Darius III of Persia

Darius III (Artashata) (c. 380–330 BC, Persian داریوش Dāriūš, ) was the last king of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia from 336 BC to 330 BC. It was under his rule that the Persian Empire was conquered during the Wars of Alexander the Great (for more information on the name, see the entry for Darius I.)

Appointment
Artaxerxes III of Persia and all of his sons except one, Arses, were killed off through the assassination plots of a Vizier named Bagoas, who installed Arses on the throne as a puppet king. When he found out Arses couldn’t be controlled, however, Bagoas killed him off as well in 336 BC, and installed to the throne a man named Codomannus, the last surviving legitimate heir to the Persian throne. Codomannus was a distant relative of the royal house who had distinguished himself in a combat of champions in a war against the Cadusii and was serving at the time as a royal courier. Codomannus was the son of Arsames, son of Ostanes, one of Artaxerxes's brothers and Sisygambis, daughter of Artaxerxes II Memnon. He took the throne at the age of 46.

Codomannus took the regnal name Darius III, and quickly demonstrated his independence from his assassin benefactor. Bagoas then tried to poison Darius as well, when he learned that even Darius couldn't be controlled, but Darius was warned and forced Bagoas to drink the poison himself. The new king found himself in control of an unstable empire, large portions of which were governed by jealous and unreliable satraps and inhabited by disaffected and rebellious subjects, such as Khabash in Egypt. Compared to his ancestors and his fellow heirs who had since perished, Darius had a distinct lack of experience ruling an empire, and a lack of any previous ambition to do so. Darius was a ruler of entirely average stamp, without the striking talents and qualities which the administration of a vast empire required during that period of crisis.

In 336 BC Philip II of Macedonia was authorized by the League of Corinth as its Hegemon to initiate a sacred war of vengeance against the Persians for desecrating and burning the Athenian temples during the Second Persian War. He sent an advance force into Asia Minor under the command of his generals Parmenion and Attalus to "liberate" the Greeks living under Persian control. After they took the Greek cities of Asia from Troy to the Maiandros river, Philip was assassinated and his campaign was suspended while his heir consolidated his control of Macedonia and Greece.

Conflict with Alexander
In the spring of 334 BC, Philip's heir, Alexander the Great, who had himself been confirmed as Hegemon by the League of Corinth, invaded Asia Minor at the head of a combined Macedonian army. This invasion, which marked the beginning of the Wars of Alexander the Great, was followed almost immediately by the victory of Alexander over the Persians at Battle of the Granicus. Darius never showed up for the battle, because there was no reason for him to suppose that Alexander intended to conquer the whole of Asia, and Darius may well have supposed that the satraps of the ‘lower’ satrapies could deal with the crisis, so he instead decided to remain at home in Persepolis and let his satraps handle it.

Darius did not actually take the field against Alexander’s army until a year and a half after Granicus, at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. His forces outnumbered Alexander's soldiers by at least a 2 to 1 ratio, but Darius was still outflanked, defeated, and forced to flee. It is told by Arrian that at the Battle of Issus the moment the Persian left went to pieces under Alexander’s attack and Darius, in his war-chariot, saw that it was cut off, he incontinently fled – indeed, he led the race for safety. On the way, he left behind his chariot, his bow, and his royal mantle, all of which were later picked up by Alexander. Darius fled so far so fast, that Alexander was able to capture Darius’s headquarters, and take Darius’s family as prisoners in the process. Darius petitioned to Alexander through letters several times to get his family back, but Alexander refused to do so unless Darius would acknowledge him as the new emperor of Persia. In 331 BC, Darius' sister-wife Statira, who had otherwise been well-treated, died in captivity, reputedly during childbirth.

Circumstances were more in Darius’s favor at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. He had a good number of troops who had been organized on the battlefield properly, he had the support of the armies of several of his satraps, and the ground on the battlefield was almost perfectly even, so as not to impede movement. Despite all these beneficial factors, he still ended up losing to Alexander. When Darius perceived the fierce attack of Alexander, as at Issus he turned his chariot around, and was the first to flee, once again abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. Many Persian soldiers lost their lives that day, so many in fact that after the battle the casualties of the enemy ensured that Darius would never again raise an imperial army. Darius then fled to Ecbatana and attempted to raise a third army, while Alexander took possession of Babylon, Susa, and the Persian capital at Persepolis. Alexander could have declared victory after the capture of Persepolis, but he instead decided to pursue Darius.

Flight, imprisonment and death
Darius did put some effort towards restoring his once great army after his defeat at the hands of Alexander, but Darius failed to raise an army comparable to that which had fought at Battle of Gaugamela, partly because defeat had undermined his authority, and partly because Alexander’s liberal policy, for instance in Babylonia and in Persis, offered an acceptable alternative to Persian domination. Darius felt his land, his subjects, indeed his very empire, being taken away from him very quickly, and there was not much he could do to stop it.

During Darius’s flight after the Battle of Gaugamela, Bessus, the satrap of Bactria who had fought alongside him at the battle of Gaugamela, and appeared to be a loyal friend, betrayed him for his own selfish interests. At the first halt the Bactrians surrounded the tent of the Shah, and in the quiet of the night he was put in chains, to be carried off a prisoner into Bactria. The men who had seized Darius had decided that if they learned that Alexander was pursuing them, they would surrender Darius to him and get something out of it for themselves, effectively turning Darius from an emperor into nothing more than a bargaining chip. Deserters from the Persian army whom Alexander encountered on the road informed him of this. It was becoming increasingly clear that Darius could no longer put up any sort of fight. Darius was no longer shah, but a fugitive without a city, army, or throne, at the mercy of the satraps of the northeast, and no longer dangerous, except as a symbol or an article of barter in their hands, yet still Alexander pressed on, determined to catch him.



In 330 BC, Darius met his death at Bessus's hands, who stabbed him and left his dying body in a wagon to be found later by one of the Macedonian soldiers. This proved to be a disappointment to Alexander, who wanted to capture Darius alive. Alexander saw Darius’s dead body in the wagon, and took the signet ring off the dead king’s finger. Afterwards he sent Darius’s body back to Persepolis and ordered that he be buried, like all his royal predecessors, in the royal tombs. Alexander gave Darius a magnificent funeral and eventually married Darius' daughter Statira at Opis in 324 BC. According to historian Plutarch, Alexander also took on as eromenos one of Darius' catamites, the eunuch Bagoas.

With the old king defeated and given a proper burial, Alexander's rulership of Persia became official. So ended Darius’s life, with his last purpose being to serve as a vehicle for Alexander’s ascension to the throne of Asia. The idea of Darius as ’great and good’ is belived by most scholars to be a fiction of legend. He may have possessed the domestic virtues, but otherwise he was a poor type of despot, cowardly and inefficient, and under his rulership, the entirety of the Persian Empire fell to a foreign invader.

After killing Darius, Bessus took the regal name Artaxerxes V and began calling himself the King of Asia. He would later be captured by Alexander, and subsequently tortured and executed in a manner befitting traitors to the Persian royal house.

The Persians referred to Alexander’s castle in Persia as the “Kelah-i-Dive-Sefid,” meaning Castle of the White Demon, with Alexander representing the Div-e Sepid of the Shahnameh epic.