Ochus, though successful in regaining the full extent of Persian dominion, was a sanguinary tyrant, who shed by wholesale the blood of his family and courtiers. About the year 338 B. C., he died, poisoned by the eunuch Bagôas, who placed upon the throne Arses, one of the king’s sons, killing all the rest. After two years, however, Bagôas conceived mistrust of Arses, and put him to death also, together with all his children; thus leaving no direct descendant of the regal family alive. He then exalted to the throne one of his friends named Darius Codomannus (descended from one of the brothers of Artaxerxes Memnon), who had acquired glory, in a recent war against the Kadusians, by killing in single combat a formidable champion of the enemy’s army. Presently, however, Bagôas attempted to poison Darius also; but the latter, detecting the snare, forced him to drink the deadly draught himself.[172] In spite of such murders and change in the line of succession, which Alexander afterwards reproached to Darius[173]—the authority of Darius seems to have been recognized, without any material opposition, throughout all the Persian empire. [172] Diodor. xvii. 5; Justin, x. 3; Curtius, x. 5, 22. [173] Arrian, ii. 14, 10. Succeeding to the throne in the early part of B. C. 336, when Philip was organizing the projected invasion of Persia, and when the first Macedonian division under Parmenio and Attalus was already making war in Asia—Darius prepared measures of defence at home, and tried to encourage anti-Macedonian movements in Greece.[174] On the assassination of Philip by Pausanias, the Persian king publicly proclaimed himself (probably untruly) as having instigated the deed, and alluded in contemptuous terms to the youthful Alexander.[175] Conceiving the danger from Macedonia to be past, he imprudently slackened his efforts and withheld his supplies during the first months of Alexander’s reign, when the latter might have been seriously embarrassed in Greece and in Europe by the effective employment of Persian ships and money. But the recent successes of Alexander in Thrace, Illyria, and Bœotia, satisfied Darius that the danger was not past, so that he resumed his preparations for defence. The Phenician fleet was ordered to be equipped: the satraps in Phrygia and Lydia got together a considerable force, consisting in part of Grecian mercenaries; while Memnon, on the seaboard, was furnished with the means of taking 5000 of these mercenaries under his separate command.[176] [174] Diodor. xvii. 7. [175] Arrian, ii. 14, 11. [176] Diodor. xvii. 7.