[1] According to Greek sources she married her brother Cambyses II after her father's death, yet it remains problematic to determine the reliability of these accounts.

However, many of the allegations within the text, such as the killing of the Apis bull, have been confirmed as false, which means that the report of Cambyses' supposed incestuous acts are also contestable.

[2] When Darius I defeated the followers of a man claiming to be Bardiya (Smerdis), the younger brother of Cambyses II in 522 BC, he married Atossa.

Atossa's special position enabled Xerxes, who was not the eldest son of Darius, to succeed his father.

[5] Herodotus even goes so far as to suggest that her wanting Hellene servant-girls was a reason for her husband Darius the Great deciding to begin a campaign against Greece[6] in 492 BC.

She is celebrated in Matthew Arnold's 1882 poem ‘Poor Matthias’, which was about the death of a pet canary.