Darius in the Shadow of Alexander

Pierre Briant, Jane Marie Todd

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780674493094
• eBook ISBN: 9780674745209
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

The last of Cyrus the Great's dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Yet, despite being the most powerful king of his time, Darius remains an obscure figure.

As Pierre Briant explains in the first book ever devoted to the historical memory of Darius III, the little that is known of him comes primarily from Greek and Roman sources, which often present him in an unflattering light, as a decadent Oriental who lacked the masculine virtues of his Western adversaries. Influenced by the Alexander Romance as they are, even the medieval Persian sources are not free of harsh prejudices against the king D?r?, whom they deemed deficient in the traditional kingly virtues. Ancient Classical accounts construct a man who is in every respect Alexander's opposite—feeble-minded, militarily inept, addicted to pleasure, and vain. When Darius's wife and children are captured by Alexander's forces at the Battle of Issos, Darius is ready to ransom his entire kingdom to save them—a devoted husband and father, perhaps, but a weak king.

While Darius seems doomed to be a footnote in the chronicle of Alexander's conquests, in one respect it is Darius who has the last laugh. For after Darius's defeat in 331 BCE, Alexander is described by historians as becoming ever more like his vanquished opponent: a Darius-like sybarite prone to unmanly excess.

Notes

Preface to the English-Language Edition

1. I have attempted to give an assessment in Alexander the Great and His Empire, trans. A. Kuhrt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 159–185 (“The History of Alexander Today: A Provisional Assessment and Some Future Directions”). Among the many publications on different versions of the Alexander Romance, see, for example, R. Stoneman, K. Erickson, and I. Netton, eds., The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East (Groningen: Barthuis, 2012), where, curiously, the figure of Darius/Dārā is never discussed as such.

2. See my “Empire of Darius III in Perspective,” in Alexander the Great: A New History, ed. W. Heckel and L.-A. Tritle (Oxford, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 141–170, repr. in Alexander the Great: A Reader, ed. I. Worthington, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 152–195. On the transition, see P. Briant and F. Joannès, eds., La transition entre l’empire achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques, c. 350–300 av. J.C. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006).

3. In French, see the book reviews by L. Martinez-Sève in Revue des Études Grecques 116, no. 2 (2003): 722–724; C. Mossé in Annales HSS 5 (2005): 1071–1072; X. Tremblay in Revue des Études Anciennes, 109, no. 1 (2007): 381–383; M.-F. Baslez in Topoi 14, no. 2 (2006): 515–517; and the review article by P. Payen, “L’‘ombre’ des Grecs,” Revue de Philologie 78, no. 1 (2004): 141–154; in German, H. Koch in Orientalia 74, no. 4 (2005): 440–442; in Italian, D. Ambaglio in Athenaeum 93, no. 2 (2005): 707–709; and in English, J.-P. Stronk in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (March 10, 2004) (unpaginated: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004–03–10.html); R. Stoneman in Classical Review 56, no. 2 (2006): 415–417; M. Brosius in Gnomon 78, no. 5 (2006); 426–430. In the pages that follow, I will refer to these reviews by the name of the author and the year of publication.

4. Histoire de l’empire perse (1996), hereafter cited as HEP, translated into English as From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (HPE), chap. 18: “Darius and the Empire Confront Macedonian Aggression.”

5. See, in particular, “ ‘Brigandage,’ conquête et dissidence en Asie achéménide et hellénistique,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 2 (1976): 163–259 (prepared in 1972–1974), whose main arguments are revised and extended in my État et pasteurs au Moyen-Orient ancien (Paris: Maison des Sciences de L’Homme; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and “Sources grecques et histoire achéménide,” in Rois, tributs et paysans (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1982), pp. 491–506. The latter article, very dated, illustrates the state of the documentation as it existed some thirty years ago. Although the questions raised remain valid, I would now write the article in a completely different way.

6. Since Histoire de l’empire perse (1996), I have given two successive assessments in Bulletin d’Histoire Achéménide (BHAch 1, 1997, and BHAch 2, 2001). See, more recently, A. Kuhrt’s sourcebook The Persian Empire, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2007), and the proceedings of many Achaemenid colloquia held in different European countries, in Turkey, or in the United States between 2000 and 2012. See also my “Achaemenid Empire,” in The World around the Old Testament, ed. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, forthcoming).

7. Although they provide nothing about the king’s personality and very little about his politics, the primary sources do offer interesting information on the state of the empire on the eve of the Macedonian invasion (cf. Briant 2009, which complements Chapter 1 of this book, “A Shadow among His Own”). By contrast, the revolt of Cyrus the Younger is known primarily through Xenophon’s Anabasis (HPE, pp. 615–634), and any study of the Median Wars must be conducted (albeit very imperfectly) by means of Herodotus’s Histories (HPE, pp. 139–161, 525–542).

8. Within the discursive framework chosen by Tremblay, the use of terminology marked by a totally inappropriate Hellenocentrism (i.e., “Greek Asia”) is paradoxical to say the least. On the use that the historian of the Achaemenid Empire makes of certain inscriptions written in Greek (and sometimes in two or three ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the English-Language Edition
• Translator’s Note
• Epigraphs
• Introduction: Between Remembering and Forgetting
• I: The Impossible Biography
• II: Contrasting Portraits
• III: Reluctance and Enthusiasm
• IV: Darius and Dārā
• V: A Final Assessment and a Few Proposals
• Abbreviations
• Greek and Roman Sources
• General Bibliography
• Notes
• Thematic Notes by Chapter
• Illustration Credits
• Index