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End of an Empire, Dawn of a New One

All I ever wanted was to subordinate Darius as a King under me, much like I had in Egypt with the Pharaoh. But before I could make such an offer, one of Darius’ men, Bessus, took matters into his own hands and killed Darius.

In many ways, Bessus solved one of my great problems but also created another one.

How did he solve my problem? I could have never killed Darius. Well, I could have. I knew that, he knew that, the Persians knew that. What I mean is that it would not have looked good…

You know, having a Macedonian King killing a Persian King in order to become King of Kings. It would have looked good on my résumé and all, in theory, but in practice, it would have hurt my chances of getting Persians to serve under me.

How did he create a problem?

Was it because Bessus robbed me of the opportunity to kill Darius myself? Hell no! I was killing enough people right and left.

The problem was that Bessus had sought to become King of Bactria and Sogdiana where he was already a satrap. He was at least technically a descendent of the Achaemenid Empire. He named himself Artaxerxes IV. He did, one could argue, claim a stake on the monarchy.

As a result, he had to be eliminated.

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