Analyse three given sources– for between 100-150 words.
a brief overview of the source
the values and limitations of the source as evidence for studying Xerxes
any other relevant information.
Sources include:
1. The court turned in on itself and was caught up in its own petty jealousies and sillinesses: the kind of court which leads people into bloody assassinations, but which cannot lead an empire … Indeed the whole of Achaemenid history from 479 BC onwards [was] a holding operation in the face of challenges from rebellious subjects, ambitious satraps and external enemies.
Cambridge Ancient History: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean, Vol. 4, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 78
2. Olmstead ‘History of the Persian Empire’
“The fine promise of Xerxes’ younger years had not been fulfilled. Failure of the European adventure opened the way to harem intrigues with all their deadly consequences…More and more the character of Xerxes disintegrated. The enlarged but still crowded harem at Persepolis tells its own story. For a time he continued his interest in the completion of the Persepolis buildings. Towards the end of his reign he was under the influence of the commander of the guard Artabanus, and the chamberlain Aspamitres.”
3. Aeschylus– Persai II 737-749(trans. P. Vellacott. Penguin, Harmondswoth 1961)
Darius–…my son in youthful recklessness, Not knowing the gods ways, has been the cause of all (this destruction). He hoped to stem the holy stream, the Bosporus, And bind the hellspont with fetters like a slave; He would wrest nature, turn sea into land, manacle A strait with iron, to make a highway for his troops. He in his mortal folly thought to overpower immortal gods, even poseiden. Was not this Some madness that possessed him?
4. Xerxes and Darius, Relief from Persepolis, Apadana (North Stairs)
5. Dandamaev on Xerxes on the nature of the Persian Invasion of Greece and Xerxes
6. The Daeva Inscription
Part 2:
Xerxes
was a bad king. Using AT LEAST FOUR of the sources from Part 1, make an evaluation.
If you can make part two as long as you can without rambling.
Marking area for both parts is attached
