Okay, so if I say the name Xerxes, I want you
to be completely honest with me. What is the
very first image that hits your brain? Don't
overthink it. I think for about 90 % of people
listening right now, it is undeniably Rodrigo
Santoro from the movie 300. Oh, absolutely. You
know the look I'm talking about? Nine feet tall,
voice like thunder. Gold body paint, piercings
in places that look incredibly painful. And sitting
on that massive mobile throne carried by slaves,
the ultimate god -king vibe. Exactly. Yeah. It
is a fantastic piece of cinema villainy. I mean,
you just love to hate him. He is the perfect
foil for the rugged underdog Spartans. But here
is the problem. What's that? That image has done
a really, really good job of erasing the actual
human being. It turns a complex historical figure
into... Well, a cartoon monster. And that's our
mission today. We are going to strip off the
gold paint and the nose rings and look at Xerxes.
I Xerxes the Great as he actually was. Because
when you dig into the sources, you find out that
the guy who ruled the Achaemenid Empire from
486 to 465 BC wasn't just some screaming tyrant.
No, not at all. He was an administrator, a builder,
a religious devotee, and honestly, a guy dealing
with a surprising amount of family drama. It's
a soap opera on an imperial scale. Yeah. And
we have to remember the canvas we are painting
on here. He controlled a territory that stretched
from India to Ethiopia. This was the superpower
of the ancient world. The absolute undisputed
superpower. So we've got a massive stack of sources
on the table today. We have the classic Greek
historians like Herodotus, who we should note
are basically writing war propaganda for the
other side. Right. That's a huge grain of salt
you have to take with everything he says. But
we also have modern scholarship, archaeological
records from Persepolis, and even some... some
biblical connections. Right. And the goal is
to see if we can find the middle ground. Was
he the hubristic madman the Greeks described?
Or was he a misunderstood stabilizer of a massive
empire who just happened to lose a very famous
naval battle? Let's start with the origin story,
because in monarchies, usually succession is
simple. You're the eldest son, you get the crown,
everyone bows. But with Xerxes, it wasn't that
clean, was it? Not at all. And understand why
Xerxes gets the job. You have to look at his
family tree. It is a tangled web. His father
is Darius the Great, obviously a titan of Persian
history in his own right. Right. But his mother,
his mother is the real power player here. Atassa.
Her name was Atassa. And she's the key. Okay,
so why is she the linchpin? Because Atassa was
the daughter of Cyrus the Great. Ah, the founder.
The George Washington of the Persian Empire.
Precisely. See, Darius was a great king, but
he wasn't a direct descendant of Cyrus. He seized
power after a chaotic period, a crisis with the
Magian usurper. He came from a collateral branch
of the family. So while he had the power... He
needed legitimacy. He needed that direct link
to the founder. So he marries into the bloodline.
He marries Cyrus's daughter, Atassa. That's a
classic move. Marry into the bloodline, you want
to claim. And by doing that, he cements his own
rule. Exactly. So when Xerxes is born, he is
the first biological bridge between the new dynasty
of Darius and the founding dynasty of Cyrus.
He represents the unification of the empire's
history. Okay, so he has the right blood. But
didn't Darius have other kids? I assume a king
of kings has a... a busy household he did he
had an older son named artobazon and artobazon
had a very solid argument for the throne which
was what he said i am the eldest son of darius
by all laws of nature and custom the throne is
mine that sounds standard i was here first so
how does xerxes jump the line he used the legal
argument that historians call being born in the
purple Born in the purple. I've heard that phrase
usually regarding Roman emperors or Byzantine
rulers. What did it mean in 500 BC Persia? Well,
the argument was incredibly technical. Artabazan
was born when Darius was just a nobleman, a subject
of the previous king. Xerxes, however, was the
first son born after Darius had actually become
the king of kings. Ah, so the argument is Artabazan
is the son of a subject, but Xerxes is the son
of king. Exactly. It feels like a lawyer finding
a loophole in the contract. Technically, your
father wasn't king when you were born, so you're
just a commoner's kid. That is a total technicality.
It is. And there's a funny, almost cinematic
anecdote that Xerxes was actually coached on
this argument by an exiled Spartan king named
Demorandus, who was living in the Persian court
at the time. A Spartan helping a Persian become
king? That is deeply ironic considering what
happens later. It is. Demorandus apparently told
him, in Sparta, the son born during the reign
takes precedence. Xerxes loved that logic. But
while the legal argument was clever, modern scholars,
people like Richard Stoneman, they think the
real deciding factor was simply Atassa. Mom pulled
the strings. She was the daughter of Cyrus. She
held immense influence in the court. Darius knew
that picking her son would lock down the dynasty's
legitimacy and prevent any questions about his
right to rule. It was the safe political move.
And it worked. It did. So in 486 BC, as Darius
is preparing his tomb and getting ready for a
campaign in Egypt, he officially named Xerxes
his successor. And the brother, Artibazon. Does
he launch a civil war? Because that's usually
what happens in these stories. Surprisingly,
no. The transition is incredibly smooth. It speaks
to how stable the empire was at that moment and
how powerful Atassa was. Xerxes steps up. No
one draws a sword and he begins his reign. So
he secures the bag. But let's look at his qualifications.
We tend to think of these ancient kings as spoiled
bracks who just inherit the world and sit around
eating grapes. Right. But the source material,
specifically a Greek text called the First Alcibiades,
it outlines a pretty rigorous education system
for Persian princes. Oh, it was brutal. It wasn't
just sit on a cushion. It was a system designed
to build a specific type of leader. Until age
seven, the boy is raised in the harem, mostly
by eunuchs. He's shielded from the world. Kept
safe. But at age seven, he gets tossed into the
deep end. Exactly. At seven, he leaves the women
and the eunuchs and enters the world of men.
He learns to ride and hunt. And for the Persians,
riding wasn't just transportation. It was an
identity. Being a horse lord was central to their
culture. Then at 14, it shifts again, right?
Right. At 14, the real education begins. He is
assigned four specific teachers, all chosen from
the highest aristocracy. And I love the breakdown
of what they taught because it tells you exactly
what the Persians valued in a ruler. Break it
down for us. What are the four majors? The first
teacher teaches him to be wise, which effectively
means theology, understanding the Zoroastrian
religion, the struggle between good and evil,
and his duty to the god Ahura Mazda. So he's
a philosopher king in training? In a way, yes.
The second teacher teaches him to be just, specifically
to tell the truth. Truth -telling was a big deal
in Persian culture. Huge. In the inscriptions
of Darius and Xerxes, they constantly referred
to the lie or draga as the ultimate enemy. Lying
was considered the worst sin because it destabilizes
reality. So a king must speak truth. Okay, wisdom
and justice. What's next? The third teacher taught
him prudence, which means self -control, not
being ruled by your appetites. A king cannot
be a slave to food, drink, or desire. And the
fourth teacher, the fourth taught him to be brave.
There's a specific quote about that bravery training
that stood out to me in the notes. It felt very
modern in a way. Yes. The teacher taught him
that fear for a Persian is the equivalent of
slavery. Fear is slavery. That is a heavy mindset
to drill into a teenager. It creates a psychological
armor. If you are afraid, you are no better than
a servant. You lose your agency. So you must
conquer fear to be a master. It explains a lot
of his later behavior, doesn't it? Yeah, you
cannot show weakness or you are enslaving yourself.
Exactly. And on top of that moral training, from
age 16 or 17, they did 10 years of mandatory
national service. Actual military service. Yes,
actual military service. Physical training, archery,
sleeping outdoors, hunting lions. So by the time
Xerxes takes the throne at age 32, he is physically
hardened. religiously educated, and trained in
statecraft. He's not a soft prince. He's ready,
and he needed to be, because the moment he sits
on the throne, the empire starts shaking. It's
like the subject nations were waiting for Darius
to die to see if the new kid was tough. That
is exactly what happened. His father Darius had
died right in the middle of preparing to suppress
a revolt in Egypt. So Xerxes inherits a war on
day one. And Egypt isn't a small problem. That's
the breadbasket of the empire. You lose Egypt,
you lose the grain. Exactly. And this is where
we see Xerxes differ from the party boy image.
He doesn't delegate this. He doesn't send a general
while he stays in Susa. In January 484 BC, roughly
a year after taking the throne, he personally
leads the army to Egypt. He goes himself. He
goes himself. He crushes the revolt swiftly and
ruthlessly. And then he installs his own brother,
Achaemenes, as the satrap. The governor. Keeping
it in the family. Always. You trust blood more
than you trust bureaucrats. But this diversion
to Egypt was costly. It drained resources and
it delayed the plans his father had made for
invading Greece. But first things first. Right.
And once Egypt was handled, a much closer and
perhaps more symbolic problem exploded. Babylon.
Babylon. The great city. It feels like Babylon
was always revolting against someone in the ancient
world. It was the New York City of antiquity.
massive, wealthy, culturally dominant, and very,
very proud. In 484 and 482 BC, two different
rebel leaders, Belshamani and Shamash Ereba,
seized the city. They were likely angry about
tax increases to pay for Xerxes' building projects
or maybe the deportation of their craftsmen.
This leads us to one of the most famous villain
Xerxes stories, the story that he hated Babylon
so much he melted down their god. The statue
controversy, yes. If you read the later Greek
writers like Herodotus or Strabo, they claim
Xerxes was so furious at the revolt that he sacked
the temples and melted down the massive solid
gold statue of Marduk, the patron god of Babylon.
Which sounds like the ultimate sacrilege. I conquered
you and now I'm turning your god into coins.
It's a very comic book villain thing to do. narrative
perfectly, but modern historians are very, very
skeptical about this. Why? Is it just that it
sounds too convenient, a little too on the nose?
Well, there's that. But practically speaking,
the statue of Marduk was essential for the legitimacy
of the ruler of Babylon. The king had to take
the hands of Marduk during the New Year festival
to be recognized as the rightful king. If you
melt the god, you can't be king. It would be
shooting yourself in the foot. So if he didn't
melt the god, where did the story come from?
Was it just pure propaganda? It's likely he removed
a different statue from the temple complex. Maybe
a statue of a previous human king or a high priest,
something like that. But over time, the story
warped into he melted Marduk. However, he did
punish them. He did something very subtle but
very humiliating. What was that? Up until this
point, the Persian emperor had the specific title,
King of Babylon. It was a way of saying Babylon
was special. a separate kingdom held by the emperor,
distinct from the rest of the empire. Right.
Xerxes dropped that title. He just stopped using
it. He stopped using it. He absorbed Babylon
into the main empire and split its massive territory
into smaller, boring administrative units. Wow.
So he didn't destroy their god. He did something
worse for their ego. He made them irrelevant.
You're just a province now. You're just a zip
code. Exactly. It was a bureaucratic demotion.
It shows a cold, calculating administrative mind.
Not a hot -headed madman. He stripped them of
their political identity. Okay, so he's pacified
Egypt with the sword. He's humbled Babylon with
the pen. Now he turns his eyes to the big one.
The one his father couldn't finish. Greece. The
invasion of Greece. This is the centerpiece of
his reign. His father, Darius, had been embarrassed
at the Battle of Marathon years earlier. It was
a stain on the Achaemenid honor. And there was
pressure on him to fix that. Oh, immense pressure.
He felt a filial duty, and he had his cousin,
General Mardonius, whispering in his ear. Mardonius
plays the devil on the shoulder here, doesn't
he? Very much so. Mardonius accused Xerxes of
being timid if he didn't attack. And you have
to remember the training. Fear is slavery. You
can't let your cousin call you a coward in the
royal court. So the machine starts turning. We
have to talk about the scale of this invasion.
Because the logistics are mind -boggling for
480 BC. It wasn't just an army. It was a migration.
It was an attempt to overwhelm the world with
engineering. He didn't just want to invade. He
wanted to change the geography to suit his needs.
First, let's talk about the Mount Athos Canal.
This is the peninsula where the Persian fleet
had been wrecked by storms years before, right?
Yes. Mount Athos is notorious for bad weather.
It's a ship killer. So Xerxes looks at the map
and says, we aren't sailing around it. We are
going through it. He digs a canal? He orders
a canal dug through the neck of the peninsula.
We're talking about moving tons of earth, employing
thousands of laborers for years just to give
his ships a safe lane. That is a massive flex.
It's terraforming. It is. It's a statement. I
will reshape the earth to ensure my victory.
But the real sharestopper is the Hellespont,
the stretch of water separating Asia from Europe.
He wanted to walk his army across the sea, literally.
He commissioned two bridges made of boats' pontoons.
Hundreds of ships lashed together with heavy
cables made of flax and papyrus, paved with planks
and earth. A bridge between continents. And this
leads to the moment that everyone cites as proof
of his insanity. The whipping of the sea. The
infamous whipping. So a storm destroys the first
version of the bridge before the army can cross.
Xerxes is furious. Herodotus tells us he ordered
the Hellespont to be whipped 300 times with chains,
and he threw a pair of fetters' handcuffs into
the water. I mean, come on. Ordering the ocean
to be whipped? That sounds like a toddler having
a tantrum. Just with more power. Bad water. Bad.
That is certainly how the Greeks framed it. Look
at this barbarian hubris, thinking he can enslave
nature. It fits their narrative of the mad despot.
But there's another way to read it. Let's put
on our deep dive hat for a second. Think about
his army. It isn't just Persians. It's multi
-ethnic. You have Egyptians, Phoenicians, people
from cultures where rivers and seas were considered
deities or spirits. If the sea god just destroyed
your bridge, your troops might be terrified.
They might think the omens are terrible and refuse
to cross. So Xerxes steps up and says, don't
worry about the sea god. I'm the bigger boss.
Exactly. It's performative. He is punishing the
unruly element to show his troops that he is
the supreme authority. He is demonstrating that
even nature is subject to the great king. It's
theater for morale. That makes so much more sense
than just he lost his mind. It was a ritual to
calm the troops and assert his own divine -like
power over the elements. And it worked. They
built the second bridge and the army crossed.
Let's talk numbers for a second. Herodotus says
he marched a million men into Greece. That can't
be right. No, it's physically impossible. They
would have drunk entire rivers dry. The logistics
of feeding a million men in 480 BC just didn't
exist. Modern espits put it closer to 60 ,000
combatants plus support staff. Still huge. A
massive force for the time. Oh, massive. It was
a moving city. And at the core of that city were
the immortals. The best brand name in military
history. It really is. The 10 ,000 elite shock
troops. The branding was brilliant. If one died,
another immediately stepped into his place, so
the unit always appeared to be at full strength.
To the enemy, it looked like they couldn't be
killed. So this massive steamroller hits Greece.
We know about Thermopylae, the 300 Spartans,
Leonidas. We don't need to retell the movie scene
by scene, but the key takeaway there for Xerxes
wasn't the fighting, it was the intelligence,
right? Right. From Xerxes' perspective, Thermopylae
was a traffic jam. He waited for days, assuming
the Greeks would run away when they saw his numbers.
When they didn't, he got frustrated. But he didn't
win Thermopylae by just overpowering them. He
won because a local Greek, Phialtes, showed him
the path around the mountain. Which the Greeks
called betrayal, and Xerxes probably called good
reconnaissance. Exactly. Xerxes was pragmatic.
He took the win and kept moving. And this is
the part people forget because of how the war
ends. He actually achieved his primary goal.
What was the goal? To punish Athens. To burn
it. And he did. He marched into Athens. The people
had fled to the island of Salamis, but the city
was there for the taking. He burned the Acropolis.
He destroyed the Temple of Athena. Is there proof
of this, or is it just a story the Greeks told
to make him look bad? Oh, there is proof. Archaeologists
call it the Persichet, the Persian debris. It's
a layer of destruction in Athens that dates precisely
to 480 BC. Broken statues, scorched stones. When
they excavated the Acropolis, they found the
statues the Persians knocked over buried in the
ground. He literally left a scar on the city
that defines archaeology there today. So he wins.
He's standing in the ashes of his enemy's capital.
He has avenged his father. Why didn't he just
go home? Hubris. Or maybe bad advice. The Athenian
fleet was still intact nearby at Salamis. And
Xerxes was advised by Queen Artemisia, the only
female commander in his navy, by the way. She's
a fascinating character. Absolutely. A ruler
in her own right from Halicarnassus. And she
told him, You have the city. You have won. Don't
fight them at sea. The Greeks are better sailors.
Just wait them out. They are trapped on an island
with no food. They will scatter. That sounds
like solid, prudent advice. It was perfect advice.
But Xerxes wanted the knockout blow. He wanted
to crush them completely. And he fell for a trap
set by the Athenian leader Themistocles, who
sent a fake message saying the Greeks were panicking
and trying to escape. And Xerxes took the bait.
He took the bait. He sent his massive fleet into
the narrow straits of Salamis. And just like
at Thermopylae, the terrain mattered. In the
open ocean, the Persian numbers were an advantage.
In the narrow straits, they were a liability.
The ships were tripping over each other. The
smaller, more agile Greek triremes tore them
apart. And Xerxes is watching this from a throne
set up on a hill, just watching his navy get
decimated. Watching his fleet be destroyed. And
suddenly, the strategic situation flips. If the
Greeks control the sea, they can sail the Hellespont
and destroy that bridge of boats. And if the
bridge is gone? Xerxes and his army are trapped
in Europe. cut off from supply lines in hostile
territory. It's a nightmare scenario. So the
retreat begins. He makes the calculated decision
to retreat. He takes the bulk of the army back
to Asia to protect the emperor's person himself
and to ensure the bridge is held. He leaves Mardonius
behind with a smaller force to try and hold the
territory. Which didn't go well for Mardonius.
No. Mardonius gets killed the next year at the
Battle of Plataea, and that's it. The Persian
invasion is over. It's treated as this huge humiliation
in Western history books, the salvation of Western
civilization. But from Xerxes' perspective...
Was it a total failure? He did what he set out
to do. That's the nuance we need to see. No,
it wasn't a total failure. He burned Athens.
He punished the people who insulted his father.
He looted the temples. He expanded the empire's
borders firmly into Thrace and Macedonia. He
went home and told his people, I conquered. I
punished the wicked Greeks. And because he controlled
the propaganda, that became the official story
in Persia. He spun the narrative. Mission accomplished.
And honestly, he never went back to war. After
479 BC, the warrior king retires and a new figure
emerges, the builder king. Let's talk about that
because when he gets back to Persia, he doesn't
sulk. He starts building on a scale that dwarfs
even his father. He focuses on Persepolis, the
ceremonial capital. He wants to turn it into
a wonder of the world. His palace was twice the
size of his father's. What are some of the highlights
of his construction phase? The gate of all nations.
Just the name tells you the ambition. It was
a colossal entry point with giant -winged bulls
-le -masu. The idea was that dignitaries from
India, Africa, and Europe would walk through
this gate and feel physically small. They would
feel the weight of the empire before they even
saw the king. And the Hall of 100 Columns. Yes,
one of the largest rooms in the ancient world.
And we have to remember, these weren't bare stone
ruins like we see today in museums. Right, we
picture them as beige and dusty. They were technicolor.
We're talking glazed bricks and bright blues,
yellows and greens. Lapis lazuli. Gold plating
on a wall, cedar wood from Lebanon. It was a
sensory overload of wealth. It was his way of
saying, I may have lost a naval battle in Greece,
but look at this. Who is the real master of the
world? It's projecting power through architecture.
A very loud, very expensive message. Exactly.
He's saying, my resources are infinite. It's
a very effective way to keep the nobles in line
and the tributaries paying up. But while he is
building these beautiful palaces, the atmosphere
inside the palace starts to get dark. We're entering
the final act of Xerxes' life, and it feels like
a conspiracy thriller. It really does. The last
years of his reign, starting around 465 B .C.,
are murky. We see famine in the empire. We see
economic trouble. The grain prices are spiking.
And inside the court, the sharks are circling.
Introduce us to the villain of this final act.
Artabanus. Not to be confused with the brother
Artabazan. Artabanus was the commander of the
royal bodyguard. He was a Hyrcanian. This is
the guy trusted with the king's safety, the most
powerful official in the court. He had risen
through religious connections and harem politics.
And in August of 465 BC, he decides to make a
move. How does it go down? It's brutal. With
the help of a eunuch named Aspemiders, Artabanus
assassinates Xerxes in his bedchamber. Just like
that. The king of kings, ruler of millions, the
man who whipped the sea, stabbed in his own bedroom.
It's a quiet and glorious end. But Artabanus
doesn't stop there. This is where it gets confusing,
the hoodoonit aspect. He has killed the king,
but he needs a cover story. We have a couple
of versions of this from ancient historians,
but the most dramatic one comes from Destesius.
What does Destesius say happened? He says Artabanus
went to Xerxes' younger son, Artaxerxes, and
told him, your older brother, the crown prince
Darius, has murdered your father to seize the
throne. He frames the crown prince. Exactly.
He plays on the younger brother's fear and ambition.
He tells Artaxerxes, he killed father and you
are next. So Artaxerxes, blinded by rage and
grief, goes and executes his own brother, Darius.
So Artabanus manages to wipe out the king in
the air in one swoop, using the spare as the
weapon. It's Machiavellian. It's Game of Thrones
long before George R .R. Martin. Eventually,
the truth comes out and Artabanus realizes he's
been played. He kills Artabanus in a violent
struggle, but the damage is done. Xerxes is dead.
His eldest son is dead. and the empire is in
chaos. It's a tragic end. You start with that
high -minded education, truth is justice, fear
is slavery, and you end up being stabbed in the
dark by your own bodyguard, leaving a legacy
of family kinslaying. It is. And that instability
nearly broke the empire. It was only saved because
a general named Megabiasus decided to switch
sides and support the Achaemenids against the
conspirators. But this moment marked a shift.
The Persian empire became less about the warrior
king on the battlefield and more about harem
intrigues and court politics. So Xerxes is gone,
but his image, his image takes on a life of its
own that has very little to do with the actual
man. Almost immediately, the Greeks control the
narrative. Aeschylus writes the play The Persians
just seven years after the invasion. It's the
oldest surviving play in history. And in it,
he paints Xerxes as this effeminate, emotional,
incompetent despot who cries and rips his clothes.
And that stuck. That became the version of Xerxes
that the West inherited. It stuck hard. It became
the template. Herodotus picked it up. Later Roman
writers picked it up. And then we had the biblical
connection. The Book of Esther. Right. Xerxes
is widely identified as King Ahasuerus in the
Bible. The king who banishes his first wife,
holds a massive drinking party, marries Esther,
and ultimately saves the Jewish people from a
plot to destroy them. Is that historically accurate?
Did he marry an Esther? That is a subject of
fierce debate. Many scholars consider the Book
of Esther to be a historical romance, a fictional
story set in a real historical setting. We don't
have Persian records of a Queen Esther. We know
his chief wife was Amestris, who was a powerful
figure in her own right. But the characterization
fits. Well, the character of Ahasuerus, wealthy,
powerful, a bit temperamental, susceptible to
advice from his courtiers, it fits the vibe of
the Xerxes the Greeks described. And then fast
forward a few thousand years and we have Handel
writing an opera about him. Circe? Which opens
with one of the most famous arias in opera history,
Ombre Maifu. Isn't that the one where he sings
a love song to a tree? It is. He is singing about
how much he loves the shade of a plane tree.
It's actually quite beautiful music, but again,
it paints him as this whimsical, slightly detached
figure, not a battlefield commander. And finally,
we land on Frank Miller and 300, the giant with
the nose ring chain. The ultimate distortion.
And you know, that movie really angered people
in Iran. They saw it as an insult to their heritage,
reducing a complex geopolitical ruler, a man
who built laws and roads and cities, to a grotesque
monster. So let's wrap this up. We've unpacked
his life. We've seen the born in the Purple Prince,
the ruthless general, the bridge builder, the
sea whipper, and the assassination victim. When
you step back and look at the whole picture,
was he mad? Or was he just a guy with a really,
really difficult job? I think mad is the lazy
answer. It's the easy answer the Greeks gave
us. But when you look at the whipping of the
sea, the burning of Athens, the massive gates
at Persepolis, it wasn't insanity. It was performance.
Performance of power. Exactly. He ruled a massive,
fracturing, multi -ethnic empire that was constantly
trying to pull itself apart. He had to be larger
than life. He had to be terrifying to the elements
and ruthless to rebels. He had to be wealthier
than imagination. It was a calculated political
strategy to hold it all together. So the god
-king thing wasn't because he delusionally thought
he was a god, but because he needed his subjects
to believe he was untouchable. Precisely. And
for the most part, it worked. The empire survived
him for another 130 years. He maintained the
structure his father built. He wasn't the failure
the Greeks painted him to be. He was a stabilizer.
who perhaps flew a little too close to the sun
in Greece. That is a fascinating shift in perspective.
Not a monster, but a man playing a monstrously
difficult role. If you ever get the chance to
see photos of the ruins of Persepolis, look at
the Gate of All Nations. You can still see the
ambition there. It's the other side of the story,
carved in stone. I love that. A calculated ruler
using performative cruelty. Definitely something
to chew on the next time you watch 300. That's
it for this deep dive into Xerxes' Eye. We hope
you learned something new about the man behind
the myth. Thanks for listening.