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Alexander was determined that Darius would not get away from him a second time.
Over jagged hills and shifting dunes, Alexander chased the Great King, urging his swift riders on through freezing desert nights and days cruelly elongated by the summer sun.
But when Alexander finally caught up with his foe, Darius lay dying.
In the dirt, amidst upturned wagons and mules broken from exhaustion, the Great King of Persia bled out, murdered by his own men.
Alexander had Darius's body cleaned and dressed, and returned to his mother.
And so, a mere five years after he inherited the crown of Macedon, Alexander seized the diadem of Persia. A king of kings, to be sure.
The killers of Darius he hunted down; the cities that resisted his rule he stormed. But in truth, most of the Persian governing class willingly exchanged one king for another.
Power such as Alexander now possessed is rarely left untroubled. Alexander caught word of a plot to kill him, hatched within his own court.
The would-be assassins were rounded up and executed — among them Philotas, son of Parmenion.
Philotas had known of the conspiracy, but said nothing: a crime, Alexander declared, as heinous as the plot itself.
But what of Parmenion? The moment he learned that his son had been executed, he would be sure to act, and he had thousands of loyal men beneath him.
No… He too would have to die.
Armed and belted men in my tent. So he's finally decided to do away with me.
Will you resist, sir?
No, I won't.
But tell the boy-king this: the gods cannot abide excess.