Hermotimus of Pedasa
Encyclopedia
Hermotimus of Pedasa was Xerxes the Great's favored royal eunuch
during the Persian Wars against Greece
(480 BC).
As a eunuch, not much factually is known about Hermotimus, because he was not as important to contemporary historians. Anecdotes still survive regarding the castration of Panionius in the winter of 480-481 BC, the same man who castrated Hermotimus and sold him as a boy. Hermotimus forced Panionius to castrate his sons, and then for his sons to castrate him, proving his ruthlessness and lack of passion that he was to show in the Persian Wars the following autumn.
After the loss at the Battle of Salamis
, Xerxes made Hermotimus the secondary guardian of some of the king's many illegitimate children, a role generally reserved for kings. After the end of the campaign, all record of Hermotimus disappears. It is likely that he lived out his life in the service of Xerxes and possibly Artaxerxes as a faithful eunuch.
Eunuch
A eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
during the Persian Wars against Greece
Greco-Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus...
(480 BC).
As a eunuch, not much factually is known about Hermotimus, because he was not as important to contemporary historians. Anecdotes still survive regarding the castration of Panionius in the winter of 480-481 BC, the same man who castrated Hermotimus and sold him as a boy. Hermotimus forced Panionius to castrate his sons, and then for his sons to castrate him, proving his ruthlessness and lack of passion that he was to show in the Persian Wars the following autumn.
After the loss at the Battle of Salamis
Battle of Salamis
The Battle of Salamis was fought between an Alliance of Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in September 480 BCE, in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens...
, Xerxes made Hermotimus the secondary guardian of some of the king's many illegitimate children, a role generally reserved for kings. After the end of the campaign, all record of Hermotimus disappears. It is likely that he lived out his life in the service of Xerxes and possibly Artaxerxes as a faithful eunuch.