Bessus

Bessus governed Bactria under the Achaemenid Empire when Darius III still held the throne. In 330 BC he killed Darius and proclaimed himself Artaxerxes V, King of Kings, attempting to rally the eastern provinces against Alexander's advance. The empire he claimed began dissolving almost immediately — even Bactria, his power base, slipped away. He fled north into Sogdia, where his own men arrested him and turned him over to the Macedonian king. Alexander had him executed at Ecbatana in the summer of 329 BC. A thousand years later the Persian epic Shahnameh remembered him under the name Janusipar…