Darius the Great

(noun)

The third king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, who ruled at its peak from c. 522-486 BCE.

Related Terms

Examples of Darius the Great in the following topics:

  • The Achaemenid Empire

    • Under Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, the Achaemenid Empire became the first global empire.
    • The Achaemenid Empire, c. 550-330 BCE, or First Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great, in Western and Central Asia.
    • Yet in 522 BCE, Darius I, also known as Darius the Great, overthrew Gaumata and solidified control of the territories of the Achaemenid Empire, beginning what would be a historic consolidation of lands.
    • Between c. 500-400 BCE, Darius the Great and his son, Xerxe I, ruled the Persian Plateau and all of the territories formerly held by the Assyrian Empire, including Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Cyprus.
    • Cyrus II of Persia, better known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.

  • Government and Trade in the Achaemenid Empire

    • When Darius I (550-486 BCE), also known as Darius the Great, ascended the throne of the Achaemenid Empire in 522 BCE, he established Aramaic as the official language and devised a codification of laws for Egypt.
    • The Behistun Inscription, the text of which Darius wrote, came to have great linguistic significance as a crucial clue in deciphering cuneiform script.
    • The inscription begins by tracing the ancestry of Darius, followed by a description of a sequence of events following the deaths of the previous two Achaemenid emperors, Cyrus the Great and Cyrus’s son, Cambyses II, in which Darius fought 19 battles in one year to put down numerous rebellions throughout the Persian lands.
    • Under Darius the Great, Persia would become the first empire to inaugurate and deploy an imperial navy, with personnel that included Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cypriots, and Greeks.
    • Darius the Great moved the capital of the Achaemenid Empire to Persepolis c. 522 BCE.

  • Defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great

    • Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BCE to form the largest empire in the ancient world.
    • Alexander then chased the ruling Persian king, Darius III, into Media and then Parthia.
    • As Alexander approached, Bessus had his men fatally stab the Great King and then declared himself Darius' successor as Artaxerxes V, before retreating into Central Asia to launch a guerrilla campaign against Alexander.
    • He claimed that, while dying, Darius had named him as his successor to the Achaemenid throne.
    • Mosaic representing the battle of Alexander the Great against Darius (III) the Great, possibly at Battle of Issus or Battle of Gaugamela, perhaps after an earlier Greek painting of Philoxenus of Eretria.

  • The Persian Wars

    • According to Herodotus, he received the ambiguous answer that “if Croesus was to cross the Halys [River] he would destroy a great empire”.
    • Specifically, the riot was incited by the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras, who in the wake of a failed expedition to conquer Naxos, utilized Greek unrest against Persian king Darius the Great to his own political purposes.
    • Darius vowed to exact revenge against Athens and developed a plan to conquer all Greeks in an attempt to secure the stability of his empire.
    • After the failure of the first Persian invasion, Darius raised a large army with the intent of invading Greece again.
    • During preparations to march on Egypt, Darius died and his son, Xerxes I, inherited the throne.

  • The Rise of Classical Greece

    • The conflict began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BCE.
    • Subsequently, Darius the Great, the Persian ruler, sought to secure his empire from further revolts and interference from the mainland Greeks and embarked upon a scheme to conquer all of Greece.
    • However, the following year, the Allied Greek states went on the offensive, defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea and ending the invasion of Greece.
    • The Delian League continued the campaign against the Persians for the next three decades.
    • It is the first known democracy in the world.

  • Alexander the Great

    • He overthrew the Persian King Darius III and conquered the entirety of the Persian Empire.
    • Alexander earned the honorific epithet "the Great" due to his unparalleled success as a military commander.
    • At Issus in 333 BCE, his first confrontation with Darius, he used the same deployment, and again the central phalanx pushed through.
    • The advance proved successful and broke Darius's center, and Darius was forced to retreat once again.
    • Bust of a young Alexander the Great from the Hellenistic era, now at the British Museum.

  • Zoroastrianism

    • The most important texts of the religion are those of the Avesta, which includes the writings of Zoroaster, known as the Gathas and the Yasna.
    • The Gathas are enigmatic poems that define the religion's precepts, while the Yasna is the scripture.
    • According to Herodotus i.101, the Magi were the sixth tribe of the Medians (until the unification of the Persian empire under Cyrus the Great, all Iranians were referred to as "Mede" or "Mada" by the peoples of the Ancient World).
    • Darius I, and later Achaemenid emperors, acknowledged their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions (as attested to several times in the Behistun inscription), and appear to have continued the model of coexistence with other religions.
    • Whether Darius was a follower of Zoroaster has not been conclusively established, since devotion to Ahura Mazda was (at the time) not necessarily an indication of an adherence to Zoroaster's teaching.

  • The Indo-Aryan Migration and the Vedic Period

    • He based his conclusions on the remains of unburied corpses found in the top levels of the archaeological site of Mohenjo-daro, one of the great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, whom he said were victims of war.
    • The Rigveda describes the most notable of these conflicts, the Battle of the Ten Kings, between the Bharatas tribe and a confederation of ten competing tribes on the banks of what is now the Ravi River in northwestern India and eastern Pakistan.
    • The invasion of Darius I (a Persian ruler of the vast Achaemenid Empire that stretched into the Indus Valley) in the early 6th century BCE marked the beginning of outside influence in Vedic society.
    • The Indo-Aryans settled various parts of the plain during their migration and the Vedic Period.
    • Describe the defining characteristics of the Vedic Period and the cultural consequenes of the Indo-Aryan Migration

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