Darius I

Darius I was the first king of the Achaemenid Dynasty, which ruled over the Persian Empire until it was defeated by Alexander III of Macedon. For a reconstruction of the events of his reign, as well as details of the structure of the Persian Empire, one has to rely on sources originating in the territory of the Persian realm and on the work of Herodotus, who gives quite an idiosyncratic account of both. Darius came to the throne after overcoming a usurper, which is how he became heir to the Teispid Dynasty. The expansion of his realm into Thrace and Hellas, as well as the Ionian revolt, which he crushed, marked the beginning of the Persian–Greek War, which assured Darius a place in western cultural memory, where he is styled as a threat to Greek and thus western freedom. This is especially true for the famous battle of Marathon in 490 bce. Darius is certainly the king who established and shaped the structure of the Persian Empire to the greatest extent. He created a form of self‐staging which had as its intended audience not only the traditional elites of the empire but also, through the translation of crucial texts, the local elites. Darius established the administrative structures of the Persian Empire which endured until the Macedonian takeover.