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Person550 BC – 486 BC

Darius I

Also called: Darius the Great

King of Achaemenid Persia (r. 522–486 BC) who organized the empire through satrapies and the Royal Road

From a collateral branch of the Achaemenid house, he seized the throne amid the turmoil after Cambyses II died. In his first year he crushed a series of revolts and justified his rule in the Behistun Inscription. He extended the empire to Thrace in the west and the Indus valley in the east, and completed a canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea. He sent an army to punish Athens for aiding the Ionian Revolt but was defeated at Marathon in 490 BC.

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3 related events

  1. 1
    522 BC – 486 BCThe Administration of Darius Imonarch

    Darius I divided the empire into some twenty provinces (satrapies) under governors (satraps), watched them through “the King’s Eyes and Ears”, and bound the empire together with the Royal Road and its relay stations.

  2. 492 BC – 479 BCPersian Warsmonarch

    Achaemenid Persia invaded Greece three times, but an alliance of city-states led by Athens and Sparta drove it back at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea.

  3. 2
    490 BCBattle of Marathonmonarch

    In 490 BC Athenian hoplites defeated a Persian army that had landed on the plain of Marathon in Attica.

Related works

  • Book: The HistoriesBook · 430 BC · Herodotus · Ἱστορίαι

People who appear alongside

  • Xerxes I465 BC

    King of Achaemenid Persia (r. 486–465 BC), son of Darius I, who invaded Greece in 480 BC and was defeated at Salamis

  • Themistocles

    Athenian statesman and general who built up the navy and defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BC

Themes this person appears in

  • Early Civilizations and Empires3500 BC – 486 BC

    From the first civilizations in the great river valleys to the first empires of the Near East, India and China — comparing their writing, law, religion and rule

  • Greece and Rome2000 BC – AD 476

    From the Aegean civilisation to the fall of the Western Roman Empire — the classical civilisation built by the democracy of the polis and the Roman republic and empire