REIGN OF XERXES I. (486-465 B.C.).--The successor of Darius, his son Xerxes, though more inclined to indulge in the ease and luxury of the palace than to subject himself to the hardship and discipline of the camp, was urged by those about him to an active prosecution of the plans of his father. After crushing the Egyptian revolt and another insurrection in Babylonia, the Great King was free to devote his attention to the distant Greeks. Mustering the contingents of the different provinces of his empire, Xerxes led his vast army over the bridges he had caused to be thrown across the Hellespont, crushed the Spartan guards at the Pass of Thermopylæ, pushed on into Attica, and laid Athens in ruins. But there fortune forsook him. At the naval battle of Salamis, his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships; and the king, making a precipitate retreat into Asia, hastened to his capital, Susa. Here, in the pleasures of the harem, he sought solace for his wounded pride and broken hopes. He at last fell a victim to palace intrigue, being slain in his own chamber (465 B.C.). END OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.--The power and supremacy of the Persian monarchy passed away with the reign of Xerxes. The last one hundred and forty years of the existence of the empire was a time of weakness and anarchy. This period was spanned by the reigns of eight kings. It was in the reign of Artaxerxes II., called Mnemon for his remarkable memory, that took place the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks under Cyrus, the brother of Artaxerxes, an account of which will be given in connection with Grecian history (see chap. XV.). The march of the Ten Thousand through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King demonstrated the amazing internal weakness of the empire. Marathon and Salamis had shown the immense superiority of the free soldiery of Greece over the splendid but servile armies of Persia, that were often driven to battle with the lash. These disclosures invited the Macedonians to the invasion and conquest of the empire. In the year 334 B.C., Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, led a small army of thirty-five thousand Greeks and Macedonians across the Hellespont. Three great battles--that of the Granicus, that of Issus, and that of Arbela--decided the fate of the Persian Empire. Darius III., the last of the Persian kings, fled from the field of Arbela, on the plains of Assyria, only to be treacherously assassinated by one of his own generals. The succeeding movements of Alexander, and the establishment by him of the short-lived Macedonian monarchy upon the ruins of the Persian state, are matters that properly belong to Grecian history, and will be related in a following chapter. 2. GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, AND ARTS.