Who Was King Xerxes of Persia?
The God King
Best known today thanks to the movie 300, where King Xerxes of Persia was characterized as the villain, the God King of Persia, a supernatural creature eight feet tall, with a fondness for jewelry and an insatiable thirst for conquest.
This depiction was naturally quite untrue, but then again, as the movie was based on a comic book, it’s hardly surprising, right?
Yet, Xerxes was a real historical figure who, for more than twenty years, ruled the largest empire of the world at the time, who really tried to conquer Greece, and who financed architectural projects on a large scale during his two-decade reign.
Early life
Born in 518 BC, Xerxes was the son of King Darius the Great of Persia and Princess Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire.
Little is known about the early life of Xerxes, and that little is also relayed by his enemies the Greeks. But most probably, the prince received a completely normal education for a Persian royal at the time that consisted of honing both his intellectual and martial abilities.
Xerxes took the throne in 486 BC, following the death of his father, and though his succession went through without the eruption of a civil war, according to some sources, his…
