{"product_id":"king-of-kings-darius-the-great-and-the-creation-of-the-persian-superpower-9798197226969","title":"King of Kings: Darius the Great and the Creation of the Persian Superpower","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Bertrand R. Hall\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Ancient - General\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe seized the throne by killing the man on it. Then he spent the rest of his life making the world forget that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 522 BCE, a Persian nobleman named Darius killed his way to the kingship of the world's largest empire, suppressed nine simultaneous revolts across nine provinces in a single year, and commissioned an inscription carved sixty meters up a cliff face to tell posterity exactly why this was all perfectly legitimate. The inscription was a masterwork of political engineering. So was the empire he built on top of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eKing of Kings\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of how Darius I transformed the Achaemenid Persian Empire from a military conquest into a functioning state - the most sophisticated administrative organization the ancient world had produced. The satrapy system, the Royal Road, the standardized coinage, the inspection network, the policy of religious tolerance that allowed thirty million people of a dozen faiths to live under a single political roof: none of these were inevitable. They were solutions to specific problems, worked out by a specific mind over three decades of relentless governance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe also marched into the Scythian steppe and found nothing to fight. He watched the Ionian revolt burn Sardis. He lost at Marathon. These things happened too, and this book does not look away from them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDarius died in 486 BCE leaving an empire intact, a succession settled, and institutions durable enough to outlast his dynasty by two centuries. He wanted ten thousand generations of remembrance. The cliff at Behistun is still there. So is everything he built.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Independently Published","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47891766378647,"sku":"9798197226969","price":1733.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9798197226969.webp?v=1781184747","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/king-of-kings-darius-the-great-and-the-creation-of-the-persian-superpower-9798197226969","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}