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>Xerxes, originally, wanted to leave Greece alone. His father had led a long and painful campaign against the Greeks and lost, and >Xerxes was not eager to follow in his footsteps. Some of his generals pushed for him to go to war, but he was not going to listen to them—until the Greeks asked him to.
>A lot of Greeks actually loved Persia. They thought they were an incredibly diverse and progressive nation. Some of them were so eager to become a part of the empire that they actually came to Persia and asked Xerxes to be their leader.
>First, the Aleuadae family came over and offered to pay Xerxes to come to Greece. Then another family, the Pisistratidae, came and offered him even more. They even brought an oracle with them, who told Xerxes he was destined to build a floating bridge and conquer Greece.
>By the time they had left, Xerxes was convinced he was meant to rule Greece. He called together his people and announced that they would be going to war. “I will never rest,” he declared, “until I have taken Athens and burnt it.”
Xerxes bought into the prophecy the Greeks gave him. He wanted to play out every moment they described leading to his victory, and so he set up a floating bridge across the Hellespont River. It did not work out—as soon as the bridge went up, a storm knocked it down.
>Xerxes had some issues with anger. If someone made him mad, he got revenge—even if that someone was a body of water. He ordered his men to put chains on the river and whip it for its insolence. So, they tossed some chains in the water and gave the river 300 lashes, yelling, “You are a turbid and briny river!”
>It gets weirder. Xerxes, apparently, felt bad about whipping the river, because, once he got his bridge to stay up, he apologized to it. He burned incense on the bridge and threw golden bottles into the water—which, according to Herodotus, was his attempt to apologize to the sea.
Any more stories about people doing stuff like this?
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>A lot of Greeks actually loved Persia.
Not true. There were some that admired particular leaders like Cyrus, but being a subject wasn't fun. They sent land-surveyors to assess cultivable land and taxed the harvests 20-30%--which was pretty significant back then. Ironically the Jews who praise the Persians for defeating the Babylonians that ultimately freed them from their captivity and granting them to return to their homeland in the Bible, also mention in the book of Nehemiah how the taxes under the Achaemenids rule in their homeland is too demanding and causing many to take out mortgages or selling their kids or themselves into slavery, but accepted the whole situation as if it was just a fact of life and Nehemiah's role in it is basically just making due and abiding by their subjugation while trying to enact more reforms to prosper more with what they had.
>They thought they were an incredibly diverse and progressive nation.
1. The Greeks couldn't had care less about diversity. To them, you either were some unruly savage brute (like Thracians, Scythians, Celts, and the mountainous tribes in Asia and Europe) or a servile decadent degenerate (like they considered the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and many of the Anatolian civilizations; or Greek (which they considered themselves exceptionally for being both civilized while also naturally self-ruling).
2. They disliked the concept of monarchy, and didn't consider it progressive, but serville. The exception is with Sparta, but they thought it didn't count because it was a dual monarchy that had a prevailing geroursia that was elected by the citizenry, and considered the citizenry class in Sparta to be more of self-independent dudes who voluntarily just pledge to the King to achieve a greater collective cause.
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>>2488765
>Some of them were so eager to become a part of the empire that they actually came to Persia and asked Xerxes to be their leader.
No one besides for figures who wanted Persian support so they could carry out their own personal ambitions in their State wanted this. The only exception that comes to mind is with Athens with allegedly the democratic fraction wanting Persian aid and rule in exchange of removing Hippias, which still counts as them coming to them for carrying out a favor.
>First, the Aleuadae family came over and offered to pay Xerxes to come to Greece.
They wanted him to come over so he could give them satrapy powers and so they could squash their neighboring enemies.
>Then another family, the Pisistratidae, came and offered him even more
This was after Hippias was removed and in exiled, and wanted them so they could restore him. Both of this was during Darius' reign.
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