King of [the] Persians. This man, when his father Darius was dying and said "Remember Marathon,", mounted an expedition against Greece and first sent heralds requesting earth and water. And so the Athenians proclaimed the banishment of the envoys from the city, and they drove out the man who had advised listening to them, along with his wife and children; but the Spartans threw them into a well and threw earth onto them. When the god became angry,[1] they grew sick; when the oracle of the god told them to give satisfaction to Xerxes because of the heralds, Boulis and Sperchis[2] went voluntarily to the Persians to give satisfaction. In astonishment, he released them alive, and the disease stopped. Of infantry he deployed tens of thousands of Egyptians and Phoenicians and Cypriots. When he was in Sardis there was a solar eclipse. He kept ten thousand chosen men, whom he called the Immortals.[3] He also dug through Athos, a mountain of Macedonia. He also bridged the Hellespont between Sestos and Abydos; and when part had been destroyed by a storm, he lowered fetters into the sea and flogged the water. When some Greek grain-bearing ships were brought to him, he released them, saying it was slaves' food.[4] When he caught spies, he showed them his whole force and released them.
Look [further] in the 'Darics' [entry].[5]