Darius III
Dareios
Artashata, a collateral Achaemenid of the royal house through his great-grandfather Darius II, raised to the throne in 336 BC by the eunuch-vizier Bagoas after the murders of Artaxerxes III and his son Artaxerxes IV — and, so the tradition says, made Bagoas drink his own poison when the eunuch tried the same with him. Faced Alexander in person at Issus in 333 and at Gaugamela in 331, fled both times; captured by his own satrap Bessus of Bactria after Gaugamela and stabbed in his wagon on the Caspian road at Hecatompylos in July 330 (Arr. *Anab.* 3.21–22). Alexander, following hard behind, found the corpse and is said to have covered it with his own cloak and sent it for royal burial at Persepolis — a gesture that underwrote Alexander's claim to be the legitimate Great-King successor, not the conqueror-destroyer.
