The Achaemenid Persian Period

The Achaemenid Persian Period covers the rule of the Achaemenid dynasty, founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BCE, which built the largest empire the ancient world had yet seen, stretching at its height from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. Cyrus's conquests, including the capture of Babylon in 539 BCE, were followed by the administrative innovations of Darius I, who divided the empire into provinces called satrapies, standardized coinage and built the Royal Road to speed communication across the empire's vast territory. The period is also defined by the Greco-Persian Wars of the early fifth century BCE, in which Persian invasions of mainland Greece under Darius and his son Xerxes I were ultimately repelled at battles including Marathon, Salamis and Plataea. The Achaemenid Empire endured until Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia between 334 and 330 BCE brought the period to an end.