The first full-scale account of a Persian king vilified by history Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486-465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes' expedition has overshadowed all the other achievements of his twenty-two-year reign. In this lively and comprehensive...