Mardonius

Mardonius was a Persian nobleman, general and son-in-law of Darius I. He led early operations against Greece and later became one of Xerxes’s principal advisers during the invasion of 480 BC. After the Persian withdrawal from Attica, Mardonius remained with a selected army and attempted to divide the Greek coalition through diplomacy. He was killed at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, after which Persian land forces retreated from mainland Greece.

Mardonius appears in Christian Cameron’s Long War series and in other historical novels about Xerxes’s invasion. Fiction often casts him as the strategist urging conquest or as the capable commander left to repair a failed campaign. Greek sources dominate the evidence, so his motives and private relationship with the royal court are largely reconstructed from an enemy viewpoint.

In Christian Cameron’s Rage of Ares, after the Persian fleet is defeated at Salamis, Mardonius remains in Greece with a powerful land army and attempts to divide the alliance that opposes him. In Conn Iggulden’s Protector, Victory at sea does not end the invasion: Mardonius remains in Greece with a powerful army, and Athens must cooperate with Sparta despite bitter political divisions.