What was going on: As Herodotus tells it, Xerxes sat above the shore at Abydos watching his army and fleet fill the Hellespont. He called himself blessed, then wept, and his uncle Artabanus questioned him about it.
Xerxes said he felt pity: life is so short that of all these men, not one will be alive in a hundred years.
Xerxes said, “I was moved to compassion when I considered the shortness of all human life, since of all this multitude of men not one will be alive a hundred years from now.”