Xerxes

Part of Jacob Abbott’s Makers of History series, this volume follows Xerxes I, the Persian king who inherited an empire at the height of its reach and led it into the war with Greece that Abbott treats as the central event of the reign. Written for younger readers in the mid-nineteenth century, it moves through Xerxes’ accession, the suppression of the revolt in Egypt, the bridging of the Hellespont, and the campaigns that ended at Thermopylae and Salamis. Abbott favors narrative over dry chronology, leaning heavily on Herodotus and pausing to weigh the character and choices of the men involved. The result is a clear, readable introduction to Achaemenid Persia and the Greco-Persian wars, useful now both as history and as a window into how nineteenth-century educators presented the ancient world to students.