In 336 B. C., the last king of the Persian Empire, Darius III., surnamed
Codomannus, succeeded to power. With the great battle in the plains of
Gaugamela, in Assyria, known as the battle of Arbela, from a town fifty
miles distant, where Darius had his headquarters before the struggle,
the Persian Empire came to an end in October, 331 B. C. The defeat of
Darius was decisive; and in 330 he was murdered in Parthia by Bessus,
one of his satraps. Asiatic Aryans had succumbed at last to their
kinsmen of Europe, who, after repelling Oriental assaults upon the home
of a new civilization, had carried the arms of avenging ambition into
Asia, and struck a blow to the heart of the older system.