| − | '''Xerxes''', was a king of [[Persia]], son of [[Darius I.]], whom he succeeded on the throne in 485 B.C.; in his ambition to subdue Greece, which, after suppressing a revolt in [[Egypt]], he in 481 essayed to do with an immense horde of men both by sea and land, he with his army crossed the Hellespont by means of a bridge of boats, was checked for a time at Thermopylæ by Leonidas and his five hundred, advanced to [[Athens]] to see his fleet destroyed at [[Salamis]] by Themistocles, fled at the sight by the way he came, and left [[Mardonius]] with 300,000 men to carry out his purpose, but, as it happened, to suffer defeat on the fatal field of Platæa in 479, and the utter annihilation of all his hopes; the rest of his life he spent in obscurity, and he was assassinated in 465 by Artabanus, the captain of his bodyguard, after a reign of 20 years.<ref>{{Nuttall|Xerxes}}</ref> | + | '''Xerxes''', was a king of [[Persia]], son of [[Darius I]], whom he succeeded on the throne in 485 B.C.; in his ambition to subdue Greece, which, after suppressing a revolt in [[Egypt]], he in 481 essayed to do with an immense horde of men both by sea and land, he with his army crossed the Hellespont by means of a bridge of boats, was checked for a time at Thermopylæ by Leonidas and his five hundred, advanced to [[Athens]] to see his fleet destroyed at [[Salamis]] by Themistocles, fled at the sight by the way he came, and left [[Mardonius]] with 300,000 men to carry out his purpose, but, as it happened, to suffer defeat on the fatal field of Platæa in 479, and the utter annihilation of all his hopes; the rest of his life he spent in obscurity, and he was assassinated in 465 by Artabanus, the captain of his bodyguard, after a reign of 20 years.<ref>{{Nuttall|Xerxes}}</ref> |