Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception Book 1)

Xerxes, the Persian king who invaded Greece in 480 BC, quickly earned a notoriety that endured throughout antiquity and beyond. The Greeks' historical encounter with this eastern king – which resulted, against overwhelming odds, in the defeat of the Persian army – has inspired a series of literary responses to Xerxes in which he is variously portrayed as the archetypal destructive and enslaving aggressor, as the epitome of arrogance and impiety, or as a figure synonymous with the exoticism and luxury of the Persian court. Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes' afterlives within the ancient literary tradition. It examines the earliest representations of the king, in Aeschylus' tragic play Persians and Herodotus' historiographical account of the Persian Wars, before tracing the ways in which the image of Xerxes was revisited and adapted in later Greek and Latin texts. The author also looks beyond the Hellenocentric viewpoint to consider the construction of Xerxes' image in the Persian epigraphic record and the alternative perspectives on the king found in the Jewish written tradition. Analysing these diverse representations of Xerxes, this title explores the reception of a key figure in the ancient world and the reinvention of his image in a remarkable array of cultural and historical contexts. FC 1 Halftitle 2 Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations and Photographs 9 Note on Translations, Illustrations and Abbreviations 10 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction: Encountering Xerxes 14 1 Staging Xerxes: Aeschylus and Beyond 24 2 Historiographical Enquiry: The Herodotean Xerxes-Narrative 58 3 Xerxes in his Own Write? The Persian Perspective 86 4 Pride, Panhellenism and Propaganda: Xerxes in the Fourth Century bc 112 5 The King at Court: Alternative (Hi)Stories of Xerxes 140 6 The Past as a Paradigm: Xerxes in a World Ruled by Rome 170 Epilogue: Re-imagining Xerxes 204 Bibliography 214 Index 240