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This chapter focuses on Xerxes's love life, which proved to be his downfall. Unlike his polygamous father, Xerxes spent his life married to a single woman, Amestris, the daughter of Otanes, the commander of the Persian army that marched to Greece. Amestris bore Xerxes three sons (Darius, Hystaspes, and Artaxerxes) and three daughters (Amytis, Rodogyne, and Ratahshah). Xerxes scores quite highly in terms of love and fidelity. However, Xerxes's fidelity collapsed in the last days of the expedition to Greece; while in Sardis he fell for the wife of his full brother Masistes. This chapter considers the polygamy of the Persian kings, along with the question of whether there is a building or suite of rooms that may be described as a harem in the Achaemenid Empire. It also examines Xerxes's affair with his niece in his last years as well as his relationship with Queen Esther.

This chapter looks at how the Persians coped with their defeat during the war. In 480 BCE, Xerxes son of Darius, the Achaemenid king of Persia, withdrew to Sardis in western Anatolia. The following year, as events unfolded in mainland Greece and Ionia, he waited patiently in the ancient Lydian capital, providing guidance insofar as communications allowed and anxiously awaiting news—at least until, one must suspect, the arrival of a report concerning Persia's defeat. If Xerxes was dismayed at the outcome of his war with the Hellenes, he certainly did not let on. Yet despite the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire, events were already unfolding in Hellas which led to the gradual division of the once-great military alliance of the Greeks. Things were beginning to unfold to the Persians' advantage.

This chapter offers a new reconstruction of Alexander the Great's fragmentary edict to Priene (I. Priene 1; Rhodes–Osborne, GHI 86, probably of 334 bc). Alexander's edict, concerning the status of a number of dependent communities in the vicinity of Priene, such as Naulochon, has played a prominent role in modern scholarship on Alexander's Philhellenism, the nature and extent of ‘royal land’ in the former Achaemenid empire, the civic life of the Greek poleis of western Asia Minor in the early Hellenistic period, and ancient archival practices. Much of this modern scholarship, however, is based on questionable restorations of fragmentary passages in the edict. This chapter offers alternative reconstructions of three critical clauses in the edict, which (if correct) shed a new light on Alexander's policies towards the Greek cities of Asia Minor in the earliest days of his Asiatic campaign.

What induced Alexander to embark upon a war of conquest against Persia? How did the peoples he attacked resist him, and why? The undertaking was bequeathed to him by his father, Philip II, whose expedition to the East was cut short by his assassination. The ostensible motives, which were presented in the form of slogans concerning vengeance and Panhellenism, were those that had been promoted in the Greek world since the years that followed the invasion of Greece by Xerxes in 480/79. The target of Alexander’s counter-invasion was the Achaemenid Empire, but the apparent soft underbelly was formed by the states thought to be held in servitude by the Persian king. Indeed, the king’s subjects were generally referred to as douloi, “slaves” of their vainglorious master. But their attitudes toward “liberation” varied according to experience, and although some welcomed the Conqueror, the notion that they welcomed a new master was mistaken.

This chapter traces the history of Jewish engagement with ancient science by contextualizing the literature related to Enoch. It first considers a working definition of “science” and the earlier history of science before assessing evidence of scientific interest among Jews in late antiquity, including the Second Temple period and the period covered by the Achaemenid Empire. In particular, it examines surviving concentrations of Jewish science from the Second Temple period in Enochic literature. It then links a distinct Jewish tradition to forerunners of Greek science in other parts of the Mediterranean shore, citing the Ionian philosophers of nature as a prime example. It also highlights the distinction between the scientific Enoch tradition and the Mosaic tradition, the latter of which was less interested in the natural sciences. Finally, it examines the Jewish narrative on the history of knowledge, with particular emphasis on the myth of the Watchers.