Pierre Briant is Emeritus Professor of History of the Achaemenid World and Alexander’s Empire at the Collège de France.

Briant is the world’s leading authority on the Persian empire that Alexander conquered, one of few living scholars with the linguistic mastery to study both the Greco-Roman and Persian sources and hence examine the reign of Darius from European and Asian perspectives. In the intensely thorough analysis he conducts here, he finds reasons to mistrust both traditions and thereby qualify the charge of cowardice that has shadowed Darius for more than two millennia… His insights are penetrating and his mastery of the evidentiary record is unsurpassed… Having deftly taken down much of the edifice supplied by the ancient accounts of Darius, Briant finally turns architect and shows us how the rebuilding might begin.

Pierre Briant is Emeritus Professor of History of the Achaemenid World and Alexander’s Empire at the Collège de France.

Briant is the world’s leading authority on the Persian empire that Alexander conquered, one of few living scholars with the linguistic mastery to study both the Greco-Roman and Persian sources and hence examine the reign of Darius from European and Asian perspectives. In the intensely thorough analysis he conducts here, he finds reasons to mistrust both traditions and thereby qualify the charge of cowardice that has shadowed Darius for more than two millennia… His insights are penetrating and his mastery of the evidentiary record is unsurpassed… Having deftly taken down much of the edifice supplied by the ancient accounts of Darius, Briant finally turns architect and shows us how the rebuilding might begin.