Who was the Xerxes the Great?

Answer 1

I would suggest Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I_of_Persia

Answer 2

Old Persian Khshayarsha , byname Xerxes The Great Persian king (486–465 BC), the son and successor of Darius I. He is best known for his massive invasion of Greece from across the Hellespont (480 BC), a campaign marked by the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. His ultimate defeat spelled the beginning of the decline of the Achaemenid Empire.

Answer 3

I think he was a Persian emperor.

Answer 4

My great uncles great grandfather.

Answer 5

founder of the xerox copy machine company.

Answer 6

persion leader

Answer 7

Xerxes the Great

AKA Xerxes

Born: 519 BC
Died: 465 BC
Cause of death: Assassination

Gender: Male
Religion: Zoroastrian
Race or Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Royalty, Military

Nationality: Persia
Executive summary: King of Persia, attempted to invade Greece

Father: Darius Hystaspis (Persian King)
Mother: Atossa (daughter of Cyrus the Great, eaten by Xerxes)
Brother: Masistes
Brother: Achaemenes
Brother: Hystaspes
Wife: Amestris (daughter of Otanes)
Son: Artaxerxes Longimanus (successor)

Persian Monarch 486 BC-465 BC
Asteroid Namesake 7211 Xerxes


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* Born: 519 B.C.
* Birthplace: Persia
* Died: 465 B.C. (assassination by stabbing)
* Best Known As: The Persian king repulsed by the Greeks

Xerxes I ruled from 485 - 465 B.C., presiding over ancient Persia's decline from mighty power to fading empire. His father Darius was defeated by the Greeks at the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), and 10 years later Xerxes assembled a vast army to invade Greece and avenge his father's defeat. (The best-known reports on the invasion come from the historian Herodotus.) Xerxes crossed the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles) and methodically overran Greece. He won a costly victory at Thermopylae -- the famous battle which ended with 300 Spartan warriors defying the entire Persian army in a last battle to the death -- and finally reached Athens and sacked the deserted city. But the invasion ended in disaster when the Persian navy was routed by the Greek fleet at Salamis (480 B.C.). Xerxes retreated to his palace in Persepolis, leaving behind an occupying army which was defeated by the Greeks shortly thereafter. Persia remained a formidable nation but Xerxes withdrew from active life, devoting himself to what Herodotus called "the intrigues of the harem." 15 years later Xerxes was stabbed to death, probably by his subordinate Artabanus, and was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes.

Xerxes is pronounced ZERK-seez... His life was the inspiration for George Handel's 1738 opera Serse (or Xerxes)... One tale from Herodotus has become particularly famous: after a storm on the Hellespont delayed Xerxes from crossing into Greece, the vainglorious king ordered that the waters of the Hellespont be given 300 lashes and cursed as punishment... Xerxes' elite troops, said to number 10,000 in all, were known as the Immortals... Xerxes was also ruler of Egypt, the third ruler of that country's 27th dynasty.

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erxes became king of Persia at the death of his father Darius the Great in 485, at a time when his father was preparing a new expedition against Greece and had to face an uprising in Egypt (Herodotus' Histories, VII, 1-4). According to Herodotus, the transition was peaceful this time. Because he was about to leave for Egypt, Darius, following the law of his country had been requested to name his successor and to choose between the elder of his sons, born from a first wife before he was in power, and the first of his sons born after he became king, from a second wife, Atossa, Cyrus' daughter, who had earlier been successively wed to her brothers Cambyses and Smerdis, and which he had married soon after reaching power in order to confirm his legitimacy. Atossa was said to have much power on Darius and he chosed her son Xerxes for successor.
After quelling the revolt of Egypt, Xerxes finally decided to pursue the project of his father to subdue Greece, but made lengthy preparations for that. Among other things, remembering what had happened to Mardonius' expedition a few years earlier (his fleet had been destroyed by a tempest in 492 while trying to round Mount Athos), he ordered a channel to be opened for his fleet north of Mount Athos in Chalcidice. He also had two boat bridges built over the Hellespont near Abydus for his troop to cross the straits.
The expedition was ready to move in the spring of 480 and Xerxes himself took the lead. Herodotus gives us a colorful description of the Persian army that he evaluates at close to two million men and about twelve hundred ships (Histories, VII, 59-100). Modern historians find these figures irrealistic, if only for logistical reasons, and suppose the army was at most two hundred thousand men and the fleet no more than a thousand ships, but this still makes an impressive body for the time. Xerxes' expedition moved by land and sea through Thracia, the fleet following the army along the coast. It didn't meet resistance until it reached Thessalia, where the Persian army defeated the Spartans and their allies at the pass of Thermopylæ while, on sea, neither the Persian nor the Athenian fleet could win the decision in the battle that took place near Cape Artemisium, along the northern coast of the island of Euboea. Because of Themistocles' decision to evacuate Athens, Xerxes managed to take the city and set fire to the temples of the Acropolis, but his fleet was soon after destroyed by the Athenian fleet of Themistocles at the battle of Salamis (Herodotus' Histories, VIII, 83-96 ; a vivid description of the battle of Salamis may also be found in Æschylus' Persians, 272-510).
After this defeat, Xerxes returned to Asia via the Hellespont, leaving part of his army in Greece under the command of Mardonius. But the following year, after having taken Athens a second time, the Persian army was defeated, in September of 479, at Platæa, near Thebes in Boeotia, in a battle that lasted 13 days, in which Mardonius was killed (Herodotus' Histories, IX, 25-85) while, at about the same time, what remained of the Persian fleet was destroyed by a Greek fleet under the command of the Spartan general Leutychides off Cape Mycale, a promontory of the Ionian coast, north of Miletus, facing the island of Samos (Herodotus' Histories, IX, 90-106). This was not the end of the war between Persia and Greece, but it was the end of the incursions of the Persian army on mainland Greece. And without a fleet, Persia had to abandon control of the sea to Athens.
Xerxes died in 465, assassinated probably upon order by one of his sons, Artaxerxes, who succeeded him.


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Xerxes (486-465 BC), Darius' eldest son by Queen Atossa, was born after his father had come to the throne; he had been designated official heir perhaps as early as 498 BC, and while crown prince he had ruled as the King's governor in Babylon. The new king quickly suppressed the revolt in Egypt in a single campaign in 485 BC. Xerxes then broke with the policy followed by Cyrus and Darius of ruling foreign lands with a fairly light hand and, in a manner compatible with local traditions, ruthlessly ignored Egyptian forms of rule and imposed his will on the rebellious province in a thoroughly Persian style. Plans for the invasion of Greece begun under Darius were then still further delayed by a major revolt in Babylonia about 482 BC, which also was suppressed with a heavy hand

Xerxes then turned his attention westward to Greece. He wintered in Sardis in 481-480 BC and thence led a combined land and sea invasion of Greece. Northern Greece fell to the invaders in the summer of 480, the Greek stand at Thermopylae in August of 480 came to naught, and the Persian land forces marched on Athens, taking and burning the Acropolis. But the Persian fleet lost the Battle of Salamis, and the impetus of the invasion was blunted. Xerxes, who had by then been away from Asia rather long for a king with such widespread responsibilities, returned home and left Mardonius in charge of further operations. The real end of the invasion came with the Battle of Plataea, the fall of Thebes (a stronghold of pro-Persian forces), and the Persian naval loss at Mycale in 479 BC. Of the three, the Persian loss at Plataea was perhaps the most decisive. Up until Mardonius was killed, the issue of the battle was probably still in doubt, but, once leaderless, the less organized and less disciplined Persian forces collapsed. Time and again in later years this was to be the pattern in such encounters, for the Persians never solved the military problem posed by the disciplined Greek hoplites.

The formation of the Delian League, the rise of Athenian imperialism, troubles on the west coast of Asia Minor, and the end of Persian military ambitions in the Aegean followed rapidly in the decade after Plataea. Xerxes probably lost interest in the proceedings and sank deeper and deeper into the comforts of life in his capital cities of Susa, Ecbatana, and Persepolis. Harem intrigues, which were steadily to sap the strength and vitality of the Achaemenid Empire, led to the assassination of the Great King in 465 BC