Tom Holland

And one of these distant cousins is Darius, who, when Cambyses becomes king, is still in his 20s.

And he is the lance bearer to Cambyses, which might sound a slightly menial function, but it doesn't because it indicates that essentially he's playing the role of a personal bodyguard.

And

The proximity to the monarch in Persia is a kind of indicator of status.

So actually, it's a very kind of splendid honorific.

I mean, it marks you out as certainly a kind of major player at court, even if you're not a royal.

And it enables Darius clearly to be privy to very, very sensitive royal secrets.

He's got his finger on the pulse.

He knows what's going on.

And that is what enables him in the summer of 522, when the dynasty of Cyrus abruptly implodes, to have a very good idea of what is going on and to know how to respond.

So tell us what happens next.

So Bardia has been killed on the orders of Cambyses, who is still kind of whooping it up in Egypt, which he's just conquered.

The twist is that Bardia is now replaced in the eastern provinces by someone who looks exactly like Bardia, but isn't.

So the Magi are the kind of the Persian equivalent of the Brahmins.

They're like a kind of priestly caste.

And this kind of fake Magus, I mean, by amazing coincidence, he exactly resembles Bardiya.

And this fake Bardiya then stages a rebellion against Cambyses.

The news is brought to Cambyses in Egypt.

He's furious, of course.

He leaps on his horse, leads an expedition out of Egypt through Syria.