The only constraints Xerxes imposed on capabilities were his own aspirations. He hoped for the best, assuming that it would be the worst. He lived only in the present, cutting himself off from the past, where experience resided, and from the future, where the unforeseen lurked.19 Had Xerxes grasped these distinctions, he’d have seen that his armies and fleets could never have transported all that it would take just to invade Greece.
