Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King

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Hailed by Tom Holland as a 'fascinating and compendious survey of ancient attitudes to Xerxes' and now available in paperback, Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes afterlives within the ancient literary tradition and the reinvention of his image in a remarkable array of cultural and historical contexts. This Persian king, who invaded Greece in 480 BC, quickly earned a notoriety that endured throughout antiquity and beyond. The Greeks historical encounter with Xerxes which resulted, against overwhelming odds, in the defeat of the Persian army has inspired a series of literary responses to the king 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. Emma Bridges 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.

Reviews

[A] fascinating and compendious survey of ancient attitudes to Xerxes -- Tom Holland * The Spectator *
Bridges well demonstrates the remarkable longevity that the ideologically-charged figure of Xerxes enjoyed in Greek and Roman literature over a span of almost a thousand years. One of the most valuable aspects of Bridges book is its marshalling of such a great variety of Greek and Roman texts that deal with Xerxes. -- David Branscome, Florida State University, USA * Classical Journal *
Few events left such a vivid impression on history as the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, King of Persia. In this lively, erudite and nuanced cultural history of the ancient portraits of Xerxes, Emma Bridges throws fresh new light on the ancient and modern western images of Asia and its archetypal ruler. -- Edith Hall, Professor of Classics, King's College London, UK
The central concern of Dr Bridges' original and challenging exercise in ancient reception-studies is to explore the richness and variety of Persian Great King Xerxes afterlives within a diverse and complex literary tradition. This is a powerfully written and conceptually sophisticated treatment of an important topic within classical studies, which has the added appeal of including an excellent discussion of the cinematic reception of Xerxes in the 21st century. -- Paul Cartledge is the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge, UK
What to make of Xerxes Ruthless tyrant Hubris personified Prisoner of history Glorious war-lord Victim of fortune Decadent playboy Lubricious harem-master Or just the foil for Greece's glory, the great invader who brought out the best in those freedom-fighters of 480 BCE He was all of those things, and Emma Bridges' beautifully written book traces all the shifts in the ideas and stories and fantasies that later generations wove as they dwelt on Greece's finest hour. -- Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford University, UK

Author Bio

Emma Bridges is a Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University, UK.