336), Philip of Macedon was assassinated by the incensed Pausanias; and the two new monarchs--Codomannus, who took the name of Darius, and Alexander the Great--assumed their respective sceptres almost simultaneously.
Codomannus, the last of the Persian kings, might with some reason have complained, like Plato, that nature had brought him in the world too late.

Personally brave, as he proved himself into the Cadusian war, tall and strikingly handsome, amiable in temper, capable of considerable exertion, and not altogether devoid of military capacity, he would have been a fairly good ruler in ordinary times, and might, had he fallen upon such times, have held an honorable place among the Persian monarchs.

But he was unequal to the difficulties of such a position as that in which he found himself.

Raised to the throne after the victory of Chaeroneia had placed Philip at the head of Greece, and when a portion of the Macedonian forces had already passed into Asia, he was called upon to grapple at once with a danger of the most formidable kind, and had but little time for preparation.

It is true that Philip's death soon after his own accession gave him a short breathing-space: but at the same time it threw him off his guard.