Herodotus (Swayne)/Chapter 5

by George Carless Swayne

CHAPTER V.

DARIUS.

"In the theatre of the World
The people are actors all.
One cloth the sovereign monarch play;
And him the rest obey."—Calderon.

The jealous hatred which Cambyses bore to his brother Smerdis was so well known, that the Persians did not believe his dying declaration that the person who had seized his throne was an impostor. They accepted him as the true Smerdis, son of Cyrus. Such impostures are possible enough in a credulous age. A false Demetrius plays an important part in the history of Russia. There were many who disbelieved the fact of the two English princes having been smothered in the Tower; and many more, at quite a recent date, have believed that Louis XVII. escaped his jailers, and grew up to manhood. The secluded life of an Eastern monarch would give such an imposture additional chances of success.

The Magian usurper reigned for eight months under the name of Smerdis, giving great satisfaction to most of his subjects, for under him "the empire was peace." He remitted the heaviest taxes, and enforced no military conscription. At last his imposture came to light. Otanes, a Persian nobleman, whose daughter was one of his wives, was informed by her that her husband had no ears. Now the Magian was known to have lost his for some offence in the time of Cyrus.^[1] The result of this revelation was, that Otanes headed the famous conspiracy of the seven nobles, of whom Darius, the son of Hystaspes, sprung from a collateral branch of the royal family, and probably the next legal heir, was one. While they were concocting their plan of attack, a tragical event happened which made immediate action necessary. The Magians, knowing how cruelly Prexaspes had been treated by Cambyses,^[2] thought it their interest to conciliate him, and prevailed upon him to mount on a tower of the palace-wall, and make a speech to the people below, who had grown suspicious, to the effect that their present king was the true Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. But in this they made as fatal a mistake as Shakespeare's Brutus and Cassius did when they allowed Mark Antony to speak at Caesar's funeral. Prexaspes, instead of lying to please the Magians, proclaimed aloud the real state of the case, and then threw himself from the tower, and was killed on the spot.

The seven conspirators gained the presence of the false king and his brother with no great difficulty, but within they met with such resistance that two were badly wounded before they succeeded in despatching them. The others cut off the Magians' heads, carried them forth, and showed them to the populace. A general massacre of the Magian caste followed, which lasted till the night. Few of them survived this St Bartholomew of Susa. During the annual festival held henceforth under the name of Magophonia, which we might call the "Median Vespers," none of the hated class dared be seen abroad, though tolerated at other times.

The seven noblemen, according to Herodotus, now resolved themselves into a debating society, for the purpose of discussing different forms of government. That is to say, he here avails himself of an author's favourite licence to propound theories of his own. His sympathies are plainly with democracy, but historical exigencies obliged him to admit that monarchy was adopted. They agreed that one of the seven should be king, and the rest his peers, having free access to the royal presence on all but certain stated occasions. It was then arranged that all should ride their horses to an open place at sunrise, and choose as king the man whose horse was the first to neigh. This was really an appeal to the Sun, to whom the horse was sacred. The omen fell to Darius, by the cunning management of his equerry, and he was at once hailed as king. When he was established in the kingdom, he is said to have set up the figure of a man on horseback, with a commemorative inscription. The story may have been invented subsequently, to account for this work of art, as often happens.

Most valuable light has been thrown on the history of Darius by the discovery of the great Behistun inscription. On the western frontier of the ancient Media there is a precipitous rock 1700 feet high, which forms a portion of the Zagros chain, separating the table-land of Iran from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The inscription can only be reached with difficulty, as it is 300 feet from the base of the rock. It is in three languages,—old Persian, Babylonian, and Scythian,—executed, according to Sir H. Rawlinson, in the fifth year of Darius, B.C. 516. The wedge-shaped letters of the Persian copy were deciphered with infinite pains by this great archaeologist. Darius mentions in it, under the name of Gaumata, a Magian who personated Bardes^[3] (as he calls him), the son of Cyrus, and says that he slew him by the help of Ormuzd, the Good Spirit, and thus recovered an empire that belonged to his own family, restoring to the Persians the religion which they had lost by the Magian intrusion. He also records that after this he was engaged in quelling a general revolt of the provinces. The main facts accord with those of Herodotus, though there is some difference in the nomenclature. The end of the inscription invokes a curse on any one who might injure it, and this has probably tended to preserve it; just as the curse on Shakespeare's monument, at Stratford-on-Avon, may have conduced to prevent officious veneration from "moving his bones."

Darius was the first monarch of Persia who regulated the revenues, and assigned the sum that each satrapy ought to pay to the royal treasury. This caused the haughty Persian aristocracy to say of him, in their contempt for red tape, that Cyrus had been a father to the state, Cambyses a master, but Darius was "a huckster, who would make a gain of everything."

There can be no question that Herodotus had access, either personally or through friends, to the royal records of Persia, or copies of them. He gives a complete list of the various satrapies into which the empire was divided, of the several subject nations which it comprised, and the form and amount of their tribute. The Persians themselves, it must be remarked, like the Magyar grandees in Hungary formerly, were exempt from taxation, and only bound to military service. He says that the Indians, the most numerous race of all, paid into the royal treasury three hundred and sixty talents in gold dust, and that the whole annual revenue was computed at fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty talents, besides a fraction—more than three millions and a half of our money. But it must be considered that this corresponds to the modern Civil List, serving only to defray the expenses of the Court. These Indians must not be supposed to be those of the Peninsula, but rather those of Scinde and the Punjab. The gold which they brought into the royal treasury was said to come from a great desert to the eastward. In this desert there were ants—"bigger than foxes"—and in their hills the gold was found. To procure it the gold-hunters took camels, chiefly females with young ones, with which they proceeded to the place at the hottest time of day, when the ants were in their holes, filled their bags with the auriferous sand, and then hurried back to escape the pursuit of the ants; the female camels leading the way, as anxious to get back to their young ones. The existence of these gigantic ants has been asserted by comparatively modern travellers, but it seems probable that they must have been really ant-eaters, which burrowed in the hills, and which some informants of Herodotus may have seen.

Amongst the barbarian tribes in dependence on Persia, he mentions one called the Padæans, who, like the Massagetæ before mentioned, allowed none of their sick to die a natural death. The horrible story is quaintly told. "If a man is taken ill, the men put him to death to prevent his flesh being spoiled by his malady. He protests loudly that he never felt better in his life; but they kill and eat him notwithstanding. So, if a woman is ill, the women who are her friends do to her in like manner. (The decent division of the sexes is worth remarking.) If any one reaches old age—a very uncommon occurrence, for he can only do so on condition of never having been ill—they sacrifice him to the gods, and afterwards eat him." Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, writing about 1500, found the practice existing in Sumatra, where the relations assembled in the sick man's house, suffocated him, and then ate him, as he describes it, "in a convivial manner." Among other wonders he mentions Arabian sheep (the forefathers, no doubt, of our "Cape" breed) which had tails three cubits long, for which the shepherds made little trucks to keep them off the ground—"each sheep having a truck of his own." The mention of remarkable countries and productions leads Herodotus to observe that, while the Greeks have the finest climate, as inhabiting the middle of the earth, yet the farthest inhabited regions have the finest productions—tin, amber, and gold coming, for instance, from the ends of the earth; but in respect of horses he gives the palm to the Nisæan breed of Media. Palgrave, in his Travels in Arabia, speaks of the horses of Nedjid as the "cream of the cream" of equine aristocracy.

Soon after the accession of Darius, one of his seven fellow-conspirators, Intaphernes, got into trouble. He insisted on seeing the king during his hours of privacy, and being denied, cut off the noses and ears of two of the palace officials, and hung them round their necks. This displeased the king so much that he condemned Intaphernes and all the males of his family to death. But Darius was touched with pity by the lamentations of the wife of Intaphernes, and allowed her to choose which of her family she would save. She chose her brother—explaining, when the king showed some astonishment at her selection, that such a loss could not possibly be replaced, her father and mother being dead. Pleased with her wit, Darius gave her the life of her eldest son into the bargain. Sophocles adopts the same curious sentiment in his tragedy of Antigone. The general justice of Darius would lead to the suspicion that the crime of Intaphernes was of the nature of high treason, otherwise his family would hardly have been involved in his punishment.

The story of Democedes, a famous surgeon of Crotona, who was brought to Persia as a slave, is introduced by Herodotus to find a motive for the attention of the king being called to Greece. He had abundant reasons besides, as the history shows; but our author will not desert the theory of his choice, that Woman is the mainspring in all human affairs. Democedes had got into favour at court by successful treatment first of Darius himself, then of Atossa the favourite sultana. For this latter service he obtained leave to name his own reward, it was, to be allowed to visit his home; and, as Darius wished also to conquer Greece, in order that Atossa's desire of having some of "those Lacedæmonian handmaidens of whom she had heard so much" might be gratified, Democedes was sent to make the tour of Greece and its colonies on the Italian coast with a party of spies. When he reached his native Crotona, he chose to remain there, and was assisted by his fellow-townsmen against the Persians who tried to take him back with them. He bade the latter tell Darius that he was about to be married to the daughter of Milo the wrestler; wishing the king to know that he was a man of some mark in his own country, where—as in some cases amongst us moderns—athletics ranked even higher than science. These spies were said to have been the first Persians who visited Greece.

But Darius had no time to think of Greece just then, as his hands were full with a revolt in Babylonia and other provinces, which appears to have assumed larger proportions than those known to Herodotus. Samos was the first state which was unfortunate enough to draw upon itself the might of the Persian arms. The cause of this war was a cloak. When Cambyses was in Egypt with his army, one Syloson, brother of Polycrates of Samos, was also there in exile. He appeared one day at Memphis in a scarlet cloak, to which Darius, who was then a plain officer of the royal guards, took a fancy, and asked the wearer to name his price. Syloson, in a fit of generosity, begged him to accept it as a present; and it had no sooner been accepted than he repented of his good-nature. As matters turned out, the cloak of Syloson became as famous as that of Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh "spoilt a cloak and made a fortune," by spreading out his for Queen Elizabeth to walk on; Syloson, by giving his away, led the way to the ruin of his country. For when Darius came to the throne, Syloson introduced himself at court as the hero of the cloak, and Darius asked him what he could do for him in return. He requested to be put in possession of his late brother's dominion in Samos. Mæandrius, the secretary of Polycrates, who was at present in possession, was a man who had had greatness thrust upon him. When Polycrates was murdered, the secretary found himself in possession of Samos; and wishing to be "the justest of men," set up an altar to the god of Freedom, stipulating only that he should be appointed its high priest as a condition of his establishing democracy. Finding, however, that the "Irreconcilables" of the period intended to prosecute him for embezzlement, he had repented of his republican generosity, and made himself master of the citadel and city. Darius now sent out an expedition which put his friend Syloson in possession of the island, but not without an insurrection, which led to a terrible massacre of the people.

Babylon, according to the Behistun inscription, revolted from Darius twice—once in the first and again in the fourth year of his reign. It is difficult to identify with either of these occasions the revolt now mentioned by Herodotus. According to his account,—which in this instance must be regarded rather as romance than history—so determined was the attempt, that the Babylonians strangled most of their women, in order to reduce their population, in preparation for the expected siege. Darius soon sat down before the city, but the walls defied his utmost power; and the besieged began to jeer the Persians, telling them that "they would never take the city until mules foaled." However, in the twentieth month of the siege, a mule belonging to Zopyrus, a Persian of rank, did foal—an event perhaps not physically impossible; and Zopyrus thought that there must have been something providential in the taunt of the Babylonians, and that now the city might be taken. The sequel, whether true or not in an historical sense, is singularly illustrative of the chivalrous self-devotion of the Persian nobility in the interests of their monarch. Zopyrus proceeded to cut off his own nose and ears, clipt his hair close, got himself scourged, and in that state presented himself to Darius, and laid his plan before him.^[4] Darius was greatly shocked at his retainer's maltreatment of himself, but as it was too late to mend the matter, made the proposed arrangement. Zopyrus was to pretend to desert to the Babylonians, telling them that Darius had so ill-used him because he had advised him to raise the siege. The Babylonians would probably believe him, and intrust him with the command of a division. Darius must then be willing to sacrifice a few thousands of his worst soldiers to give the Babylonians confidence in Zopyrus, who, when he had the game safe in his hands, would open the gates to the Persian army. All turned out according to the programme. Zopyrus admitted the Persians, who took the city. Darius did his best to destroy the formidable walls, and had three thousand of the leading rebels impaled; but not wishing to depopulate the city, procured from the neighbouring nations fifty thousand women to make up for those whom the Babylonians had sacrificed. As for Zopyrus, the king loaded him with honours and made him governor of Babylon; but he was wont to say, more scrupulous than Henry IV. of France, who changed his religion to procure the surrender of the capital, thinking Paris "well worth a mass," that he would rather have Zopyrus unmutilated than be master of twenty Babylons.

1. This is the mildest form of mutilation, as the feature seems more ornamental than useful, except to those savage tribes in whom the muscle that moves the ear is developed. It was practised in England as late as the seventeenth century, for such offences as Nonconformity, Petty Treason, Libel, and the like. Prynne is a well-known instance. It is common now in Africa, and is said to give the head the look of a barber's block, but to be attended with no great inconvenience. The False Smerdis, as has been said, never went abroad, and probably wore his turban low on his head.
2. See p. 71.
3. The s, whether at the beginning or end of Persian names, is commonly only a Greek addition. So Bardy(a)—the vowel being pronounced though not written—is Smerdis, Gaumat(a) becomes Gomates, Yashtasp(a) Hystaspes, &c.—See Rawlinson, I. 27-29, note.
4. The town of Gabii, according to Livy, was taken by the Romans by a very similar stratagem.