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Updated: June 26, 2025
In the year 485 before Christ, Xerxes, king of Persia, sent his nephew Sataspis to discover India; who sailed from the Mediterranean through the Straits of Hercules, and passed the promontory of Africa, which we now call the Cape of Good Hope; but, wearying of the length of the voyage, he returned back again, as Bartholomew Diaz did in our days . In 443 A. C. Hamilco and Hanno, two Carthaginian commanders who governed that part of Spain now called Andalusia, sailed from thence with two squadrons.
Most of the other inhabitants left the city, as the people of Athens had done when the army of Xerxes approached. It was resolved to abandon the city to the barbarians, but to maintain the citadel, the home of the gods of Rome.
Its columns were fluted, and had in every case the complex capital, which occurs also in the great propylaea and in the Hall of Xerxes. It was built of the same sort of massive blocks as the south-eastern edifice, or Ancient Palace blocks often ten feet square by seven feet thick, and may be ascribed probably to the same age as that structure.
The force of the million of mercenaries, collected through Asia and Africa by Darius and Xerxes, to overwhelm a few Greek cities, accomplished nothing permanent in history; but the force of the ten thousand Athenians who fought at Marathon and of the other thousands at Salamis, saved democracy for Europe and made possible the civilization of the Occident.
Without him Persia would probably have sunk as rapidly as she rose, and would be known to us only as one of the many meteor powers which have shot athwart the horizon of the East. Xerxes, the eldest son of Darius by Atossa, succeeded his father by virtue of a formal act of choice.
THE WAR WITH XERXES: THERMOPYLAE. Darius died while he was preparing another grand expedition against Greece. This proud monarch drew together from his immense dominions an army which tradition, as given in Herodotus, made to number one million seven hundred thousand men and a fleet of twelve hundred large vessels. He had for a counselor, Demaratus, a fugitive king of Sparta.
“Will they really dare to fight by sea?” asked Xerxes, hardly pleased at the suggestion. “Omnipotence, you have slain Leonidas, but a second great enemy remains. While Themistocles lives, it is likely your slaves will have another opportunity to prove to you their devotion.” “Ah, yes! A stubborn rogue, I hear. Well—if we must fight by sea, it shall be under my own eyes.
An inward omen—not from the entrails of birds, nor a sign in the heavens—told Democrates the fellow brought no happy tidings. With incisive questions Themistocles had been bringing out everything. “So it is absolutely certain that Xerxes begins his invasion next spring?” “As certain as that Helios will rise to-morrow.” “Forewarned is forearmed.
In ancient times, Xerxes, the king of kings, looking down upon his myriads, wept to think that in a hundred years not one of them would be left. Where will be these millions of to-day in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask, Where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour?
"The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, was permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had been wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more to sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East.
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