In this role, he allied himself with the Rhodian mercenary general Mentor, and with his help succeeded in once again making Egypt a province of the Achaemenids, probably from 342 BCE.
Mentor became general of the maritime provinces, suppressed the rebels in Egypt and sent Greek mercenaries to the king, while Bagoas administered the satrapies and gained such power that he was almost the real master of the Empire towards the end of Artaxerxes III's reign (Diod.
[1] Arses of Persia was the youngest son of Artaxerxes III and Atossa and was not expected to succeed to the throne.
His unexpected rise to the throne came in 338 BCE as a result of the death of his father, who, according to the Greek work of Diodorus Siculus, was poisoned along with most of his family by Bagoas with the assistance of a physician,[2][3] when the vizier fell out of favour with him.
A cuneiform tablet in the British Museum (BM 71537), however, suggests Artaxerxes III died from natural causes.
Arses remained little more than a puppet-king during the two years of his reign while Bagoas acted as the power behind the throne.
However, Bagoas again acted first in order to protect himself and managed to poison and kill Arses.
[5] According to the Bibliotheca historica by Diodorus Siculus, Bagoas became very wealthy by confiscating the sacred writings of the Egyptian temples and giving them back to the priests for large bribes (Diod.
[5] Bagoas' house in Susa, with rich treasures, was presented by Alexander the Great to Parmenion (Plut.
[5] Plutarch reports an angry letter from Alexander to Darius, naming Bagoas as one of the persons who organized the murder of his father, Philip II of Macedon.