Darius I

Darius I ruled the Persian empire for thirty-six years and organised it into the machinery that held it together for two centuries. Born around 550 BC into a collateral branch of the Achaemenid house, he was a spear-bearer to Cambyses II and had no strong claim to the throne. He took it in 522 BC by killing a man ruling as Bardiya, Cambyses's brother, whom Darius claimed was an impostor, a magus named Gaumata. Almost everything about this comes from Darius himself, carved on the cliff at Behistun in three languages — the inscription that later allowed cuneiform to be deciphered — and most historians treat it as a usurper's justification. Nineteen battles and a year of campaigning were needed to suppress the revolts that followed. He then reorganised the empire. He divided it into some twenty satrapies with fixed annual tribute assessed in silver, separated civil from military command, and sent inspectors known as the king's eyes. He standardised weights and measures, issued the gold daric, built the Royal Road from Susa to Sardis with posting stations covering 2,700 kilometres, and completed a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. He built Persepolis as a ceremonial capital, whose reliefs show subject peoples bringing tribute rather than captives. He extended the empire into the Indus valley and across the Bosphorus into Thrace, and his Scythian campaign north of the Danube achieved nothing. The Ionian Revolt from 499 BC led to his invasion of Greece, and his forces were defeated at Marathon in 490 BC. He died in 486 BC preparing another.

• Lived: 550 BCE – 486 BCE
• Nationality: Persian
• Roles: ruler