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Darius III, the last Achaemenid king, ascended the throne in 336 BC. Meanwhile, a new power was rising in Greece. Around 338, the Macedonian king Philip united the Greek city-states behind him. Within six years of Philip's death, his son Alexander the Great conquered the once invincible Persian empire.

Why did the Achaemenid Empire fall? Classical Greek accounts emphasize the increasing brutality and repression of the later Achaemenid kings, provoking violent uprisings among subject peoples and causing them to favor Alexander. According to classical historians, the Egyptians rejoiced at Alexander's arrival: “For since the Persians had committed impieties against the temples and had governed harshly, the Egyptians welcomed the Macedonians.” In Phoenicia, “the inhabitants accepted him willingly.” At Ephesus, after paying homage to the local sanctuary of Artemis, Alexander issued a proclamation to the Greek coastal cities: “He ordered the oligarchies everywhere to be overthrown and democracies to be established; he restored its own laws to each city…Straightway [sic] all the cities sent missions and presented the king with golden crowns and promised to co-operate with him in everything.”

Like the Cyrus cylinder, such accounts almost certainly contain a substantial dose of imperial propaganda. It is implausible that Alexander was universally hailed as a liberator. He was after all a conqueror and reputedly “the most brilliant (and ambitious) field-commander in history. “44 Nevertheless, it appears accurate that the later Achaemenid period was characterized by growing intolerance, unrest, and violence. This is consistent with the basic thesis of this book: As Persian rule grew more intolerant, it became increasingly difficult to maintain political stability across the vast Achaemenid domains or to harness the energies of diverse subject peoples in the service of the empire.

But here's the final and most important twist. Ironically, the very tolerance that enabled Cyrus and Darius to build their immense empire sowed the seeds of the intolerance that followed. As the world's first hyperpower, Achaemenid Persia faced—but never solved—the same fundamental problem that would confront every subsequent world-dominant power.

The Persians incorporated within their realm unprecedentedly large numbers of diverse peoples. This they accomplished because Cyrus and Darius had the shrewdness neither to try to Persianize their subjects nor to suppress their local religions, languages, social networks, and aspirations. Initially, some of these conquered peoples were so close to them—culturally, geographically, linguistically—that the Persians were able simply to absorb them. The Medes, for example, essentially merged with their Persian conquerors. But as the empire expanded, it came to include increasingly divergent peoples and cultures, which remained distinct communities under their Persian overlords.

Although militarily unified, the Achaemenid Empire had no overarching political identity, as modern nations do. No common religion, language, or culture bound the sprawling empire together. Precisely because of the legendarily tolerant policies of Cyrus the Great, “a Greek felt that he was a Greek and spoke Greek, an Egyptian felt that he was an Egyptian and spoke Egyptian, and so on.” Achaemenid subjects generally did not feel any special allegiance to the empire or take any particular pride in belonging to it—as, for example, the subjects of the Roman Empire did by the fourth century AD. “[Tjhere was no Achaemenid identity that might have induced the peoples, in all of their diversity, to rise up and defend some common norms.”45

As a result, powerful forces of disintegration lay at the heart of the empire. With increasing antagonism, the distinct peoples whose identities had been preserved and strengthened through Persian tolerance eventually turned on the empire itself. Lacking any strong ideological glue capable of holding the empire's disparate peoples together,