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Lydia - Persian Imperial Coinage - Xerxes - Artaxerxes I -
Silver Siglos 15mm (5.30 grams) Struck 486-450 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4678; Babelon, pl. 86, 11
Bearded archer (the Great King) kneeling right, holding spear and bow.
Oblong punch.
The later kings of Persia, successors of Darius I, continued
in the traditions established by that monarch, issuing gold darics and silver
sigloi for circulation in western Anatolia. The Lydian capital of Sardeis, the
center of Persian power in the area, was undoubtedly the principal mint, though
other cities may have assisted in the production of this enormous coinage. The
kneeling archer, with oblong punch on reverse, remained the sole type for this
Persian imperial coinage down to Alexander's conquest in 330 B.C. -- Many sigloi
bear small countermarks, possibly the signets of money changers. A large number
of emblems have been recorded, and as many as five may sometimes appear on a
single specimen.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of
Authenticity.
Oblong. In
Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is
any
quadrilateral with four
right angles. It can also be defined as an
equiangular quadrilateral, since equiangular means that all of its angles are
equal (360°/4 = 90°). It can also be defined as a parallelogram containing a
right angle. The term
oblong is occasionally used to refer to a
non-square
rectangle.[1][2]
A rectangle with
vertices ABCD would be denoted as ABCD.
The word rectangle comes from the
Latin rectangulus, which is a
combination of rectus (right) and angulus (angle).
A so-called crossed rectangle is a crossed (self-intersecting)
quadrilateral which consists of two opposite sides of a rectangle along with the
two diagonals.[3]
It is a special case of an
antiparallelogram, and its angles are not right
angles. Other geometries, such as
spherical,
elliptic, and
hyperbolic, have so-called rectangles with
opposite sides equal in length and equal angles that are not right angles.
Rectangles are involved in many
tiling problems, such as tiling the plane by
rectangles or tiling a rectangle by
polygons.
Xerxes I of Persia (English: /ˈzɜrksiːz/;
Old Persian:
خشایارشا (Ḫšayāršā), IPA: [xʃajaːrʃaː];
also known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth
Zoroastrian
king of kings of the Achamenid Empire.
Life
Youth
and rise to power
Immediately after seizing the kingship,
Darius I of Persia (son of Hystaspes) married
Atossa (daughter of
Cyrus the Great). They were both descendants of
Achaemenes from different Achaemenid lines.
Marrying a daughter of Cyrus strengthened Darius' position as king.
Darius was an active emperor, busy with building programs in
Persepolis,
Susa,
Egypt, and elsewhere. Toward the end of his
reign he moved to punish Athens, but a new revolt in Egypt (probably led by the
Persian satrap) had to be suppressed. Under Persian law, the Achaemenian kings
were required to choose a successor before setting out on such serious
expeditions. Upon his great decision to leave (487-486 BC),
Darius prepared his tomb at
Naqsh-e Rostam and appointed Xerxes, his eldest
son by Atossa, as his successor. Darius' failing health then prevented him from
leading the campaigns,
and he died in October 486 BC.
Xerxes was not the oldest son of Darius and according to old Iranian
traditions should not have succeeded the King. Xerxes was however the oldest son
of Darius and Atossa hence descendent of Cyrus. This made Xerxes the chosen King
of Persia.
Some modern scholars also view the unusual decision of Darius to give the throne
to Xerxes to be a result of his consideration of the unique positions that Cyrus
the Great and his daughter Atossa have had.
Artobazan was born to "Darius the subject", while Xerxes was the eldest son
born in the purple after Darius' rise to the
throne, and Artobazan's mother was a commoner while Xerxes' mother was the
daughter of the founder of the empire.
Xerxes was crowned and succeeded his father in October–December 486 BC
when he was about 36 years old.
The transition of power to Xerxes was smooth due again in part to great
authority of Atossa
and his accession of royal power was not challenged by any person at court or in
the Achaemenian family, or any subject nation.
Almost immediately, he suppressed the revolts in Egypt and
Babylon that had broken out the year before,
and appointed his brother
Achaemenes as governor or
satrap (Old Persian: khshathrapavan) over
Egypt. In 484 BC, he outraged the Babylonians by violently confiscating and
melting down
the golden statue of Bel (Marduk,
Merodach), the hands of which the rightful king of Babylon had to clasp each New
Year's Day. This sacrilege led the Babylonians to rebel in 484 BC and 482 BC, so
that in contemporary Babylonian documents, Xerxes refused his father's title of
King of Babylon, being named rather as King of Persia and
Media, Great King, King of Kings (Shahanshah)
and King of Nations (i.e. of the world).
Although Herodotus' report in the Histories has created certain
problems concerning Xerxes' religious beliefs, modern scholars consider him as a
Zoroastrian.
Death
In the year 465 BC Xerxes was murdered by
Artabanus, the commander of the royal bodyguard
and the most powerful official in Persian court (Hazarapat/commander of
thousand). He was promoted to this most prestigious of positions in Achamenid
court after his refusal to help Mardonius in Plataea and instead withdrawing the
second Persian army successfully out of Greece. Although he bore the same name
as famed uncle of Xerxes, a
Hyrcanian, his rise to prominence was due to
his popularity in religious quarters of the court and harem intrigues. He put
his seven sons in key positions and had an effective master plan to dethrone the
Achamenids.
In August, 465 B.C he assassinated Xerxes with the help of a eunuch
Aspamitres. Greek historians give contradicting
accounts on the full story. According to Ctesias (in Persica 20), he then
accused the crown prince Darius (Xerxes' eldest son) of the murder; he
instigated Artaxerxes (another of Xerxes' son), to avenge the patricide. But
according to
Aristotle (in Politics 5.1311b), Artabanus
killed Darius first and then the king himself. Later on after discovering what
he had done and planned for the royal power, Artabanus together with his sons
were killed by Artaxerxes I.
Participating in the scuffles was also general Megabyzus (baghabukhsha) whose
side switching probably saved the day for the Achamenids.
Campaigns
Invasion
of the Greek mainland
Darius left to his son the task of punishing the
Athenians,
Naxians, and
Eretrians for their interference in the
Ionian Revolt and their victory over the
Persians at
Marathon. From 483 BC Xerxes prepared his
expedition: A channel was dug through the
isthmus of the peninsula of
Mount Athos, provisions were stored in the
stations on the road through
Thrace, two bridges were built across the
Hellespont. Soldiers of many nationalities
served in the armies of Xerxes, including the
Assyrians,
Phoenicians,
Babylonians,
Indians,
Egyptians and
Jews.
According to the Greek historian
Herodotus, Xerxes' first attempt to bridge the
Hellespont ended in failure when a storm destroyed the
flax and
papyrus bridge; Xerxes ordered the Hellespont
(the strait itself) whipped three hundred times and had
fetters thrown into the water. Xerxes' second
attempt to bridge the Hellespont was successful.
Xerxes concluded an alliance with
Carthage, and thus deprived Greece of the
support of the powerful monarchs of
Syracuse and
Agrigentum. Many smaller Greek states,
moreover, took the side of the Persians, especially
Thessaly,
Thebes and
Argos. Xerxes set out in the spring of 480 BC
from
Sardis with a fleet and army which Herodotus
claimed was more than two million strong with at least 10,000 elite warriors
named
Persian Immortals. Xerxes was victorious during
the initial battles.
Thermopylae
and Athens
Relief of an Achaemenid king, possibly Xerxes or
Darius, on the wall of Persepolis
Palace
At the
Battle of Thermopylae, a small force of Greek
warriors led by King
Leonidas of
Sparta resisted the much larger Persian forces,
but were ultimately defeated. According to Herodotus, the Persians broke the
Spartan phalanx after a Greek man called
Ephialtes betrayed his country by telling the
Persians of another pass around the mountains. After Thermopylae,
Athens was captured and the Athenians and
Spartans were driven back to their last line of defense at the
Isthmus of Corinth and in the
Saronic Gulf. The delay caused by the Spartans
allowed Athens to be evacuated.
What happened next is a matter of some controversy. According to Herodotus,
upon encountering the deserted city, in an uncharacteristic fit of rage
particularly for Persian kings, Xerxes had Athens burned. He almost immediately
regretted this action and ordered it rebuilt the very next day. However, Persian scholars dispute this view as
pan-Hellenic propaganda, arguing that Sparta, not Athens, was Xerxes' main
foe in his Greek campaigns, and that Xerxes would have had nothing to gain by
destroying a major center of trade and commerce like Athens once he had already
captured it.
At that time, anti-Persian sentiment was high among many
mainland Greeks, and the rumor that Xerxes had
destroyed the city was a popular one, though it is equally likely the fire was
started by accident as the Athenians were frantically fleeing the scene in
pandemonium, or that it was an act of "scorched
earth" warfare to deprive Xerxes' army of the spoils of the city.
At Artemisium, large storms had destroyed ships from the Greek side and so
the battle stopped prematurely as the Greeks received news of the defeat at
Thermopylae and retreated. Xerxes was induced by the message of
Themistocles (against the advice of
Artemisia of
Halicarnassus) to attack the Greek fleet under
unfavourable conditions, rather than sending a part of his ships to the
Peloponnesus and awaiting the dissolution of
the Greek armies. The
Battle of Salamis (September 29, 480 BC) was
won by the Greek fleet, after which Xerxes set up a winter camp in
Thessaly.
Due to unrest in
Babylon, Xerxes was forced to send his army
home to prevent a revolt, leaving behind an army in Greece under
Mardonius, who was defeated the following year
at
Plataea.
The Greeks also attacked and burned the remaining Persian fleet anchored at
Mycale. This cut off the Persians from the
supplies they needed to sustain their massive army, and they had no choice but
to retreat. Their withdrawal roused the Greek city-states of Asia.
Construction
projects
After the military blunders in Greece, Xerxes returned to Persia and
completed the many construction projects left unfinished by his father at Susa
and Persepolis. He built the Gate of all Nations and the Hall of a Hundred
Columns at Persepolis, which are the largest and most imposing structures of the
palace. He completed the Apadana, the Palace of Darius and the Treasury all
started by Darius as well as building his own palace which was twice the size of
his father's. His taste in architecture was similar to that of Darius, though on
an even more gigantic scale.
He also maintained the Royal Road built by his father and completed the Susa
Gate and built a palace at Susa.
In
classical music
Xerxes is the protagonist of the opera
Serse by the German-English
Baroque composer
George Frideric Handel. It was first performed
in
King's Theatre in London on 15 April 1738. The
famous
aria, "Ombra
mai fů" is taken from the opera.
Children
By queen
Amestris
By unknown wives
Depictions
in popular culture
Later generations' fascination with ancient Sparta, and particularly the
Battle of Thermopylae, has led to Xerxes' portrayal in a number of works of
popular culture. For instance, he was played by
David Farrar in the
1962 film
The 300 Spartans, where he is portrayed as
a cruel, power-crazed despot and an inept commander. He also features
prominently in the graphic novel
300 by
Frank Miller, as well as the
movie adaptation (portrayed by
Brazilian actor
Rodrigo Santoro).
Other works dealing with the Persian Empire or the Biblical story of
Esther have also referenced Xerxes, such as the
video game
Assassin's Creed II and the film
One Night with the King, in which Ahasueras
(Xerxes) was portrayed by British actor
Luke Goss. He is the leader of the Persian
Empire in the video game
Civilization II (along with
Scheherazade) and
III, although
Civilization IV replaces him with
Cyrus the Great.
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