involved in the strange proceeding recorded by Ctesias, that Cyrus secured his power by first adopting as his mother, and then marrying, Amytis, the daughter of Astyages, although her husband had to be slain to enable him to do this*. The first act of the revolution was thus brought to an end, and no further troubles seem to have arisen till after the death of Cyrus. The pedigree of the Achæmenids may, after what has been said, be with considerable probability set out as follows, in substantial accordance with Herodotus and Ctesias, as well as with the Behistun rock tablets. *Ctesias related that Astyages was first of all put in chains by Cyrus, but soon after released by his own hand, καὶ ὡς πατέρα τιμηθῆναι, καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα ̓Αμύτιν πρότερον μὲν μητρικῆς ἀπολαῦσαι τιμῆς, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ εἰς γυναῖκα ἀχθῆναι τῷ Κύρῳ, Σπιταμα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἀνῃρημένου, ὅτι ἐψεύσατο ἀγνοεῖν εἰπὼν ἐρευνώμενον 'Αστυΐγαν.........καὶ ὅτι πρὸς Βακτρίους ἐπολέμησε [Κῦρος] καὶ ἄγχώμαλος ἡ μάχη ἐγένετο· ἐπεὶ δὲ Βάκτριοι Αστυίχαν μὲν πατέρα Κύρου γεγενημένον, Αμύτιν δὲ μητέρα καὶ γυναῖκα ἔμαθον, ἑαυτοὺς ἑκόντες ̓Αμύτι καὶ Κύρῳ παρέδοσαν. It appears to me not unlikely that at the coronation of the Medo-magian kings, some ceremony like the proceeding which Ctesias states to have taken place was employed to typify the conveyance of absolute dominion over the earth,—an essential idea of Oriental sovereignty. That such a meaning might naturally be so symbolized is shown by the interpretation which the soothsayers put upon Julius Cæsar's dream (Suetonius, Jul. Cæs. § 8), and that which Hippias put upon his own (Herod. vi. 107). The case of Comon the Messenian refugee (Pausanias, iv. 26. 3) is still more decisive; and indeed Artemidorus (see Casaubon's note on the passage of Suetonius), whose work is a repertory of traditional interpretations, and therefore represents the notions of a much earlier time than his own, lays it down as a settled point that a dream like Cæsar's is an especially lucky one for a statesman, on the ground of its symbolizing an absolute dominion willingly acquiesced in. It is only natural that the ceremonies of a foreign hierarchy should be taken literally by a people not familiar with them, and hence the coarse charge of Catullus, embodying, no doubt, the vulgar notions prevalent in Rome at his time Nascatur magus ex Gelli matrisque nefando Nam magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet, Si vera est Persarum impia relligio.—Catullus, xc. That the interests of the Magians and those of the dynasty of Astyages were closely bound up together, and that the possible succession of Cyrus was looked forward to as something necessarily fatal to the former as well as the latter, appears from Herodotus (i. 120). The corrected pedigree will now in its turn enable us to offer an explanation of some parts of the Inscription which are otherwise unintelligible. Darius, in the first part of what may be called his annals, as well as in the tablet above his own figure in the bas-relief, asserts that there have been eight kings of his race before him, and that he himself is the ninth. As it is plain from the genealogy which accompanies this assertion that three of the number were not in the direct line from Achæmenes to himself, and consequently were not kings of Persia, they must be sought for elsewhere. I believe that they are Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, and the true Smerdis. It may be argued against this view, that as he speaks of Smerdis (Bartius) as a fomentor of troubles, it is not to be supposed that he would acknowledge him as a sovereign de jure. To this, however, I cannot agree. Ctesias expressly states that Cyrus left his son Tanyoxarces (who is identical with the Bartius of the inscription) an independent sovereign of a portion of his dominions, at the same time that he constituted the elder brother Cambyses his successor in the empire*; and although subsequent proceedings cost the younger son his life, yet this would not (I conceive) at all detract from the disposition to acknowledge his royal character. Jehu paid a similar mark of respect to the idolatress Jezebel immediately after he had caused her destruction (2 Kings, ix. 34). And it is to be observed, that Bartius's conduct is nowhere spoken of as if it had extended to open rebellion against Cambyses. He is rather conceived of as secretly tampering with the subjects of the latter, and, if destroyed at all during his reign, as cut off by assassination; and that in so mysterious a manner as to occasion very different reports both of the time and the circumstances of his death, and to furnish more than one pretender with plausible grounds for asserting his existence. For until after the death of Cambyses it was popularly believed that he was alive and reigning; therefore, up to that time it was impossible that he should have been publicly declared a rebel and as such deprived of his royal character, even if we grant that this consequence would, in oriental ways of thinking, follow from such a public declaration. And after the death of Cambyses, and the assertion being publicly made that the professed Bartius was an impostor, there would remain no motive for such a gratuitous insult to the memory of the real Bartius, a prince who no longer stood in the way of Darius. A To return to the history of the empire after the death of Cyrus, it may be gathered from every account of Cambyses that his distinctive character was that of a despiser of the prevailing religion, his hostility to which was carried to the extreme of intolerance. savage in temperament and filled with religious fanaticism, his policy put an end to the calm which had been produced by the compromise of his father Cyrus, and induced the troubles which it was the interest * Κῦρος δὲ μέλλων τελευτάν Καμβύσην μὲν τὸν πρῶτον υἱὸν βασιλέα καθίστη, Τανυοξάρκην δὲ τὸν νεώτερον ἐπέστησε δεσπότην Βακτρίων καὶ τῆς χώρας καὶ Χοραμνίων καὶ Παρθίων καὶ Καρμανίων, ἀτελεῖς ἔχειν Tas xúpas diopioάμevos. Ap. Photium, Biblioth. p. 37. of his brother Bartius, king of the Bactrians*, to foment. It was only natural under such circumstances that the Medians should seize the opportunity of Cambyses' absence in Egypt to endeavour to rid themselves of him, and at the same time revive the supremacy of their own religion. It had become a question between supremacy or extinction; and accordingly the general revolt spoken of in the Behistun tablets took place, and was for a time eminently successful, until the Ormuzd worshipers under the guidance of Darius-the next heir to the empire after the death of Bartius-once more obtained the victory, and by the consummate skill of their champion succeeded in consolidating it. Indeed the true political significance of the Magian usurpation,-represented as it is by Herodotus in the light of a private scheme, carried into effect by an ambitious and unprincipled pretender,-yet shows itself here and there in his narrative, in insulated passages which harmonize ill with the story that he follows in his main account, but are in exact agreement with the course of proceedings as recorded in the Behistun tablets. Several of these undesigned confirmations of the official account I have myself remarked, and probably more will be detected by a reader whose attention has been once called to the subject t. The narrative of Herodotus represents the cadastral system intro*See the passage of Ctesias quoted above in the last note, and the latter part of that in the note on page 20, by which last the attachment of the Bactrians to the Magian dynasty is proved to demonstration. I. Herodotus says that on the accession of Darius to the throne, he found the whole of Asia, with the exception of the Arabians, submissive to his rule, "Cyrus, and afterwards Cambyses, having subdued it" (iii. 88). But in the whole of his work there is no account of Cambyses having done anything of the sort. On the contrary, the expedition to Egypt is spoken of as if immediately following the death of Cyrus. But the Behistun inscription does imply something of the kind; for after mentioning troubles excited in the state by the true Bartius, and his death by Cambyses, it adds that the troubles then ceased and Cambyses went to Egypt. 66 II. Again, in describing the conduct of Orœtes (whose satrapy included nearly the whole of Asia Minor) after the Magian usurpation, Herodotus says that he gave no help to the Persians when they had been deprived of their sovereignty by the Medes" (iii. 126),—a phrase appropriate not to a mere personal usurpation, as he represents the Magians' to have been, but to a revolution restoring the relative position of Medes and Persians as it had existed in the time of Astyages. It is therefore exactly in keeping with the account of the rock-tablets. III. On this same principle perhaps may be explained another passage (i. 130), which has given a great deal of trouble to the commentators. After winding up the account of the dethronement of Astyages and the subjection of the Medes to the Persians, in consequence of the acerbity of the Median monarch's temper, Herodotus adds, that subsequently the Medes repented of the course they had taken, and revolted from Darius, but on doing so were subdued and again put down. This notice has been assumed to refer to the revolt under Darius Nothus, which was put down in the year 408 B.C., and of course the chronology of the matter occasions great difficulty. One can hardly conceive Herodotus engaged in writing his history so late as this, or that if he meant Darius Nothus, he would not have added some qualifying expression to distinguish that monarch from his much more celebrated ancestor. Even if an ancient interpolation, this might be looked for. I myself cannot but think that here there is either a perversion of the revolt under the Gomates of the Behistun inscription (which was quelled by Darius), or an allusion to the Veisdates of the same (who really revolted from Darius), or-which in my duced by Darius as his first measure after setting up the monument to which the strange story of his horse (iii. 89) was attached. But this system, from its very nature, implies a centralization of government. It was calculated by its operation to render the monarch far more independent of his powerful vassals, and likewise to procure him personal popularity in the outlying countries, the imposts on which were fixed by it at a definite sum, instead of being left dependent on the will of the ruffianly chiefs who happened to be in command. It was only to be expected that this limitation of arbitrary power should be unpalatable to the semi-barbarous Persian chivalry, and that they should express their contempt for the financial turn of their sovereign by nicknaming him "a tradesmant." Now when Herodotus puts the erection of the monument and the introduction of the cadastral scheme together, this is (I apprehend) due to the circumstance of the two relating to the two salient points of Darius's life. His accession to the throne of Media not merely made him the feudal superior of the king of Persia, but united in one family the hereditary sovereignty of both countries, and thus furnished him with a power that his predecessors had not possessed,—that of converting a bundle of states into an organic whole. Except under such circumstances, it is likely that the centralization effected by him would have been impossible; and we see that those Persians who were not Achæmenids, as well as the Magian usurpers, are represented by Herodotus as pursuing the opposite policy, and one calculated to encourage the independence of the separate states. But even with such advantages of opinion is the most likely of all (see the second note on page 25)-a compression of the two rebellions into one. IV. Herodotus, although he does not expressly say that the murder of the Magian usurper took place in Susa, yet by implication shows that he laid it there (iii. 64, 70, 76). Yet he uses the expression of Darius: παραγίνεται ἐς τὰ Σοῦσα ἐκ Пepréшv йкwv. This expression (see iii. 30) is as inappropriate as it would be to say that a person came to Kendal out of Westmoreland. But it appears from the Behistun inscription that the destruction of the Magian really took place, not in Susa, but "in the fort Siktakhotes, in Nisæa the province of Media:" and to kill him there, Darius may very well have come "out of Persia." * Orates is represented by Herodotus (iii. 127) as having, at the time of the Magian usurpation, the government of " the Phrygian, Lydian, and Ionic nomes." The only check upon this absolute dominion over the whole of Asia within the Halys was the presence of the Achæmenid Mitrabates, who had the satrapy of which Dascyleum was the seat of government. This hindrance Orates removed by a violent death (iii. 126), and showed by unmistakeable conduct that he intended to assert his independence of the new monarch, to whom he stood in very much the same relative position as Vespasian to Vitellius on the accession of the latter to the throne of the Cæsars. Herodotus (it is to be observed) describes the position of Orœtes in terms of the later division into satrapies, although it is quite clear that such a division could not have been made at the time Orates was appointed: for it was in the time of Cyrus (iii. 120) that he went to his post, probably as the successor of Harpagus, who had completed the conquest of the country (i. 162) begun by Mazares (i. 156, 161.) + κánηλos, Herod. iii. 89. The Magians were greatly regretted by all the Asiatic states when they were killed, with the solitary exception of the Persians (iii. 67). Orates abstained from aiding the movement against them, when he had the whole force of Asia at his command (iii. 127). And Aryandes asserted the power of a sovereign by issuing a coinage (iv. 166). position, it is inconceivable that such a revolution as that effected in the creation of the Persian empire (as we find it at the end of Darius's reign) can have been brought about by him rapidly. It is more reasonable to consider it as the ultimate state into which things subsided at the end of a long series of wars and civil troubles. And this is exactly what the Behistun inscription would lead us to believe. The annals, which take up the greater portion of the first and the whole of the remaining three tablets which completed the original monument, are nothing more or less than the details of those campaigns which issued in the acquisition of absolute dominion over the twenty-three provinces, these provinces themselves being enumerated immediately after the formal recitation of Darius's titles, that is, in the very beginning of the inscription. The acquisition of the empire and its reduction under a system of central government is plainly regarded by the Persian monarch in the same light as the French Code was by Napoleon: it is the great work in which he looks to go down to posterity,—the résumé of his achievements. Before it could have been effected, the spirit of the individual races must have been quelled, their separate interests fused together, and the weight of individual nobles diminished to an extent which could scarcely have been produced by any other agency than that which the inscription shows us to have been at work, viz. bloody wars of race and religion, terminating in the establishment of a central predominant power wielding the resources of the whole empire. Such a course of events is quite natural, and in accordance with what has taken place in many other countries. The struggles which resulted in the supremacy of Darius have their parallel in the Thirty Years' War of modern Europe, and in our own Wars of the Roses. Henry the Seventh is the English Darius in many important elements of his character and fortunes, although wanting his personal accomplishments and generous temper. Conformably to what might have been expected from a train of events such as has been sketched out, it appears that Darius changed the seat of government from Agbatana to Susa. This was as important a step as it would be to transfer the British court and legislature from London to Edinburgh; or as it would have been if the Bourbons on their restoration had made Bordeaux the capital of France *. Yet the fact only appears indirectly from the narrative of Herodotus, who is perfectly unconscious of the momentous revolution of interests necessarily involved in such a policy, and never explicitly notices it at all. (See i. 153 and iii. 64, compared with iii. 129; vi. 119; vii. 3; ix. 108.) Again, the extreme anxiety about the personal identity of Bartius (Smerdis), and the very mysterious circumstances attending his death, receive an entirely new illustration if the relationship of Darius *This is even an understatement of the case. In the East, where there is no class of capitalists, all artisans are maintained, from day to day, by the personal expenditure of the wealthy. The change of the seat of government is therefore a sentence of emigration or utter ruin to the non-agricultural portion of the community. |