her advantage, you know, because if Xerxes became king, she would become queen mother and there was nobody to touch the queen mother. Whereas wives and concubines of kings can drop from status, you know, depending on

• 12:53Speaker 03

  the favor that the king shows them. The, the queen mother, who is the, the link between the two generations of kings, she can reign supreme in the harem. She has the, the, the rank of the highest woman in the empire. So I think Atossa has a very important role to play in this.

• 13:07Tristan Hughes?

  It's good to mention that as well. I mean, so Darius dies in the mid 40s. That's great. And he's not assassinated?

• 13:13Speaker 03

  No, no. He dies, yeah, absolutely, of natural causes, as far as we know, absolutely. And almost straight away, we have a series of inscriptions set up by Xerxes, stamping his authority on the empire. And the first one is is an inscription that we know as the Harem inscription because of where it was found at Persepolis. And there Xerxes makes a very bold statement and he says, my father had many sons, but of his sons I was the greatest. And the word there is mathishta.

• 13:49Tristan Hughes?

  It's a power play, isn't it?

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Really is, absolutely. So he acknowledges that there could have been a succession crisis and maybe there really was, you know, which he overwrites, of course, you know. But then this statement, I was the greatest, greatest mathishta, you know, that really puts his seal on what's going on. And what we find throughout the early part of Xerxes' reign, in all of his inscriptions, he makes a real play at being the son of Darius all the time, as though he can't emphasise that enough, you know, he needs people to recognise his legitimacy as as king through through his through his ancestry in particular. So this is a real motif of of Xerxes' earliest inscriptions, constantly, son of Darius and

• 14:31Speaker 03

  a chemanid, son of Darius and a chemanid, keeps on saying this all the time. And he builds on his father's reputation quite literally. So around about five nineteen B C, we know that Darius started the big, big building project at Persepolis.

• 14:50Tristan Hughes?

  Right, yes.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  Okay. So, you know, this becomes one of the sort of state palaces, a kind of ceremonial centre for the empire. This is Darius' baby, it comes from his mind and he builds.

• 15:00Tristan Hughes?

  Like a famous Apidana today?

• 15:02Speaker 03

  That's right, exactly, exactly. So the Apidana is one of Darius' buildings. And this is all on a platform, a tacht, which is sort of thirty metres off the ground. I mean, it's one of the most spectacular ruins of antiquity. It's it's an incredible sight to walk. Originally, during Xerxes' lifetime, the the entrance way to to that platform was in the south of the of the tacht. Xerxes decided that he was going to enlarge that and he changes the access. He blocks off the old access of his father and he builds a new gateway with a double staircase on the eastern side, which goes up to this most. Enormous gateway, which he calls the gate of all lands or the gate of all peoples.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  And it's flanked with two bulls on one side and two human-headed winged bulls on the other side, very Assyrian in its look. And this becomes the the portal through which all of these dignitaries and diplomats come every year in the springtime to give their offerings to the great king, to give him their gifts, their diplomatic exchanges, to to hear the king's speeches, to show their loyalty to him. So you get with the creation of of that, a kind of real sense of confidence in in the empire and what he's inherited from his father. And in fact, we have several empire lists from Xerxes' reign, where he enumerates, you know, we have

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Medes and Elamites and Achaeans and Chosamians and Yauna and all of this. We get actually to the to the number of thirty-three, thirty-three peoples under Xerxes, which is actually bigger than Darius' province, county.

• 16:47Tristan Hughes?

  And Yauna are the Greeks, are they?

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Yauna are the Greeks, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Same same word in modern Persian today, actually, for Greece, Yauna, it remains the same. So so, yeah, we get, I I think, a sense of real confidence about him in in that respect. And maybe that is a reaction to some of the political problems that he faced in reality at his succession. Now, I dare say there must have been skirmishes with some of his brothers.

• 17:17Tristan Hughes?

  I was going to ask, I mean, do we know anything about his relationship with all of these half-brothers?

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Well, yes, we do, mainly from Herodotus, Ctesius, and some other Greek sources as well. We he had a load of full brothers, sons of Atossa, and of course, many, many more half-brothers. And by and large, you know, his relationships with his brothers were pretty good, not bad at all. Many of them fought in the in the Persian Wars alongside him, for instance. Some of them even lost their lives, you know, for him. And he appointed many of them as satraps in different parts of the of the empire as well, these kind of regents acting on his behalf. But I think there must have been. Some kind of antagonism at the beginning, you know, maybe like Darius's very first born

• 18:05Speaker 03

  son, who was a son of a woman who came from a very, very high ranking Persian noble family, the family of Gobrias. I can't see that he would have, you know, given up his potential so easily. So while the sources are silent, I think it's quite feasible to think there must have been a bit of a clash with a few of the brothers or half brothers. But of bigger concern to Xerxes was the fact that Egypt erupted into rebellion immediately at the death of Darius. And so we see that Xerxes heads an army, goes off to Egypt, quells the revolt. And that's a really great thing. This is in the first year of his accession. So that's, you know, immediately saying, look, I'm, I'm, I'm serious here, you know,

• 18:50Speaker 03

  it also shows us that he's a good military man as well, you know, we shouldn't dismiss him at all. On his way back from Egypt, in fact, he puts down another rebellion in Babylon. These are the always the kind of, you know, litmus tests for kings, you know, Babylon and Egypt, can you hold them, you know? And, and again, he, he does a good job of putting down the, the Babylonian rebellion too. So we can see in the very first year of his reign, he's a very active individual, you know, and he stamps his mark on the empire, always in the shadow as if of his father, but nevertheless, you know, he's there and he says, you know, I am king now. Okay. I'm, I know, I'm in the same line as Darius. You remember how he ruled you, I will rule you the same. And I think that's, that's kind of an interesting thing.

• 19:35Tristan Hughes?

  And is that how Xerxes portrays himself during this period? You know, this idea that he's a young, active, energetic ruler. Yes, the great old Darius is dead, but rejoice, we've got a young, new ruler on the throne now, and he's going to continue it.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  And I think, I think he can say that with genuine honesty, because he's been trained for governance by his father. So about 14 years ago, we discovered amidst the, the archive from Persepolis, a tablet that hadn't been translated before. And it's a document Talks about reserves of food and drink being sent to the Sattrapal palace in Parthia, in northeastern Iran, from central Iran. And that's where Xerxes is serving his time as a governor. So I think that what the kings, great kings tended to do was to test their sons by giving them important satrapes to look after.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  So we see Xerxes going through this period of, I suppose, an apprenticeship, really, you know, governing a large and important province. So we know that he has that kind of background. The other thing I think he does, you know, after his father's death is to provide his father with a fitting funeral as well. And that's a very important thing to do is to bury, you know, your ancestor, your father in particular. And we know that Darius's courtage travelled from Susa to Persepolis, where he's buried, in this great kind of cataclysm, you know, and there was sort of a period of mourning declared across the empire. And we know that Xerxes establishes a cult for the worship of his father as well.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Persian kings weren't gods, they didn't see themselves as gods. But certainly now we have more understanding that they took on a kind of divine essence after their deaths. And despite of what Herodotus tells us, you know, they didn't have these kind of cults or temples or statues, we know now that they really did have these. And we have found recently in Babylon, from the archives there, reference to a cult of Darius and to offerings being given to Darius and to his statue as well. So I think Xerxes did all the right things in the first year of his accession, you know. He buries his father with great dignity and great honour. And he shows himself to be a warrior king.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  And this is what his father himself puts on his tomb facade, you know. We are, you know, I am a Persian man, the spear of the Persian man has gone far. As a horseman, I'm a good horseman. As a spearmen, I'm a good spearmen. As a bowman, I'm a good bowman. And Xerxes lives up to all of those ideas that his father has. So, you know. That image that we have of straight away this this boy king who can't quite live up to his father, I don't think stands at all.

• 22:34Tristan Hughes?

  No, it seems like he really does succeed in that potentially troublesome.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 22:37Tristan Hughes?

  Immediate years, taking the throne in that succession.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 22:40Tristan Hughes?

  Time. During that time, do we know who was closest to him? I mean, is his mother still around and influencing him?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yes, and in fact, Atossa comes into her own in the indigenous Iranian sources of this period. So whereas during the lifetime of her husband Daria, we only get like six mentions of her in the Persepolis fortification texts. Suddenly, with her accession to the role of queen mother, she's everywhere. You know, I mean, she's the principal lady in the land, you know. So yes, absolutely. She really sort of swells in in in appearance. And also, of course, the other woman important in his life is his one known, one named consort. He must have had many more. And that is a woman called a mestress, which is based on

• 23:27Speaker 03

  the Persian word meaning strength, which says something about her as well. So here we have, you know, this ideal couple, both, you know, ruling over heroes and woman of strength. That's the way they want to project their image, you know. And she is the daughter of a very, very high ranking Khan, sort of tribal leader indeed. And so it's a it's a great match between these two kind of tribal houses. And she gives him a whole brood of sons and daughters as well. So and they're they're already born by the time Xerxes becomes king. And so, you know, he comes with a ready made family. The the throne is set to continue. And he must have had many other consorts and concubines as well, of course. So again, another pact harem. And of course, we should remember that Xerxes

• 24:12Speaker 03

  appears in the Hebrew Bible.

• 24:14Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  In a kind of, just in a guise, that's all. So in the Book of Esther, which was probably written in the fourth century, so about 100 years after Xerxes' death, it's set during the reign of Xerxes. So according to the Hebrew scribes, Esther is a wife of Xerxes as well. It's just that in the Bible, he's called Ahasiris, which is the Hebrewized version of Xerxes, essentially.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it, the history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 26:15Tristan Hughes?

  Do we know much about the Harem of Persian rulers, including Xerxes? Do we know much about its composition?

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Yes, I think that the best way to see it, as in any kind of high-level court society, it must have had a real strict hierarchy to it, where clearly you have the mother of the king holding the prime position. Since a king could have many wives, but he could only ever have one mother, of course. You know, so she holds that principal position. Then he can have a numerous consorts. Now, we know that in Persia, the queens, the wives of kings, only come from Persian families. So he never, they never marry outside of the Persian blood, okay?

• 26:54Tristan Hughes?

  Is that the blue blood idea?

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I suppose, well, it's to keep these. Family lines, these these great noble alliances with with with the great households of the Persian tribes to keep them going. But then he could take foreign concubines, many, many foreign concubines. And these came in so many different forms, so they could be given as gifts, diplomatic gifts. They can be taken as war captives, war booty. Basically, what we're dealing there, of course, is is with sex trafficking. But these women, you know, these women who've become concubines, they are not insignificant. Because we we have several occasions when the the sons of concubines become king. And so a concubine from the lowest rung of the harem suddenly finds herself in the next generation as the queen mother, you know.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  So so there's a political game going on in the harem all the time. Now, some colleagues feel, you know, this is all a Greek fantasy. I don't think so at all. The harem is a feature of many ancient courts and in courts ever since, you know, think of the Qing in China. Uh, think of the Moghuls in India, you know, these are important aspects of of the the politicking of the of a royal family. So, you know, we we find exactly the same thing in in Persia.

• 28:07Tristan Hughes?

  And how important were eunuchs to Xerxes' rule and indeed to Persian rule?

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Uh, that's interesting. So so Xer- Xerxes did use eunuchs in his court, and these are castrated men, uh, of course. And the importance of them, I suppose, is that, well, there are several things going on here. First of all, as castrates. They were thought of as being more loyal. They didn't have families of their own.

• 28:32Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  So they weren't going to, you know, try to work for um the betterment of their their own family at all.

• 28:39Tristan Hughes?

  They they're tied to the king.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, precisely. There's all this Greek philosophizing on on Persian eunuchs. The Greeks really find it very problematic. So they say, oh, Cyrus the Great probably started this this trend. He didn't. They were they were much, much older than that. You know, eunuchs have been in the Near East since the fourth millennium BCE. But the Greeks say, no, oh, he he castrated men to make them more like um docile dogs. If you castrate a dog, you know, or if you castrate a horse. It becomes more docile, so it makes these men docile. I don't think there's any necessarily truth in that, but the Greeks tried to justify it in that kind of way. What it really meant is that these castrated individuals become really kind of like a third sex.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  So it means that they can they can easily go between the inner world of the central court or the inner court, which includes the harem, of course, into the outer court of men, you know, of governance as well. So this is why they're very often used as messengers.

• 29:41Tristan Hughes?

  Messengers.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  As go betweens. And we find that in, you know, in the Hebrew Bible, in Herodotus. They understand that that's the kind of idea about them. But they could also be very important counselors, counselors of state, officers of state, and important individuals in the army as well. We have we have eunuch generals as well. So they're omnipresent in a way. Why would you put yourself through castration? Well, I think there's there's two forms that go on. We have eunuchs who are castrated before puberty. And therefore they stay essentially like boys, you know, they don't really develop and their voices stay high and so forth. And then we have individuals who will have themselves castrated post, I know, post-youth.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  And therefore, you know, the testosterone has developed and, you know, they, to all intents and purposes, they look like real men, you know. It gave these individuals access into the very heart of Persian royalty. And that's the way it's always been, you know, if you think about the Forbidden City in China in the eighteenth, nineteenth, early nineteenth centuries. You know, these men had extraordinarily access to power.

• 30:53Tristan Hughes?

  And we hear them with Xerxes, do we?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Yes, we do, absolutely. And in fact, Ctesius, who is one of our chief sources for this period, he's a Greek from Knidos and lived in the Persian court for seventeen years. He automatically kind of lists the influential eunuchs every time he talks about a new succession of a king.

• 31:16Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  So he'll say Xerxes became king, the eunuchs who were influential under him were blah, blah, blah, blah. And he will name them in that way. So, yes, there was definitely a reliance on these men who were advisors, civil servants, military men, all of these things wrapped into one.

• 31:35Tristan Hughes?

  You mentioned Canidus there in passing, so that's part of the Greek world, but it's in, it's on the western coast of Turkey.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah, not too far from, from Bodrum, modern day Bodrum.

• 31:44Tristan Hughes?

  So it's within the sphere of Persian.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Yes, of Persian Empire, yeah.

• 31:48Tristan Hughes?

  And of course, the biggest thing many people remember with Xerxes is his massive, ultimately failed invasion of Greece. We're not going to cover that in detail in today's chat because we've done an episode, a detailed episode with Dr Rukh Khan and I as well.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  Two episodes.

• 32:03Tristan Hughes?

  Two episodes on both the invasion of Greece by his dad, Derris, and by Xerxes too. So we'll kind of cover it quickly, but I think an overarching question to cover it will be, how much of Xerxes' reign, I mean, how much attention does he really give to the Greeks? How much would you argue?

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Not as much as the Greek sources suggest, but the Greeks are not irrelevant to him either. And I think that's chiefly because, you know, during Xerxes' early reign, he's still looking at the idea of expanding the empire, both east and west, you know, that's still something that, you know, his father had done and he'd like to do, and that's the kind of thing that's reflected in these empire lists as well. For the satraps on the western borders of the empire, so that is, you know, in modern day Turkey, in these kind of Greek speaking city-states like Myelitus, Ephesus, Sardis, this kind of thing, then obviously what went on in the Aegean and across the Aegean in,

• 33:03Speaker 03

  in, in the Greek mainland was of importance to them, of course, you know? And I think it's because of that, that really Xerxes was, was kind of encouraged to think about bringing the Greek mainland under his control. Don't forget, many of the Greek city-states of northern Greece, Macedon, Boeotia, Thebes, were already kind of, you know, Persian. Friendly Persian allies, some of them had even been satrapes. So there wasn't this sharp divide between Greece and Persia that the kind of, you know, the traditional histories have portrayed. It wasn't really like that.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  But I think that Xerxes really wanted control of the Aegean more than anything else. Because the Aegean obviously bleeds into the Mediterranean. Mediterranean gives you access to the Nile. His father Darius had dug a canal which went from the river Nile across the desert to the Red Sea. Can you believe it? It's amazing. And that meant that, you know, a trade ship could go right the way down through the Nile, the Red Sea, around Arabia into the Persian Gulf. I mean, you know, so I think the access there to the Aegean is something that really appealed to Xerxes and not made much of in the sources. Because, you know, Herodotus and the others want to make this an ideological war more than anything else. I don't think it was for Xerxes.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  And I think if we could put ourselves in Xerxes' shoes for a moment, I think that for him, you see, the Persian wars were a success. You know, what did he accomplish? Well, he accomplished two things that he set out to do. The first was the sack of Athens.

• 34:43Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Great, perfect. That's

• 34:45Tristan Hughes?

  Burns down the wooden necropolis, isn't it?

• 34:47Speaker 03

  The complete thing. I mean, it's devastated. And the second thing is, he takes the head of Leonidas, the king of Sparta. And for Xerxes, Leonidas would have represented chaos.

• 35:01Tristan Hughes?

  This is their victory, the bastion of Thermopylae, isn't it?

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Exactly, you know. So that's hailed as, you know, a great tragedy for the Greeks, but also a moment of sort of ideological triumph where Greece comes into its own and Xerxes loses out on something. I don't see that at all. I think Xerxes would have seen this. I've taken the head of a liar king. Xerxes believed in Arta, this concept of Arta, which means truth. And this concept comes from his chief god, Ahura Mazda, the wise lord. And Ahura Mazda is a creator god. He is a god of everything light and good. And the Persians believe that when the world was created, when Ahura Mazda formed the universe, he formed the king at the same time as well. So the king is set in his place

• 35:45Speaker 03

  to rule naturally the world. So anybody who rebels against the Persian king doesn't follow Artad, is not following the truth at all. And therefore, they they call these rebels liar kings. So Xerxes would have identified Leonidas and all of the Greeks as adherents of Drauga, the lie.

• 36:09Tristan Hughes?

  So Themistocles as well.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely.

• 36:11Tristan Hughes?

  The man who wins the Battle of Salamis.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  That's right, absolutely. So all of these are labelled in in in that way. And I think that's a really interesting concept for us, you know. So I think as far as Xerxes is concerned, he came back from Greece, not with his tail between his legs, but actually quite triumphantest. And he he returns from Greece personally, not because he's ashamed of what's gone on, but he goes back to put down another rebellion in Babylon.

• 36:38Tristan Hughes?

  But it is coincidental, isn't it, that his decision to return to Asia does happen right after the Athenian victory at the Battle of Salamis, the naval victory?

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 36:47Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, so I was going to ask, is this idea of Xerxes back in Asia and he's a defeated monarch, but what you were saying there sounds like it's not?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  No, it's not. It's a pragmatic return. Babylon is far too important to lose. You know, if if Xerxes has a choice of a Babylon or Athens, it would be Babylon every time. Okay. So that's what takes him back. It's so easy then to put the spin on it, isn't it? You know, that he goes back a defeated man. It's not, it's not, it's not true at all. I think there's a great what if, you know, what if the Persians hadn't had to deal with Babylon at this time? What if Xerxes had stayed around in Athens? You know, what would have happened? In my opinion, I think he would have marched into the Peloponnese. I think he would have crushed Sparta. I think Sparta would have disappeared. So there would have been no Peloponnesian war. And I think that probably Xerxes would have chosen Athens to be the new satrapal capital for for Greece.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  And he would have installed, I think, a Persian satrap plus, I think, a Greek, an Athenian, maybe, governor, maybe even Themistocles himself, you know, because one thing that the Persians didn't do was to kind of completely overturn local systems. And so if Themistocles had already been seen as a good thing for the government in Athens, then I wouldn't be surprised if Xerxes would have left him there.

• 38:08Tristan Hughes?

  Well, shall we elaborate on this Themistocles-Xerxes link? Because we do think of Themistocles fighting the Persians, which he did. You know, he's the great admiral who wins the Basra Salamist.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  In the in the film 300, of course, he actually kills Darius, doesn't he? Oh, yeah, please.

• 38:24Tristan Hughes?

  We won't go down that route anymore. We won't delve more into the Greco Persian wars for now. We very much know your allegiance, Lloyd. But with, can we explore this relationship between Xerxes and Themistocles? Because it doesn't end with them fighting. I mean, how does this actually become a bit of a friendship as time goes on?

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Well, it's bizarre, isn't it? You know, people say never burn your bridges, right? So like, what happens to Themistocles is kind of typical of any Athenian politician who's been there for too long. He gets ostracized, right? You know, he's literally voted out of office and has to go into exile, which I think is a really good idea. And that any politician should always be under the threat of ostracism. So, you know, this happens numerous times in Athenian democracy. And so he becomes, Themistocles becomes this kind of vagabond, really, and he goes, sort of bounces around different city-states, and even goes to the island of Thasos to see if he can't, like, you know, stay there.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  He finally ends up in the Persian Empire in Asia Minor, close to the city of Daskileon, which is a satrap or capital there. And he actually goes and sees the satrap and says, look, do you think I could, you know, do you think I could appeal to the king and he could give me a home or something? Could I live here? And so the satrap says, okay, well, I'll write in on your behalf, you know, he writes to Xerxes. And Xerxes invites him to Susa. And not only invites him to Susa, but gives him a house there, gives him a pension. And Themistocles becomes completely Persianized. He learns Persian to fluency.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And he lives out the rest of his life as a guest of state, beyond Xerxes' reign, into the reign of his son as well. So isn't it strange?

• 40:05Tristan Hughes?

  Does Prutarch mention that as well?

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He makes a big thing of that. Absolutely. Isn't it incredible?

• 40:11Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, you don't hear about that part.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  No, no, these sworn enemies, you know, they find a way. It's really quite nice. I like it.

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• 41:56Tristan Hughes?

  So what do we know about Xerxes's rule after he returns to Persia, to Asia? So he puts down the Babylonian revolt, and then how does he promote himself?

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Well, it's kind of interesting. This is when we get a change in the tone of these royal inscriptions. So what we get now is an area really uncharted by Persian kings before. So in the 1930s, when Hertzfeld and his team were excavating Persepolis, they discovered these really elegantly carved cuneiform blocks, okay? Trilingual. And in it, Xerxes says really something really strange. So he says, you know, the usual, "I am Xerxes' great king, son of Darius," and all of that.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  And then he says, "It's kind of come to my notice that in my empire, there are people who worship the divers, the divers. And they do not worship a Hiramazda in the right way and at the right time."

• 43:01Tristan Hughes?

  And a Hiramazda is the chief Persian god.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  It's the great god of, you know, this wise lord, this creator god. And he said, you know, "There are some peoples who reject him altogether." So you've got to read between the lines on all of this. Who are these some peoples who are rejecting? Is his experience of Greece on his mind, you know? Or is it Babylon that he's still thinking about? But somehow he's aligning, of course, theology to politics here, okay? But what about this word "divers" then? "Divers"? Well, "diva" comes from an Indo-European word, which is linked to things like the Latin "deus," the Welsh "du," the French "dieu." So it's a word for god.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  But within its Persian context, "diva" can also be linked to a modern Persian and modern Arabic word, "div," which means like a wicked spirit. So we could call it something which is like something satanic or something evil, something dark. So they are worshiping... Evil gods.

• 44:12Tristan Hughes?

  Mesopotamian demons, I think.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Possibly, possibly, okay.

• 44:15Tristan Hughes?

  Lilith and stuff like that.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Well, I don't think you need to do that. I think, I think he's, it's, he is applying this word to mean gods who are not Persian.

• 44:25Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, okay, okay.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  So, you know, this is really odd in a world of polytheism. Nobody ever gets really bothered by other gods, you know. People just recognise different countries have different gods. The Jews in antiquity, you know, they get worked up about this, okay. Um, because, you know, by the second temple period, they've got their monotheistic god. Xerxes is kind of preempting that idea, I think, in, in this thing which we call the diva inscription. You should be worshipping Ahura Mazda in the proper ways and at the proper times, he says. Which suggests then that there is a kind of codified system of worshipping this god with certain rituals

• 45:10Speaker 03

  and at certain festivals or certain times of the week or the day or whatever it might be. So this is the only time we get this idea that the Persians are imposing a religious ideology on their empire. It is completely out of touch with Cyrus the Great, who was happily worshipped, you know, whatever gods were available and likewise Darius as well. And Darius, you know, when he conquers or goes into Egypt as a pharaoh, um, you know, he worships Egyptian gods. It's no problem. Xerxes suddenly seems to have almost this kind of zealot-like attachment to Ahura Mazda.

• 45:52Tristan Hughes?

  Given the amount of different cultures within the Persian Empire at that time, the superpower, such an inscription, if they try and enforce it and dare they try and do persecutions almost, I mean, that is going to cause his reputation to absolutely plummet.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. It is so unlike the Persians, you know. So something strange is going on here. And that strangeness is emphasised by the fact that Hertzfeld and his team discovered these, and they are beautifully ma-made inscriptions, they really are. But they found them in the most unlikely context. They found them taken off the walls, hacked off the walls. And they were actually in the latrines and the drainage channels underneath Persepolis.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  So somebody has chosen to, you know, to, to, to decry these things by literally putting them in their place and, and doing their business over them. The question is, who was it? Who was it? Now, we know that towards the end, there are tensions among Xerxes' many sons. So just, you know, this is history repeating itself. Okay, so Xerxes has a long reign and long reigns tend to be dangerous for kings towards the end.

• 47:11Tristan Hughes?

  So how long are we talking?

• 47:12Speaker 03

  What are we saying here? We're talking about thirty odd years on the throne.

• 47:15Tristan Hughes?

  So twenty years or so after the invasion of Greece?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Yes, maybe, maybe fifteen, something like that. We, we start, you know, but here he's got a family of sons who are already, you know, in their twenties, you know, some of them actually early thirties as well. And so they're all sort of chomping at the bits to have a go at being king. And there's one in particular, a boy who is known as Ochus. He seems to be particularly sort of ambitious for the crown. And if we pull together all of the different classical versions that we have of what happens next, it seems that Ochus starts working with a group of courtiers, in particular, a group

• 48:00Speaker 03

  of influential eunuchs, in order to plot perhaps the overthrow of his father, Xerxes. Now, this might sound again, you know, like a, like a kind of orientalist fantasy, but we have a Babylonian text which becomes so important for us because the Babylonians, Babylonians, of course, were great astronomers, sky watchers, okay? So they were always looking out for omens. And in the Babylonian star chart, which is essentially like a diary of what goes on in the sky every day.

• 48:32Tristan Hughes?

  Or the astronomical diaries.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Some Babylonian astrologer simply writes down, you know, there was an eclipse of the moon, a normal happening, nothing, nothing incredible on this particular date. And then the entry ends, Xerxes.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  As it were, comma, his son killed him.

• 48:52Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  It's really amazing.

• 48:54Tristan Hughes?

  They're very necronic, aren't they, those entries?

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, very, very. So this is the only extra classical source to talk about Xerxes assassination. But of course, frustratingly, we don't know which of his sons did it, okay? But my money has to be on Ochus, I think, who wasn't the eldest of the sons. And in fact, what Ochus manages to do in the last months of Xerxes' life before he is killed, he manages to instigate a plot against his eldest brother, Darius, and has the boy executed, the man executed. So he's gotten rid of his chief rival already. This man is, this Ochus is really a mover and shaker.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  And what we get from the Greek historiography is that Xerxes' personal life is in chaos, right? And you know, I don't know how much emphasis we really should put on it, but let's, you know, well, the Greeks were certainly interested in it. So for instance.

• 49:55Tristan Hughes?

  This is for another example.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So there's this great story that Xerxes, with all of these women in the Harem, you know, could choose any woman in the empire as a lover. He decides to have an affair with his daughter-in-law, who is Darius', this Prince Darius' wife. And there's a very interesting tale that's told about this. So the king's wife, a mistress, she makes the king with her own hands, this beautiful robe, a sort of riding coat, and she gives it to him. And it's, you know, a great gift, obviously, you know, a great pride to a mistress that she's done this. But this mistress of Xerxes, a girl called Atayinti,

• 50:38Speaker 03

  his daughter-in-law and his niece at the same time, his brother's daughter. She says to the king, oh, I'd really like that. Please, can I have it? You know, and the king says, well, no, my wife made it for me. You know, but anyway, she keeps on and on. And so he, she gives, he gives it to the girl. But the girl doesn't keep it for herself. She sends this robe to her father, whose name is Myssites, and he is Xerxes' full brother. Now, this is one of those moments where you have to look for the Persian version, okay? Because if you, if you just think, oh, well, you know, that's a bit of an insult, isn't it? You know, you know, to a mistress and all of this. No, it's more than that because.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  A robe worn by the king, in ancient Persian thought, kind of took on his far, took on his power, okay? So a king sometimes would gift a robe of his to a favoured courtier, and the courtier would wear it just on his shoulders, and this would be a huge mark of honour. Xerxes has not gifted this to his brother. It's gone via his mistress to his brother. And basically, what Atayinti and her father are doing is they are claiming the kingship through him wearing this robe.

• 51:52Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, right, so that's cool.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  So this is treason, really, okay? Now, Xerxes, who's always portrayed in Herodotus, you know, as hubristic and stupid, let's put it that way, okay? Doesn't see any of this, but a mistress does. So what does a mistress do? Well, interestingly, she doesn't punish the girl because she's the mistress of Xerxes and kind of untouchable. But instead, she brings the girl's mother, Myssites' wife, to court. And she has her guards mutilate her. Chops off her nose, her lips, her ears, cuts off her breasts, and throws those to the dogs, and then sends this poor woman in this mutilated state back to Myssites' house. And of course, the woman dies thereafter.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  But Myssites has seen what has happened. And then there's an open rebellion between these two brothers, in which Myssites is then killed. So this is the background to Xerxes' final years. Chaos within the royal family equals chaos within the empire. You know, things will only decline sharply. And maybe it's because of this that Ochus and this group of eunuchs do what they do. Xerxes is murdered in his bed. That's where he is. And actually, Xenophon writes, you know, about the frequency of assassination in Persia. He says, you know, "And nowhere is a king more susceptible to the knife

• 53:18Speaker 03

  than when he's in his bed, in his bath, or drunk." You know, and this is the way that Xerxes, great Xerxes, is killed in his bed.

• 53:27Tristan Hughes?

  And I find it interesting how Over the course of Xerxes's reign, you see his extended family get cut down.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:34Tristan Hughes?

  One way or another.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Oh, constantly, absolutely, either by Greek troops.

• 53:37Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, it's mardonious, isn't it?

• 53:39Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 53:39Tristan Hughes?

  Another brother who's killed at the end of the Persian Wars.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they're the shadow of their former selves. And what's interesting, you know, when he is succeeded by Ochus, who takes the throne name Atticus Xerxes, comes Atticus Xerxes the first, okay? Ochus actually goes to a whole pogrom of Xerxes' courtiers. So all the old guard who used to, you know, look after Xerxes, advise him, they're all.

• 54:06Tristan Hughes?

  They're out.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  All executed, you know, so this is a fresh start. And I think that those incredible diver inscriptions were probably hacked off the walls under Atticus Xerxes the first instructions. And there's also a very interesting thing as well, because at the centre of the two staircases in the great Apodana, Episepolis, there were once this big relief of a king and his crown prince standing together. And that was probably meant to be Xerxes and Prince Darius. But they were hacked off the wall too. They weren't destroyed, but they were put away in the treasury out of sight, out of mind. And I think that again is on the order of Atticus Xerxes, trying to get rid of his father.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  So we have a complete change around, don't we, of this idea that Xerxes was so reliant on his link with his father, but Atticus Xerxes wants to kind of distance himself from his father. In his official inscriptions, Atticus Xerxes will say, I am the son of Xerxes, the son of Darius, the son of Hystapsus. So he gives the line there, but he'd rather get back to, you know, being an Achaemenid and just using that title really than lingering with his father. So he doesn't stop at, I am the son of Xerxes.

• 55:22Tristan Hughes?

  And that could potentially be, of course, the infamous end, but maybe Xerxes' policies later on, which maybe were looked upon very unfavorably.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  I think there's something in that, you know, because what we find in these, these next lot of Achaemenid kings, Atticus Xerxes the first, Darius the second, Atticus Xerxes the second.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  Is far more evidence of them worshipping other Persian gods such as Anahita, Mithra. So was Xerxes trying to get rid of all deities apart from Ahura Mazda? You know, was there really a kind of religious revolution?

• 55:58Tristan Hughes?

  Was an Akhenaten-esque movement.

• 55:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, was something like that going on? Yeah, so you know, there's a lot more to Xerxes than meets the eye and a lot more than, you know, we just see in the in the Greek historians.

• 56:09Tristan Hughes?

  Lloyd, this has been such a fantastic chat. I mean, how would you say, how should we view Xerxes today?

• 56:16Speaker 03

  I think we should see him as a very able king who during the the heights of his power was an active politician, a good military commander, a good leader, somebody who was very aware of the empire that he created. However, as he got older, there seems to have been this religious nagging pull that he's trying to deal with as well. That's not unusual, again, in long reigns, you know, for for people to, you know, take different approaches or to become obsessed with other things. So I think there is a slight change in the personality of Xerxes towards the end.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  But I think by and large, we should judge him far more favorably than historians have usually given him justice.

• 57:06Tristan Hughes?

  We've covered a lot of his story, but is there anything you feel we should briefly mention before we wrap up, any other achievements that we should highlight?

• 57:13Speaker 03

  I think more than anything, it's it's it's the kind of legacy that that he's left behind for us because he is one of the best known Persian kings. He has been written about constantly. He's been portrayed on stage, on screen, in opera. And I think it's lovely that he's there. There's only been one attempt, however, to write a biography of him by the the late Richard Stoneman, a really fine classical historian who went to Iran about 10 years ago, fell in love with the place like we all do and we go there, you know, and attempted to write this story of Xerxes. I would love to see more people attempting that with with more Persian great kings anyway,

• 57:55Speaker 03

  because we can do it if only we look for the Persian version.

• 57:59Tristan Hughes?

  Well Lloyd, this has been such a fantastic chat. You have of course written a book-

• 58:03Speaker 03

  All about the Persian Empire-

• 58:04Tristan Hughes?

  -which focuses also on Xerxes's life.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  That's right, absolutely, called Persians: The Age of the Great Kings.

• 58:09Tristan Hughes?

  Well, as always, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming back on.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Thanks so much, Tristan.

• 58:18Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was the fantastic Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones returning to the show to talk through the story of Xerxes the Great, showing how there is so much more to that Persian king's story than just his ill-fated invasion of Greece. If you want to learn more about that invasion, well, you can listen to Lloyd and Dr Raul Kninadik talking through that campaign in an episode that we did about this time last year. We'll put a link to that in the description. But thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't

• 59:03Tristan Hughes?

  forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.