Xerxes, King of the Persians, Crosses a Bridge with His Army

Though the bridge shown here resembles one that the artist might have seen spanning the Seine in Paris during the 1400s, the Boucicaut Master meant to represent the immense bridge that Xerxes I, the great Persian king, constructed to facilitate his invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. Of positively gigantic size, the bridge linked Asia Minor with Europe, and the entire Persian army--a million men--crossed it on foot. The author Boccaccio reported that soldiers sliced mountains and filled valleys in constructing their path, but he did not state exactly how the bridge was made. Historians today believe Xerxes' incredible bridge was actually made of ships linked together.