hairs on the tail, and a beetle mark on its tongue. But the tyrant would have it that they were making merry over his calamities. In vain did the natives whom he had himself intrusted with the government of Memphis strive to explain the real cause of the rejoicing. They were all put to death. The priests who were next summoned gave the same explanation; and Kambyses said that he would see this tame god who had come among them. The beast was brought, and Kambyses, drawing his dagger, wounded him on the thigh. 'Poor fools, these then are your gods,' he cried, 'things of flesh and blood, which may be wounded by men. Truly the god and his worshippers are well matched: but you shall smart for raising a laugh against me.' So the priests were scourged; an order was issued that everyone found in holiday guise should forthwith be slain; and the feast was broken up in terror. The calf-god pined away and died in the temple; and the priests in secret buried it with the wonted rites. From this time, so said the Egyptians, Kambyses became hopelessly mad. It is possible that his madness may have been not without method, and that these insults to Apis and his worshippers were only part of a deliberate plan, such as would commend itself to Nadir Shah or Timour, for crushing the spirit of the conquered nation; but the opinion must remain little more than a conjecture. It is to this period that Herodotos assigns the murder of his brother whom, in jealousy of his strength and beauty, he had sent back to Sousa. In the dreams which followed his departure the tyrant had seen a herald and heard from his lips that Smerdis sat on a throne and that his head touched the heaven. Putting on this vision the only interpretation which would suggest itself to a despot, Kambyses at once sent Prexaspes home with orders to slay the prince. When it was afterwards discovered that the deed had been done to no purpose, Prexaspes swore solemnly that he had not only slain but buried him with his own hands; but the historian admits that while one account represented him as murdering Smerdis on a hunting expedition, others said that he had enticed him out to sea and thrown him overboard. The Behistun inscription shuts out both these tales by saying that the tyrant's brother was murdered long before the army started for Egypt. Kambyses and the We now come to the last act of the tragedy. The army had reached on its homeward march a Syrian village named Agbatana, when a herald coming from Sousa bade all Persians to own as their king not Kambyses who was deposed but his brother Smerdis the son of Cyrus. To a question of Prexaspes, put by the order of Kambyses, the herald replied that he had received his message not from the new king, whom he had never seen, but from the Magian who was over Magian his household. A further question put by Kambyses to Prexaspes himself called forth the answer that he knew not who could have hatched this plot but Patizeithes, whom Kambyses had left at Sousa as his high steward, and his brother Smerdis. So then this was the Smerdis whose head was to touch the heaven: and the despot wept for his brother whom he had so uselessly done to death. Presently he said that he would march on at once against the usurper, and leaping on his horse gashed his thigh (the part where he had wounded the calf-god) with his sword from which the sheath had accidentally fallen off. 'What is the name of this place?' asked Kambyses, when he felt that the wound was serious. They told him that he was at Agbatana; and the tyrant, knowing now that only a misinterpretation of the oracle from Bouto which said that he must die at Agbatana had led him to indulge in pleasant dreams of an old age spent among the Median hills, confessed that his brother had been righteously avenged. His remaining days or hours were spent in bewailing his evil deeds to his courtiers, and in exhortations to them to stand out bravely against the Magian usurpation which, he clearly saw, was designed to transfer to the Medes the supremacy of the Persians. His words were naturally received with little faith, for Prexaspes, of course, swore as stoutly before the Persians that he had never harmed Smerdis as he had to Kambyses averred that he had buried him with his own hands; and thus the Magian Smerdis became king of the Persians. Such is the dramatic version of Herodotos, which absolutely needs the doubling of the names Agbatana and Smerdis. The Be The conspiracy of the Seven Persians. histun inscription, it is said, affirms that Kambyses killed himself purposely; that the name of the Magian was Gomates, not Smerdis; and that his usurpation was a religious, and not, as has been generally supposed, a national rebellion, its object being to restore the ancient magism or element worship, which the predominance of the stricter monotheism of Zoroaster had placed under a cloud. The details of the sequel may be passed lightly over. The false Smerdis, who had had his ears cut off, is discovered by the daughter of Otanes, who passes her hands over his head while he sleeps; and Otanes, taking counsel with Aspathines and Gobryas, gains over to the conspiracy Intaphernes, Megabyzos, and Hydarnes, Dareios being admitted last of all as the seventh, on his arrival from the province of Persia Proper, of which his father Hystaspes was the viceroy. The number of conspirators being complete, two debates follow, the first issuing in the resolution to slay the Magian and his supporters at once; the second, after their death, to determine the form of government which it would be wise to set up. Otanes, the author of the conspiracy, having proposed a republic on the ground that in no other way can a really responsible government be attained, is opposed by Megabyzos who, urging that the insolent violence of the mob is quite as hateful as that of any despot, recommends an oligarchy, while Dareios with the old stock argument that, if the ruler be perfect as he ought to be, no form of polity can be preferable to monarchy, insists that the customs of the Persians shall not be changed. Upon this, Otanes, it is said, seeing that things would go as Dareios wished, made a paction that he would neither be king himself nor submit to anyone else as king. He and his successors with their families should remain independent for ever, while the king on his part must covenant to take his wives only from the families of the seven conspirators, who should have as their special privilege the right of entering the king's presence without being announced. The sovereign power was to belong to that man whose horse should neigh first after being mounted on the following morning. Such a The acces reios to the Persian throne. 520 B.C.(?) All these conditions, it has been urged, furnish clear evidence that these seven conspirators are not, as Herodotos supposes,. founders of seven families who form henceforth the highest nobility of Persia, but heads of seven existing sion of Daprincely houses, who thus carried into action their protest against the usurpation of the infidel. national movement may have taken place: but we can scarcely venture to affirm the fact positively, while the Behistun inscription compels us to reject almost every portion of the story as given by Herodotos. Of the mutilation of the Magian by Kambyses, of his discovery through the agency of Phaidyme, of the conspiracy of the Seven, this monument says absolutely nothing. To the version of Herodotos, who represents Dareios as the last who joined the conspirators, it gives the most complete contradiction. Dareios asserts unequivocally that no one dared to say anything against the Magian until he arrived. To the seven he makes no reference, unless possibly in the words that 'with his faithful men' he fell on the Magian and slew him, while the legend of his election by the trick of his groom Oibares is put aside by his assertion that the empire of which Gomates dispossessed Kambyses had from the olden time been in the family of Dareios. The incidents so rejected are the chief and essential features in the narrative of Herodotos; and the rock inscription must, on the supposition of their truth, have made to them at least some passing allusion, if 1 Niebuhr, who takes this view, Lect. Anc. Hist. i. 131, says that as these seven grandees continue to be mentioned in later Persian history, and as Dareios, being an Achaimenid. was one of them, only six would have remained, so that the families cannot be the descendants of the seven conspirators. 2 This would mean that Cyrus, like Dareios, was an Achaimenid. not some direct reference. But if such a monument as the inscription of Behistun overthrows on such important points a series of narratives in the history of one of the most trustworthy of men, and if other large portions are to be set aside as mere reflexions of Hellenic thought or feeling, alike absurd and impossible in the East, with what trust may we receive any story which paints the course of intrigue and illustrates the secret history of a Persian or Assyrian Court? for, with the exception of the march of armies and tales of foreign conquest, the annals of those courts are only a secret history. Hints of execrable cruelties may force their way into the outer air; pictures of fancied luxury and generosity may light up the dim recesses of the hidden harem: but what reason have we to suppose that of any single motive we shall have a faithful description, of any single deed a true report? We have arrived at a time in which such intrigues and hidden motives are said to be the mainspring of actions affecting all Hellas; and the answer to this doubt must seriously affect almost the whole history of Persia in its connexion with events which have changed the fortunes of the world. CHAPTER II. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE UNDER DAREIOS THE death of the usurper who dethroned Kambyses was followed, it is said, by a general massacre of the Magians. This massacre The revolt of seems to point to a state of confusion and disorder Babylon. which, according to Herodotos,1 prevented Dareios from taking the strong measures which he otherwise would have taken The against some refractory or rebellious satraps of the empire. statement is amply borne out by the inscription of Behistun, which describes the early years of the reign of Dareios as occupied with putting down a series of obstinate insurrections against his authority. The massacre of the Magian and his partisans seems in no way to have deterred the Medians from making a general effort to recover the supremacy of which they had been deprived by Cyrus. But the fortune of war went against them. The revolt of Babylon may have appeared a matter even more serious; but our knowledge can scarcely be said to extend beyond the facts that it broke out and that it was with great difficulty suppressed; the walls of the 1 Herod. iii. 126, 127, 150. The phrases ή ταραχή, and οἰδεόντων τῶν pyμárov, if justified by the facts, would indicate a partial anarchy. city being now so far dismantled as to leave the place henceforth at the mercy of the conqueror. The despotes in tism of Poly Samos. But the worst enemies of Dareios came sometimes from his own people. In Aryandes, who had been appointed satrap of Egypt by Kambyses, he found a rival rather than a subject: but the career of the viceroy who dared to have an independent mint was soon cut short. Another formidable antagonist was Oroites, the satrap of Lydia, who has a wider fame as the murderer of Polykrates the despot of Samos. This unscrupulous tyrant had, it is said, seized on the government of the island some time before the Egyptian expedition of Kambyses, and had shared it at first with his brothers Pantagnotos and Syloson; but having afterwards killed the one and banished the other, he entered into a close alliance with Amasis king of Egypt, and soon achieved a greatness inferior only to that of Minos, like whom he is said to have had a navy which was the terror of the islands and countries round about. In the emphatic words of Herodotos, he was lord of the most magnificent city in the world. His war-ships plundered friends and foes alike; and the men of Lesbos who ventured to aid the Milesians paid the penalty by having to dig in, chains the moat round the wall of the city of Samos. But in spite of all his iniquities Polykrates enjoyed an unbroken good fortune; and his well-doing became, we are told, a cause of grief and misgiving to his ally Amasis, who reminded him of the Divine Jealousy, and counselled him to inflict some pain on himself, if none were sent to him by the gods. 'Seek out,' he said, 'that thing for the loss of which thy soul would most be grieved, and cast it away so that it may never come to mortal hand: and if hereafter thy good fortune be not mixed with woe, remedy it in the manner which I have set before thee.' This counsel Polykrates thought that he could not follow more effectually than by rowing out into the deep sea and casting into the water a seal-ring of emerald set in gold, wrought by the Samian Theodoros. A few days later a fisherman brought to him as a gift a fish which seemed to him too fine to be taken to the market. Polykrates in requital bade the man to supper: but before the time for the meal came, his servants had found the seal-ring in the fish. In great astonishment Polykrates sent to Amasis a letter telling him what had happened. The Egyptian king, feeling now that no man could deliver another from that which was to come upon him, sent a herald to Samos and broke off the alliance, in order that, when some evil fate overtook Polykrates, his own heart might not be grieved as for a friend. 1 Herod. iv. 166. 2 Ib. iii. 39. 3 Ib. iii. 55. |