Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King: 1 (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception) - Softcover

Bridges, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474260721 ISBN 13: 9781474260725

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015

Synopsis

Hailed by Tom Holland as a 'fascinating and compendious survey of ancient attitudes to Xerxes' and now available in paperback, Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes afterlives within the ancient literary tradition and the reinvention of his image in a remarkable array of cultural and historical contexts. This Persian king, who invaded Greece in 480 BC, quickly earned a notoriety that endured throughout antiquity and beyond. The Greeks historical encounter with Xerxes which resulted, against overwhelming odds, in the defeat of the Persian army has inspired a series of literary responses to the king in which he is variously portrayed as the archetypal destructive and enslaving aggressor, as the epitome of arrogance and impiety, or as a figure synonymous with the exoticism and luxury of the Persian court. Emma Bridges examines the earliest representations of the king, in Aeschylus tragic play Persians and Herodotus historiographical account of the Persian Wars, before tracing the ways in which the image of Xerxes was revisited and adapted in later Greek and Latin texts. The author also looks beyond the Hellenocentric viewpoint to consider the construction of Xerxes image in the Persian epigraphic record and the alternative perspectives on the king found in the Jewish written tradition.

About this title

Review:

"[A] fascinating and compendious survey of ancient attitudes to Xerxes" --The Spectator

"Bridges well demonstrates the remarkable longevity that the ideologically-charged figure of Xerxes enjoyed in Greek and Roman literature over a span of almost a thousand years. One of the most valuable aspects of Bridges' book is its marshalling of such a great variety of Greek and Roman texts that deal with Xerxes." - David Branscome, Florida State University, USA, Classical Journal

"Few events left such a vivid impression on history as the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, King of Persia. In this lively, erudite and nuanced cultural history of the ancient portraits of Xerxes, Emma Bridges throws fresh new light on the ancient - and modern - western images of Asia and its archetypal ruler." --

"The central concern of Dr Bridges' original and challenging exercise in ancient reception-studies is to explore the richness and variety of Persian Great King Xerxes' afterlives within a diverse and complex literary tradition. This is a powerfully written and conceptually sophisticated treatment of an important topic within classical studies, which has the added appeal of including an excellent discussion of the cinematic reception of Xerxes in the 21st century." --

"What to make of Xerxes? Ruthless tyrant? Hubris personified? Prisoner of history? Glorious war-lord? Victim of fortune? Decadent playboy? Lubricious harem-master? Or just the foil for Greece's glory, the great invader who brought out the best in those freedom-fighters of 480 BCE? He was all of those things, and Emma Bridges' beautifully written book traces all the shifts in the ideas and stories and fantasies that later generations wove as they dwelt on Greece's finest hour." --

About the Author:

Emma Bridges is an Associate Lecturer in Classics at the Open University. Her doctoral thesis, completed at the University of Durham, focused on the representation of Xerxes in ancient literature from the fifth century BC to the second sophistic. In 2007 she co-edited (with Edith Hall and P. J. Rhodes) a volume entitled Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1474260721
• ISBN 13: 9781474260725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246