Encyclopaedia Iranica Online

Greek historiographer, son of a certain Kandaules, probably born in Sardis, and a Hellenized Lydian. XANTHUS THE LYDIAN, Greek historiographer, son of a certain Kandaules, probably born in Sardis, and a Hellenized Lydian. He lived sometime after Hecataeus of Miletus and was an older contemporary of Herodotus, but the information of the Suda (s.v.) that he was born at the time when Cyrus II the Great took Sardis, is not reliable. The preserved fragments of Xanthus’s works, which seem to tell fewer historical facts than those of cultural history, d…

Avestan term (Mid. Pers. xwarrah), conventionally “glory.” See FARR[AH].

(ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek historian and essayist from Athens, who served among the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger. XENOPHON (ca. 430-353 BCE), Greek historian and essayist from Athens, who served among the Greek mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger (see CYRUS vi) and then led them back home, a set of events which he described in the Anabasis, one of his major works. Apart from Socratic links and presumed service in the Athenian cavalry, little is known of Xenophon until he joined the mercenaries of Cyrus the Younger in 401 and became involved in Cyrus’s …

name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes. XERXES i. The Name XERXES, name of two Achaemenid rulers and of some later princes. Xerxes is the common Greek ( Xérxēs) and Latin form ( Xerxes, Xerses) of the Achaemenid throne-name which in Old Persian is spelled x-š-y-a-r-š-a (with the initial a- of the second element being spread into medial position) and must be interpreted as four-syllable Xšaya-ṛšā (thus first P. Tedesco in Herzfeld, pp. 97 f. and Hoffmann, p. 85, fn. 15). This form and the secondary contracted form * Xšayaršā are reflected more or less accurately in Bab. Ḫi-ši-ʾ-…