Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 725

ROBERT ROLLINGER

University of Innsbruck

In a famous story about court intrigue, SEX and crime, incest, and atrocities staged within the walls of an inaccessible Persian palace and withheld from the views of a large public, Artaÿnte, XERXES’ niece and daughter‐in‐law (daughter of his brother MASISTES and wife of his son DARIUS) becomes the object of Xerxes’ DESIRE after the Great King first unsuccessfully yearned for Masistes’ anonymous wife (9.109–12). The story is a didactic play of unlimited DESPOTISM and the ruthless violation of established social structures (Bichler 2000, 358–59). Xerxes’ wife AMESTRIS takes terrible VENGEANCE, not against Artaÿnte but against her mother, whom she orders to be maimed. As a consequence Masistes and his family are extinguished. The name is Iranian with good Iranian etymology (Schmitt, IPGL 114–15 (no. 72)).

SEE ALSO: End of the Histories; Mutilation; Short Stories; Violence; Women in the Histories