Guest
M any people know of Darius I (r. 522–486 B.C.) from events at the end of his reign—he’s the king who sent troops to ¿ ght the Greeks at Marathon in 490 B.C.—but fewer know how he rose to power. How Darius became king is one of the most fascinating mysteries of Persian history, and we’ll look into his murky beginnings in this lecture. We’ll also see that the reign of Darius I was a crucial moment in Persian history. The territories conquered by Cyrus and Cambyses were not yet integrated in a single whole; many of them had leaders who might want to reclaim their independence. Darius showed that he was capable of meeting this challenge and establishing an imperial ideology that would endure for almost 200 years.
