person
Xerxes I
Xerxes
also: Xerses
King of Persia who, on the advice of the Magi, is said to have burned the temples of Greece on the principle that the gods should not be shut within walls; Cicero rejects the doctrine.
Reading notes
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.112 if Xerxes, having bridged the Hellespont and tunnelled through Athos
Xerxes I, the Persian king who in 480 BC bridged the Hellespont with boats and cut a canal through the isthmus of Mount Athos for his invasion of Greece. Cicero uses the disproportion of effort to end (as if to fetch honey) as a simile for the sage who lives only for pleasure.
- On the Nature of the Gods §1.115 not, like Xerxes, with his hands, but with his arguments
Xerxes, the Persian king who burned Greek temples during his invasion of 480 BC, the proverbial sacrilegious destroyer. Cotta says Epicurus overthrew the gods' temples not physically but by his reasoning.
- Tusculan Disputations §5.20 Xerxes
The Persian Great King (r. 486-465 BC), proverbial for boundless wealth and power. The story that he offered a prize to whoever could invent a new pleasure illustrates the insatiability of desire.