should be thought that Æschylus makes Xerxes his hero simply because tragedy requires a calamity. A sad ending is not essential to tragedy; greatness and "removedness" are.
But we must hasten to inquire at what point in the series of events the action of the play begins, and what was the knowledge of the preceding history with which the Athenian spectator was prepared. It was in the year 500 B.C., eight-and-twenty years ago, that the Ionian cities rebelled against Darius, and nearly six years later that Miletus was sacked and the revolt suppressed. The next year the Athenians had come to the assistance of their kinsmen in Asia; had accomplished a two months' march from the sea to Sardis, and insulted the Great King almost in his own house. Darius had no sooner put down the rebels in Ionia than he remembered the insolent strangers who had ventured to burn his palace; and in the year 490 B.C. he sent over the great armament under Mardonius which was to bring the Athenians in chains to Persia. Till of late their very name was unknown to him. He is said to have asked contemptuously where Athens was; a question which, in the play before us, is put into the mouth of his wife Atossa. But the unknown little state proved too strong for Mardonius, and Marathon destroyed the hopes of that expedition. This was in 490 B.C., or about eighteen years ago.
Darius bequeathed to his son Xerxes the task of subjugating Greece, and after several years spent in preparations, the young king set forth to lead against these few despised tribes the flower of all the nations
