The Death of Darius I and the Succession of Xerxes

Darius I died in late 486 BCE, probably in November, after a reign of thirty-six years and at an age of about sixty-four. He left behind an Egypt in revolt and an unfinished plan for a new war against Athens. His successor was Xerxes, his eldest son by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great, chosen over an older half-brother in one of the smoothest successions in Achaemenid history.

Darius’s last years

After the defeat at Marathon in 490 BCE, Herodotus says, Darius was more determined than ever to punish Athens and spent three years gathering ships, horses, food and soldiers from across the empire. In the fourth year after Marathon, around 486 BCE, Egypt revolted. Herodotus gives no reason, but heavy demands for the coming war may have played a part. Darius now faced two campaigns at once, and he was no longer young.

Inside the empire, the last decade of his reign was a period of building and administration rather than crisis. The Persepolis terrace was rising, with the Apadana and his own palace, the Tachara, under construction (see Building Persepolis), and the Fortification tablets show a busy, well-supplied administration in Fars until 493 BCE.

A contest between brothers

Herodotus reports that a Persian king had to name his successor before leaving on campaign. Darius had sons by several wives. Before he became king he had married a daughter of Gobryas, one of his fellow conspirators of 522, and had three sons by her, the eldest called Artobarzanes. After he took the throne he married Atossa, daughter of Cyrus and widow of both Cambyses and Bardiya, and had four sons by her, the eldest Xerxes.

According to Herodotus, Artobarzanes claimed the throne as the eldest son, while Xerxes argued that he was the grandson of Cyrus and the first son born to Darius as king. Herodotus adds a Greek touch: the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, then living at the Persian court, is said to have advised Xerxes to stress that he was born while his father was king, as was the custom in Sparta. Herodotus himself doubts that this was decisive. Atossa, he writes, held all the power, and Xerxes would have been king anyway.

Other Greek and Roman writers tell a different version. Plutarch names the rival brother Ariamenes and describes a friendly settlement, with the loser accepting his brother’s rule and receiving honours. The names and details cannot be reconciled, and none of these writers had access to court records.

Xerxes’s own account

The Persian side survives in a single inscription. In a text found at Persepolis, known to scholars as XPf, Xerxes states that Darius had other sons, but that, by the will of Ahura Mazda, his father made him the greatest after himself. The inscription confirms the key fact behind Herodotus’s story: Xerxes was not the eldest son, and his choice needed explaining. It also shows how the royal family presented the decision, as the father’s choice and the god’s will rather than a matter of birth order.

Some historians think Xerxes was formally named heir years before his father’s death and took on public duties. Reliefs from the Treasury at Persepolis show a seated king with a prince standing behind him. These were once taken to be Darius and Xerxes, but the identification is not certain, and some scholars prefer Xerxes and his own son. What is clear is that, unlike the deaths of Cyrus and Cambyses, Darius’s death did not set off a civil war.

Death and burial

The date of death comes from Babylonian documents, which were dated by the regnal years of the reigning king. The last tablets dated to Darius belong to November 486 BCE and the first dated to Xerxes to early December, so Darius died in between. Ctesias, a Greek doctor at the Persian court some eighty years later, says he died after an illness of thirty days. Ctesias is unreliable on many points, and this detail cannot be checked.

Darius was buried at Naqsh-e Rostam, about six kilometres from Persepolis, in a tomb cut high into the cliff. Its cross-shaped facade copies the front of a palace, and above it a relief shows the king standing on a platform carried by figures representing the peoples of the empire. Two inscriptions accompany it. One, DNa, lists the lands he ruled and describes his conquests. The other, DNb, is a statement of royal character: the king says he is a friend to right, not to wrong, that he does not lose his temper, and that he rewards and punishes according to what each man has done. Xerxes later had much of this text copied in his own name, a sign of how he wished to be seen as his father’s heir. The tomb set the pattern for three later kings buried beside him; see The Royal Tombs of Naqsh-e Rostam.

What Xerxes inherited

The new king’s first task was Egypt. Xerxes reconquered it in 484 BCE and placed his brother Achaemenes there as satrap. The war against Greece, prepared by Darius, now became Xerxes’s war. Greek writers, especially Herodotus, later shaped the story so that Xerxes appears to have been talked into invading by ambitious advisers like Mardonius. That is a literary pattern as much as a record of court debate. Xerxes’s reign is covered in Xerxes I: King of Kings, and the invasion itself in Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. The site’s general article on the Persian Empire gives the wider setting.