Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King

246 Pages·2015·3.072 MB·English

by  Emma Bridges

Imagining Xerxes
Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception
Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception presents scholarly monographs
offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars
in the reception of Classical Studies. Each volume will explore the appro-
priation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects
of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the
ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within
antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.
Also available in the Series:
Ovid’s Myth of Pygmalion on Screen, Paula James
Imagining Xerxes: Ancient
Perspectives on a Persian King
Emma Bridges
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First published 2015
© Emma Bridges 2015
Emma Bridges has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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ISBN: 978-1-47251-137-9
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Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
For my parents, with love and thanks

Contents
List of Illustrations and Photographs viii
Note on Translations, Illustrations and Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Encountering Xerxes 1
1 Staging Xerxes: Aeschylus and Beyond 11
2 Historiographical Enquiry: The Herodotean Xerxes-Narrative 45
3 Xerxes in his Own Write? The Persian Perspective 73
4 Pride, Panhellenism and Propaganda: Xerxes in the Fourth
Century bc 99
5 The King at Court: Alternative (Hi)Stories of Xerxes 127
6 The Past as a Paradigm: Xerxes in a World Ruled by Rome 157
Epilogue: Re-imagining Xerxes 191
Bibliography 201
Index 227
List of Illustrations and Photographs
Illustrations
Plate 1: Xerxes’ army crosses the Hellespont xii
Plate 2: Atossa’s dream. Based on a 1778 sketch by George Romney 10
Plate 3: Xerxes contemplates the brevity of human existence 44
Plate 4: Darius and his crown prince. Detail of Persepolis treasury sculpture 72
Plate 5: Xerxes rebuking the sea. Based on a nineteenth-century Spanish
lithograph illustrating La Civilisación (1881) by Don Pelegrin Casabó y Pagés 97
Plate 6: Esther at the court of Xerxes. Based on an illustration from Harold
Copping’s Women of the Bible (1937) 126
Plate 7: Xerxes’ return to Persia. Adapted from a lithograph illustrating Jacob
Abbott’s History of Xerxes the Great (1878) 155
Plate 8: A Xerxes for the twenty-first century. Based on the depiction of Xerxes in
Zack Snyder’s movie 300 (2007) 190
Photographs
Figure 1: Council Hall: South jamb of east doorway of main hall depicting
enthroned Darius with crown prince behind him 84
Figure 2: Persepolis treasury: South portico of Courtyard 17 depicting audience
scene with king and crown prince 85
Note on Translations, Illustrations
and Abbreviations
Translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. Translations of Persian
inscriptions in Chapter 3 are from A. Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of
Sources from the Achaemenid Period (Routledge: London and New York 2007),
and are reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.
Chapter frontispieces were illustrated by Asa Taulbut. Plates 1 and 3 are
original drawings created by the artist; others are based on the images referred
to in the captions. Photographs in Chapter 3 (Figures 1 and 2) are reproduced
courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Abbreviations of the names of ancient authors and texts follow those used
in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Standard abbreviations are used for modern
texts. Persian inscriptions discussed in Chapter 3 are referred to by the abbrevia-
tions used in Kent (1953) and Kuhrt (2007).