Esther 10

Xerxes the Great reigned from 486 BC until his top bodyguard assassinated him in 465 BC. He’s the king perhaps best known for defeating King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of Thermopylae and then destroying Athens and taking control of mainland Greece. Xerxes later left and took his army home. But many scholars say this Xerxes is fictional—a weak-minded caricature of the powerful ruler.

Also known as the “Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia.” This is possibly the same records the sleepless king read in Esther 6:1, when he learned that Mordecai may have saved him from an assassination. It was only a reprieve. His top bodyguard assassinated him later, in 465 BC.