Darius II: Did you mean...?

Persian Archers at Darius' palace at Susa. Exhibited in Pergamon Museum / Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.

Darius I's (c. 550-486 BCE) trilingual inscription, in Akkadian or Babylonian, Elamite, and old Persian, carved on the Behistun rock relief from the village of the same name.

Tombs of the Achaemenid kings of Darius I, Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I at Naqsh-e Rostam.

The Persian Wars, also known as the Greco Persian Wars, were a series of battles fought between Ancient Greece and the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the 5th century BCE. The most famous of these battles are the Battle of Marathon, the Battle...

The Hellenistic World (from the Greek word Hellas for Greece) is the known world after the conquests of Alexander the Great and corresponds roughly with the Hellenistic Period of ancient Greece, from 323 BCE (Alexander's death) to the annexation...

Originality in literary compositions in the ancient world did not carry the same weight and value as it does today. In recent centuries, authors have been applauded for the creation of original works and have been derided for plagiarism or...

Cyrus the Great (558-530 BCE) built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus River. This was the famous Achaemenid Empire of Persia. An inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam, the tomb of his able successor Darius I (521-486...

Herodotus' Histories with their historical, geographical, ethnographic, and religious aspects, have always been a source of delight and interest, not only for generations of readers, students, and storytellers, but also for artists. A complete...

Behistun Inscription, Column 1 (DB I 1-15) Sketch: Fr. Spiegel, Die altpers. Keilinschriften, Leipzig

In which John compares and contrasts Greek civilization and the Persian Empire. Of course we're glad that Greek civilization spawned modern western civilization, right? Maybe not. From Socrates and Plato to Darius and Xerxes, John explains...