Xerxes
Son and successor of Darius on the throne of Persia. He entered Greece with an immense army, which was checked at Thermopylae by the valor of three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas, who for three successive days successfully opposed the enormous forces of Xerxes, and were at last slaughtered. From this period the fortunes of Xerxes waned. His fleet being defeated at Salamis, and mortified with ill-success, he hastened to Persia, where he gave himself up to debauchery, and was murdered in the twenty-first year of his reign, about 464 years before the Christian era.