Emperor at the Height of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Perfecter of Its Administration
Darius I (reigned c. 550–486 BC), having seized the Persian throne by a palace coup, expanded the territory of the Achaemenid Empire to its historical greatest extent, reaching from the Indus valley all the way to the Balkans. He divided the empire into some twenty satrapies, each managed by a "satrap," while sending "the King’s Eyes and Ears" as secret inspectors to tour the provinces, and built the "Royal Road" connecting Susa and Sardis, establishing relay stations along the way to greatly speed the transmission of information — this system of satrapies and post roads thereafter became a classic paradigm of the administration of great ancient empires. The two Greco-Persian Wars he launched (above all the Battle of Marathon) ended in failure, yet were also the first large-scale military collision of East and West, profoundly shaping the later collective ancient Greek imagination of "Persia" as the image of "Oriental despotism."
Darius I ordered a massive inscription and relief carved on a cliff in western Iran, recounting in three cuneiform scripts — Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian — the course of his seizure of the throne and the achievements of his rule; this "Behistun Inscription" thereafter became the most crucial "Rosetta Stone"-like parallel text for nineteenth-century scholars deciphering cuneiform, of foundational significance for the whole study of ancient Near Eastern history.
In 490 BC Darius I sent an army on an expedition to Greece, but was defeated by the Athenian army on the plain of Marathon; the messenger Pheidippides is said to have died of exhaustion after a long run to bring news of the victory, and this legend is the direct origin of the name of the modern marathon race. This defeat thereafter prompted his son Xerxes I to launch the larger second Greco-Persian War.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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