No, Xerxes I Was Not an Eight-Foot-Tall Giant

In the 2007 epic fantasy action film 300, cowritten and directed by Zack Snyder and based on the 1998 limited comic book series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, Xerxes I, the king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, is portrayed by the Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro as a towering giant god-king who goes around almost completely nude, wearing only a very skimpy gold loincloth and a ton of really ornate gold jewelry, which is held on mostly through body piercings.

I’ve already written an entire post about how 300 is not historically accurate and it blatantly promotes a fascist, white supremacist message. Sadly, though, it has recently come to my attention that there are apparently some people on the internet who earnestly think that Xerxes I was really believed in antiquity to have been an eight-foot-tall giant.

Some have tried to prove this claim using a blatantly misquoted passage from the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) and Achaemenid relief carvings as evidence. In this post, I will show that Xerxes I was not really an eight-foot-tall giant, that Herodotos never claimed that he was an eight-foot-tall giant, and that there is no evidence to suggest that anyone in antiquity ever believed that he was one.

The misconception that Xerxes I was believed to have been a giant

The misconception that Xerxes was a giant obviously originates from the movie 300, but the claim that Herodotos specifically recorded that he was eight feet tall seems to have originated on Quora. On 9 November 2017, someone named Kofi C. Amanfo wrote an answer to the question “How tall was Xerxes?” in which he references the portrayal of Xerxes in 300 and makes the vague, uncited claim that he remembers reading “some historical records” that said that Xerxes was unusually tall:

“Xerses reigned unti 465BC at that time there was no standards system of measurements like today (they measured in cubits).NO one wrote how tall he was but i remember reading some historical records about him it seems that he was taller than average.”

“In the 300. Film he is portrayed as a giagantic 7 foot man with some gayish attitude i doubt If he was realy like that, he is also mentioned in the bible he married esther a jewish woman. this is all i know hope i satisfied your curiosity?”

On 25 February 2018, someone named Aditya Kabir (who appears to no longer be active on Quora) came along and wrote an answer to the same question, in which he claims that Xerxes was “almost 8 feet tall.” Unlike Amanfo, Kabir attributes this claim specifically to Herodotos. In support of the claim, he writes:

“Herodotus wrote in Histories (7:117) that ‘[Xerxes] was in stature the tallest of all the Persians, falling short by only four fingers of being five royal cubits in height.’”

“A royal cubit is assumed to be a bit more than 20 English inches (52 cm), which makes Xerxes almost 8 feet tall (2.43 m). Apparently Zack Snyder did get this part quite right when he made 300, and shown Xerxes to be almost 9 feet tall.”

As I will show in a moment, the line from Herodotos that Kabir cites here is not, in fact, about Xerxes at all, but rather about a completely different person. The chapter that he cites, though, does include mention of Xerxes.

Based on this evidence, here is what I think probably happened: Amanfo remembered Xerxes being portrayed as a giant in the movie 300 and assumed that this was based on some ancient sources. Then, Kabir came along and read Amanfo’s answer in which he attributes the claim of Xerxes being exceptionally tall to unnamed “historical records.”

Kabir was probably familiar with Herodotos and he probably speculated that the “historical records” Amanfo references might be Herodotos’s Histories. He then probably searched for something like “Herodotus Xerxes height” in Google, turned up Herodotos’s Histories 7.117, saw that it mentioned someone who was just short of five cubits tall, and automatically assumed that the passage was talking about Xerxes without bothering to read the whole sentence.

Kabir goes on to cite Achaemenid relief carvings of Xerxes as further evidence that supposedly confirms that he was a giant. He writes:

“He is depicted as much taller than the average Persian. Check out this bas-relief in the doorway of his palace at Persepolis:”

As I will show in a moment, Kabir’s argument based on the reliefs holds just as little water as his misquotation of Herodotos.

ABOVE: Screenshot of Xerxes as he is portrayed by the Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro in the film 300

Sadly, this claim that Xerxes was a giant has gone on to become tremendously influential, both on Quora and on the internet at large.

Years after Kabir wrote his answer, on 12 April 2021, someone named Diana Crisan asked the question on Quora “Was Xerxes a giant?” Nearly every single answer that has been written to the question so far uncritically repeats Kabir’s incorrect claim that Herodotos claimed that Xerxes was eight feet tall. This includes the answers written by David M. Prus (who apparently has an associate’s degree in history), Dimitri, J.R.B., Ahmed Ali, Vasu Pandian, Michael Damian Brooke Baker, Alice Giam, Thomas Musselmann, and Jean Gemmell.

Some of the answers I have just listed accept that Xerxes really was eight feet tall historically. Others of them reject the view that Xerxes really was eight feet tall, but still accept the claim that Herodotos said he was, and therefore attack Herodotos, calling him “the Father of Lies” and denouncing him as untrustworthy for supposedly saying something that he never actually said. Not a single one of these answers dares to question whether Herodotos actually said what Kabir claims that he said.

Meanwhile, Kabir’s claim that Herodotos wrote that Xerxes was eight feet tall has proliferated across the internet. For instance, on 22 April 2021, someone named Joe Ford made a post on the website Answers to All titled “Was Xerxes really tall?” which repeats the claim. Versions of this article have been copied to other websites across the internet, all of them incorrectly attributing the same claim to Herodotos.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust of the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos, based on an earlier Greek original

The Herodotos passage

The fact that not a single person bothered to check to see whether Herodotos actually wrote what Kabir claims he wrote is made particularly embarrassing by the fact that Kabir very helpfully cites the exact passage that he misquotes in his answer and many of the people repeating his claim have also repeated his citation, as well as by the fact that there are multiple English translations of Herodotos’s Histories available for free on various websites on the internet.

Literally all it would have taken for any person on Quora to double-check this passage would have been a simple Google search for the phrase “Herodotus Histories 7.117.” If you go to Google and search for this phrase, the first two results that come up are both full, unredacted translations of this exact passage, which anyone can read.

ABOVE: Screenshot showing the results that come up in a Google search for the phrase “Herodotus Histories 7.117”

This is what Herodotos actually says in his Histories 7.117, as translated by A. D. Godley (with Greek spellings of names restored):

“While Xerxes was at Akanthous, it happened that Artachaies, overseer of the digging of the canal, died of an illness. He was high in Xerxes’ favor, an Achaemenid by lineage, and the tallest man in Persia, lacking four finger-breadths of five royal cubits in stature, and his voice was the loudest on earth. For this reason Xerxes mourned him greatly and gave him a funeral and burial of great pomp, and the whole army poured libations on his tomb. The Akanthians hold Artachaies a hero, and sacrifice to him, calling upon his name. This they do at the command of an oracle.”

As I think anyone who can read English reasonably well can easily tell, Herodotos is not claiming that Xerxes was eight feet tall in this passage, but rather that a completely different person, a man named Artachaies, who was apparently overseeing the digging of the Canal of Xerxes through the Mount Athos peninsula in Chalkidiki, was eight feet tall.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the northern end of the site of the Canal of Xerxes, which is now filled in

The Achaemenid relief carvings

Now that I’ve dealt with that passage from Herodotos, let’s talk about the Achaemenid relief carvings that Kabir and a few of the other people writing answers on Quora have cited.

It is actually true that Achaemenid relief carvings do depict Xerxes I as physically bigger than other people. To illustrate, below is a photograph of the relief carving from what is believed to be Xerxes I’s tomb in the Achaemenid royal necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam, located about seven-and-a-half miles or twelve kilometers northwest of the main Achaemenid capital of Persepolis in what is now the Fars Province of Iran.

As you can see, the carving depicts Xerxes as a colossal man with a long beard wearing a robe, holding a bow and facing the Faravahar, which was an important symbol with religious and political significance in ancient Persian culture. Beneath him, the platform on which he is standing is supported by two rows of Achaemenid soldiers of many different ethnicities, who are shown as physically less than half Xerxes’s size.

Despite this, as I will show, these reliefs do not in any way indicate that anyone in antiquity actually believed that Xerxes was a literal giant.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the relief carving from the Tomb of Xerxes at Naqsh-e Rostam

Quite simply, it was a routine practice for ancient Near Eastern artists to depict kings and deities as bigger than everyone else in order to maximize their visibility and show that they were more important than everyone else. This is not at all a portrayal that is in any way unique to Xerxes.

We see the exact same thing, for instance, in the Anubanini rock relief in Kermanshah Province, Iran, which was carved under the orders of Anubanini, the king of the Lullubi, sometime around 2300 BCE or thereabouts. The relief shows Anubanini as a colossal figure, facing the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, who is portrayed as equally huge.

Anubanini is trampling a tiny, defeated foe beneath his foot. Ishtar leads two more captive enemies, who are shown as tiny and naked with their hands bound. The rope Ishtar is using to lead them runs through rings that have been put in their noses. Beneath Anubanini is a row showing six more tiny, naked prisoners being led with their hands bound, the foremost of whom is wearing a crown, indicating that he is a king whom Anubanini has defeated.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the Anubanini rock relief in Kermanshah Province, Iran, dating to around 2300 BCE

We see the same thing again in the relief carvings of the battles of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II from the Ramesseum at Luxor; they all show him as a giant who is several times larger than everyone else in the scene, rushing into battle in his chariot, armed with a bow and arrow, trampling dozens of tiny enemies before him.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the relief from the second court of the Ramesseum at Luxor depicting the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II plowing his enemies, who are depicted as tiny compared to him, in the Battle of Kadesh

ABOVE: Line drawing of the same relief of Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh from the second court of the Ramesseum

Naturally, this widespread artistic convention carried over into Achaemenid art. Xerxes I’s father Darius I is similarly depicted in as a colossal figure towering several heads above everyone else in several reliefs, including in the relief accompanying Behistun Inscription, which is thought to have been inspired by the Anubanini rock relief, carved on a cliff at Mount Behistun in Kermanshah Province, Iran, and in the relief carving at his tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam, which is nearly identical to the relief carving at Xerxes’s tomb and is thought to have been its inspiration.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the relief from the Behistun Inscription, showing Darius I as a colossal figure towering over his defeated enemies

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the relief carving from the tomb of Darius I at Naqsh-e Rostam

In other words, relief depictions of ancient Near Eastern kings that portray them as gigantic compared to everyone else are not meant to reflect the king’s actual, historical height. They are propaganda images meant to make the king more visible and to make him look as mighty and impressive as possible, regardless of what he really looked like.

At least in general, ancient people do not seem to have taken these images literally. They seem to have realized that their kings were not really twenty-foot-tall giants who could easily trample their enemies under their feet. Ancient authors, including Herodotos, generally assume that ancient Near Eastern kings are human beings of normal height. I suppose it is possible that someone or other in antiquity could have seen one of these relief carvings and thought that the king was really a giant, but I can’t think of a single ancient source off the top of my head that interprets any of the reliefs in this way.

Conclusion

There are three important lessons here. The first is that you shouldn’t get your history from 300 (or any other Hollywood film for that matter). The second is that, if you’re going to cite an ancient source to support an incredible claim, at least bother to read the source yourself to make sure it actually says what you’re claiming it says. The third is that ancient artistic depictions of kings are always propaganda images and they do not always reflect exactly what the king really, historically looked like.

These are all things that I thought should have been obvious, but I realize that what seems obvious to one person might not be obvious to others.