Early in his reign, Darius wanted to organize the loosely organized empire with a system of taxation he inherited from Cyrus and Cambyses.

Plutarch reports an angry letter from Alexander to Darius, naming Bagoas as one of the persons that organized the murder of his father, Philip II.

Around 500 BCE, following the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I, Old Aramaic was adopted by the conquerors as the " vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages.

The expedition was intended to bring the Cyclades into the Persian empire, to punish Naxos ( which had resisted a Persian assault in 499 BC ) and then to head to Greece to force Eretria and Athens to submit to Darius or be destroyed.

Darius introduced a reform of the administrative arrangements of the empire including the collection, codification and administration of local law codes, and it is reasonable to suppose that this policy lay behind the redaction of the Jewish Torah.

Alexander conquered the Persian Empire under its last Achaemenid dynast, Darius III, within a short time-frame and died young, leaving an expansive empire of partly Hellenised culture without an adult heir.

* 500 BC — Darius I of Persia proclaims that Aramaic be the official language of the western half of his empire.

Artobazan was born to " Darius the subject ", while Xerxes was the eldest son born in the purple after Darius's rise to the throne, and Artobazan's mother was a commoner while Xerxes's mother was the daughter of the founder of the empire.

Some modern historians suspect that Cambyses may have been assassinated, either by Darius as the first step to usurping the empire for himself, or by supporters of Bardiya.

Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans ( Bulgaria-Romania-Pannonia ), portions of north and northeast Africa including Egypt ( Mudrâya ), eastern Libya, coastal Sudan, Eritrea, as well as most of Pakistan, the Aegean Islands and northern Greece / Thrace-Macedonia.

Darius expanded his empire by conquering Thrace and Macedon and invading Scythia, home of the Scythians, nomadic tribes who invaded Media and had previously killed Cyrus the Great.

Darius also worked on construction projects throughout the empire, focusing on Susa, Pasargadae, Persepolis, Babylon and Egypt.

When Cyrus awoke from the dream, he inferred it as a great danger to the future security of the empire, as it meant that Darius would one day rule the whole world.

Several days after Gaumata had been assassinated, Darius and the other seven nobles discussed the fate of the empire.

After securing his authority over the entire empire, Darius embarked on a campaign to Egypt where he defeated the armies of the Pharaoh and secured the lands that Cambyses had conquered while incorporating a large portion of Egypt into the Achaemenid Empire.

Darius asserted his position as king by force, taking his armies throughout the empire, suppressing each revolt individually.

Darius chose Aramaic as a common language, which soon spread throughout the empire.

Darius applied the coinage system as a transnational currency to regulate trade and commerce throughout his empire.

The daric was called dārayaka within the empire and was most likely named after Darius.

In the lands that were conquered by his empire, Darius followed the same Achaemenid tolerance that Cyrus had shown and later Achaemenid emperors would show.

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.

Darius reportedly offered all of his empire west of the Euphrates River to Alexander in exchange for peace several times, each time denied by Alexander against the advice of his senior commanders.

The Ionian revolt threatened the integrity of his empire, and Darius thus vowed to punish those involved ( especially those not already part of the empire ).

It was paired with a Darius Milhaud opera, `` The Poor Sailor '', set to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, a kind of Grand Guignol by the sea, a sailor returns, unrecognized, and gets done in by his wife.

It was occupied by the Persians in 514 BC, and Darius burnt it in 512.

The opposing armies are distinguished by the colors of their uniforms: Darius ' army in red and Alexander's in blue.

Because Daniel continues to pray three times a day to God towards Jerusalem, he is accused and King Darius, forced by his own decree, throws Daniel into the lions ' den.

The vision in first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus ( 9: 1 ) concerning seventy weeks, or seventy " sevens ", apportioned for the history of the Israelites and of Jerusalem ( 9: 24 ) This consists of a meditation on the prediction in Jeremiah that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, a lengthy prayer by Daniel in which he pleads for God to restore Jerusalem and its temple, and an angelic explanation which focuses on a longer time period-" seventy sevens "-and a future restoration and destruction of city and temple by a coming ruler.

Zerubbabel comes into the story, appointed by Darius as governor over the district of Yehud Medinata.

Authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC, the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius, including his ancestry and lineage.

It was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate Greece.

Once the Ionian revolt was finally crushed by the Persian victory at the Battle of Lade, Darius began plans to subjugate Greece.

Darius I of Persia, as imagined by a Greek painter, 4th century BC

The revolt was used as an opportunity by Darius to extend the empire's border to the islands of the eastern Aegean and the Propontis, which had not been part of the Persian dominions before.

However in 490 BC, following up the successes of the previous campaign, Darius decided to send a maritime expedition led by Artaphernes, ( son of the satrap to whom Hippias had fled ) and Datis, a Median admiral.

According to Herodotus, the fleet sent by Darius consisted of 600 triremes.

* Cinéma, an orchestral composition by Erik Satie later arranged for piano duet by Darius Milhaud

The Hall of Hundred Columns at Persepolis, measuring 70 × 70 metres, was built by the Achaemenid king Darius I ( 524 – 486 BC ).

* La création du monde, a 1923 ballet by Darius Milhaud

Antonín Dvořák's String Quintet in G major, Op. 77 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Serenade in G major, K. 525 (" Eine kleine Nachtmusik ") are the most popular pieces in this repertoire, along with works by Darius Milhaud, Luigi Boccherini ( 3 quintets ), Harold Shapero, and Paul Hindemith.

Herodotus records that when heralds of the Persian king Darius the Great demanded " earth and water " ( i. e., symbols of submission ) of various Greek cities, the Athenians threw them into a pit and the Spartans threw them down a well for the purpose of suggesting they would find both earth and water at the bottom, these often being mentioned by the messenger as a threat of siege.

Afghanistan was inhabited by the Aryan tribes and controlled by the Medes until about 500 BC when Darius the Great ( Darius I ) marched with his Persian army to make it part of the Zoroastrian Achaemenid Empire.