Although Herodotus has thoughts on why the Persians failed in their conquest on Greece, I myself have different opinions. For starters, Xerxes did not take into accountability of the near disaster that his own father, Darius, had when trying to build a bridge over the Thracian Bosphorus and the Danube (Herodotus, Book Seven, Chapter Ten). Xerxes’s uncle, Artabanus, tries to warn him of the possibility of a repeated history by informing him of how “the Scythians went to all lengths in their efforts to induce the Ionian guard to break the Danube bridge” (Herodotus, Book Seven, Chapter Ten). Although Artabanus was merely looking out for the safety of his nephew and the rest of the Persians, he was speaking truth and foreshadowing the events to take place at the…show more content… Since Xerxes was closed-minded to the possibility of making the same mistake that his father made, it affected the outcome of the Persian invasions. Secondly, throughout Xerxes’s travels, he was continuously making his men, especially the Phoenicians and Egyptians, work for the betterment of his invasion. For example, he made his men build the canal at Mt. Athos, which according to Herodotus “was only built to show his power and to leave something to be remembered by” (Herodotus, Book Seven, Chapter Twenty-Four). Xerxes also ordered the Phoenicians and Egyptians to build a bridge across the Hellespont using flax and papyrus cables (Herodotus, Book Seven, Chapter Thirty-Four). Just as Artabanus predicted, a storm had destroyed the finished bridge and in return “Xerxes gave order that the men responsible for building the bridge should have their heads cut off” (Herodotus, Book Seven, Chapter Thirty-Five). Because of the constant travels and demands of architecture, Xerxes put unnecessary strain on his men, which affected their ability to fight. Not to mention how killing the men responsible for the completion of the bridge lowered his numbers by a decent
