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Darius the Great

by Jacob Abbott · English · Gutenberg #27802 · 344,913 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Darius the Great

Author: Jacob Abbott


        
Release date: January 13, 2009 [eBook #27802]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARIUS THE GREAT ***




Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









 Makers of History

 Darius the Great

 BY

 JACOB ABBOTT

 WITH ENGRAVINGS

 NEW YORK AND LONDON

 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

 1904




 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
 eight hundred and fifty, by

 HARPER & BROTHERS,

 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
 of New York.

 Copyright, 1878, by JACOB ABBOTT.




[Illustration: DARIUS CROSSING THE BOSPORUS.]




PREFACE.


In describing the character and the action of the personages whose
histories form the subjects of this series, the writer makes no
attempt to darken the colors in which he depicts their deeds of
violence and wrong, or to increase, by indignant denunciations, the
obloquy which heroes and conquerors have so often brought upon
themselves, in the estimation of mankind, by their ambition, their
tyranny, or their desperate and reckless crimes. In fact, it seems
desirable to diminish, rather than to increase, the spirit of
censoriousness which often leads men so harshly to condemn the errors
and sins of others, committed in circumstances of temptation to which
they themselves were never exposed. Besides, to denounce or vituperate
guilt, in a narrative of the transactions in which it was displayed,
has little influence in awakening a healthy sensitiveness in the
conscience of the reader. We observe, accordingly, that in the
narratives of the sacred Scriptures, such denunciations are seldom
found. The story of Absalom's undutifulness and rebellion, of David's
adultery and murder, of Herod's tyranny, and all other narratives of
crime, are related in a calm, simple, impartial, and forbearing
spirit, which leads us to condemn the sins, but not to feel a
pharisaical resentment and wrath against the sinner.

This example, so obviously proper and right, the writer of this series
has made it his endeavor in all respects to follow.




CONTENTS.


 Chapter                                                    Page

    I. CAMBYSES                                              13

   II. THE END OF CAMBYSES                                   38

  III. SMERDIS THE MAGIAN                                    59

   IV. THE ACCESSION OF DARIUS                               82

    V. THE PROVINCES                                         99

   VI. THE RECONNOITERING OF GREECE                         123

  VII. THE REVOLT OF BABYLON                                144

 VIII. THE INVASION OF SCYTHIA                              167

   IX. THE RETREAT FROM SCYTHIA                             189

    X. THE STORY OF HISTIAEUS                                210

   XI. THE INVASION OF GREECE                               233

  XII. THE DEATH OF DARIUS                                  264




ENGRAVINGS.


                                                            Page

 MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.

 DARIUS CROSSING THE BOSPORUS                    _Frontispiece._

 THE ARMY OF CAMBYSES OVERWHELMED IN THE DESERT              35

 PHAEDYMA FEELING FOR SMERDIS'S EARS                          69

 THE INDIAN GOLD HUNTERS                                    121

 THE BABYLONIANS DERIDING DARIUS FROM THE WALL              156

 MAP OF GREECE                                              232

 THE INVASION OF GREECE                                     256




[Illustration: MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.]




DARIUS THE GREAT




CHAPTER I.

CAMBYSES.

B.C. 530-524

Cyrus the Great.--His extended conquests.--Cambyses and
Smerdis.--Hystaspes and Darius.--Dream of Cyrus.--His anxiety and
fears.--Accession of Cambyses.--War with Egypt.--Origin of the war
with Egypt.--Ophthalmia.--The Egyptian physician.--His plan of
revenge.--Demand of Cyrus.--Stratagem of the King of Egypt.--Resentment
of Cassandane.--Threats of Cambyses.--Future conquests.--Temperament
and character of Cambyses.--Impetuosity of Cambyses.--Preparations for
the Egyptian war.--Desertion of Phanes.--His narrow escape.--Information
given by Phanes.--Treaty with the Arabian king.--Plan for providing
water.--Account of Herodotus.--A great battle.--Defeat of the
Egyptians.--Inhuman conduct of Cambyses.--His treatment of
Psammenitus.--The train of captive maidens.--The young men.--Scenes
of distress and suffering.--Composure of Psammenitus.--Feelings of the
father.--His explanation of them.--Cambyses relents.--His treatment of
the body of Amasis.--Cambyses's desecrations.--The sacred bull
Apis.--Cambyses stabs the sacred bull.--His mad expeditions.--The sand
storm.--Cambyses a wine-bibber.--Brutal act of Cambyses.--He is deemed
insane.


About five or six hundred years before Christ, almost the whole of the
interior of Asia was united in one vast empire. The founder of this
empire was Cyrus the Great. He was originally a Persian; and the whole
empire is often called the Persian monarchy, taking its name from its
founder's native land.

Cyrus was not contented with having annexed to his dominion all the
civilized states of Asia. In the latter part of his life, he conceived
the idea that there might possibly be some additional glory and power
to be acquired in subduing certain half-savage regions in the north,
beyond the Araxes. He accordingly raised an army, and set off on an
expedition for this purpose, against a country which was governed by a
barbarian queen named Tomyris. He met with a variety of adventures on
this expedition, all of which are fully detailed in our history of
Cyrus. There is, however, only one occurrence that it is necessary to
allude to particularly here. That one relates to a remarkable dream
which he had one night, just after he had crossed the river.

To explain properly the nature of this dream, it is necessary first to
state that Cyrus had two sons. Their names were Cambyses and Smerdis.
He had left them in Persia when he set out on his expedition across
the Araxes. There was also a young man, then about twenty years of
age, in one of his capitals, named Darius. He was the son of one of
the nobles of Cyrus's court. His father's name was Hystaspes.
Hystaspes, besides being a noble of the court, was also, as almost all
nobles were in those days, an officer of the army. He accompanied
Cyrus in his march into the territories of the barbarian queen, and
was with him there, in camp, at the time when this narrative
commences.

Cyrus, it seems, felt some misgivings in respect to the result of his
enterprise; and, in order to insure the tranquillity of his empire
during his absence, and the secure transmission of his power to his
rightful successor in case he should never return, he established his
son Cambyses as regent of his realms before he crossed the Araxes,
and delivered the government of the empire, with great formality, into
his hands. This took place upon the frontier, just before the army
passed the river. The mind of a father, under such circumstances,
would naturally be occupied, in some degree, with thoughts relating to
the arrangements which his son would make, and to the difficulties he
would be likely to encounter in managing the momentous concerns which
had been committed to his charge. The mind of Cyrus was undoubtedly so
occupied, and this, probably, was the origin of the remarkable dream.

His dream was, that Darius appeared to him in a vision, with vast
wings growing from his shoulders. Darius stood, in the vision, on the
confines of Europe and Asia, and his wings, expanded either way,
overshadowed the whole known world. When Cyrus awoke and reflected on
this ominous dream, it seemed to him to portend some great danger to
the future security of his empire. It appeared to denote that Darius
was one day to bear sway over all the world. Perhaps he might be even
then forming ambitious and treasonable designs. Cyrus immediately sent
for Hystaspes, the father of Darius; when he came to his tent, he
commanded him to go back to Persia, and keep a strict watch over the
conduct of his son until he himself should return. Hystaspes received
this commission, and departed to execute it; and Cyrus, somewhat
relieved, perhaps, of his anxiety by this measure of precaution, went
on with his army toward his place of destination.

Cyrus never returned. He was killed in battle; and it would seem that,
though the import of his dream was ultimately fulfilled, Darius was
not, at that time, meditating any schemes of obtaining possession of
the throne, for he made no attempt to interfere with the regular
transmission of the imperial power from Cyrus to Cambyses his son. At
any rate, it was so transmitted. The tidings of Cyrus's death came to
the capital, and Cambyses, his son, reigned in his stead.

The great event of the reign of Cambyses was a war with Egypt, which
originated in the following very singular manner:

It has been found, in all ages of the world, that there is some
peculiar quality of the soil, or climate, or atmosphere of Egypt which
tends to produce an inflammation of the eyes. The inhabitants
themselves have at all times been very subject to this disease, and
foreign armies marching into the country are always very seriously
affected by it. Thousands of soldiers in such armies are sometimes
disabled from this cause, and many are made incurably blind. Now a
country which produces a disease in its worst form and degree, will
produce also, generally, the best physicians for that disease. At any
rate, this was supposed to be the case in ancient times; and
accordingly, when any powerful potentate in those days was afflicted
himself with ophthalmia, or had such a case in his family, Egypt was
the country to send to for a physician.

Now it happened that Cyrus himself, at one time in the course of his
life, was attacked with this disease, and he dispatched an embassador
to Amasis, who was then king of Egypt, asking him to send him a
physician. Amasis, who, like all the other absolute sovereigns of
those days, regarded his subjects as slaves that were in all respects
entirely at his disposal, selected a physician of distinction from
among the attendants about his court, and ordered him to repair to
Persia. The physician was extremely reluctant to go. He had a wife and
family, from whom he was very unwilling to be separated; but the
orders were imperative, and he must obey. He set out on the journey,
therefore, but he secretly resolved to devise some mode of revenging
himself on the king for the cruelty of sending him.

He was well received by Cyrus, and, either by his skill as a
physician, or from other causes, he acquired great influence at the
Persian court. At last he contrived a mode of revenging himself on the
Egyptian king for having exiled him from his native land. The king had
a daughter, who was a lady of great beauty. Her father was very
strongly attached to her. The physician recommended to Cyrus to send
to Amasis and demand this daughter in marriage. As, however, Cyrus was
already married, the Egyptian princess would, if she came, be his
concubine rather than his wife, or, if considered a wife, it could
only be a secondary and subordinate place that she could occupy. The
physician knew that, under these circumstances, the King of Egypt
would be extremely unwilling to send her to Cyrus, while he would yet
scarcely dare to refuse; and the hope of plunging him into extreme
embarrassment and distress, by means of such a demand from so powerful
a sovereign, was the motive which led the physician to recommend the
measure.

Cyrus was pleased with the proposal, and sent, accordingly, to make
the demand. The king, as the physician had anticipated, could not
endure to part with his daughter in such a way, nor did he, on the
other hand, dare to incur the displeasure of so powerful a monarch by
a direct and open refusal. He finally resolved upon escaping from the
difficulty by a stratagem.

There was a young and beautiful captive princess in his court named
Nitetis. Her father, whose name was Apries, had been formerly the King
of Egypt, but he had been dethroned and killed by Amasis. Since the
downfall of her family, Nitetis had been a captive; but, as she was
very beautiful and very accomplished, Amasis conceived the design of
sending her to Cyrus, under the pretense that she was the daughter
whom Cyrus had demanded. He accordingly brought her forth, provided
her with the most costly and splendid dresses, loaded her with
presents, ordered a large retinue to attend her, and sent her forth to
Persia.

Cyrus was at first very much pleased with his new bride. Nitetis
became, in fact, his principal favorite; though, of course, his other
wife, whose name was Cassandane, and her children, Cambyses and
Smerdis, were jealous of her, and hated her. One day, a Persian lady
was visiting at the court, and as she was standing near Cassandane,
and saw her two sons, who were then tall and handsome young men, she
expressed her admiration of them, and said to Cassandane, "How proud
and happy you must be!" "No," said Cassandane; "on the contrary, I am
very miserable; for, though I am the mother of these children, the
king neglects and despises me. All his kindness is bestowed on this
Egyptian woman." Cambyses, who heard this conversation, sympathized
deeply with Cassandane in her resentment. "Mother," said he, "be
patient, and I will avenge you. As soon as I am king, I will go to
Egypt and turn the whole country upside down."

In fact, the tendency which there was in the mind of Cambyses to look
upon Egypt as the first field of war and conquest for him, so soon as
he should succeed to the throne, was encouraged by the influence of
his father; for Cyrus, although he was much captivated by the charms
of the lady whom the King of Egypt had sent him, was greatly incensed
against the king for having practiced upon him such a deception.
Besides, all the important countries in Asia were already included
within the Persian dominions. It was plain that if any future progress
were to be made in extending the empire, the regions of Europe and
Africa must be the theatre of it. Egypt seemed the most accessible and
vulnerable point beyond the confines of Asia; and thus, though Cyrus
himself, being advanced somewhat in years, and interested, moreover,
in other projects, was not prepared to undertake an enterprise into
Africa himself, he was very willing that such plans should be
cherished by his son.

Cambyses was an ardent, impetuous, and self-willed boy, such as the
sons of rich and powerful men are very apt to become. They imbibe, by
a sort of sympathy, the ambitious and aspiring spirit of their
fathers; and as all their childish caprices and passions are generally
indulged, they never learn to submit to control. They become vain,
self-conceited, reckless, and cruel. The conqueror who founds an
empire, although even his character generally deteriorates very
seriously toward the close of his career, still usually knows
something of moderation and generosity. His son, however, who inherits
his father's power, seldom inherits the virtues by which the power
was acquired. These truths, which we see continually exemplified all
around us, on a small scale, in the families of the wealthy and the
powerful, were illustrated most conspicuously, in the view of all
mankind, in the case of Cyrus and Cambyses. The father was prudent,
cautious, wise, and often generous and forbearing. The son grew up
headstrong, impetuous, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable. He had the
most lofty ideas of his own greatness and power, and he felt a supreme
contempt for the rights, and indifference to the happiness of all the
world besides. His history gives us an illustration of the worst which
the principle of hereditary sovereignty can do, as the best is
exemplified in the case of Alfred of England.

Cambyses, immediately after his father's death, began to make
arrangements for the Egyptian invasion. The first thing to be
determined was the mode of transporting his armies thither. Egypt is a
long and narrow valley, with the rocks and deserts of Arabia on one
side, and those of Sahara on the other. There is no convenient mode of
access to it except by sea, and Cambyses had no naval force sufficient
for a maritime expedition.

While he was revolving the subject in his mind, there arrived in his
capital of Susa, where he was then residing, a deserter from the army
of Amasis in Egypt. The name of this deserter was Phanes. He was a
Greek, having been the commander of a body of Greek troops who were
employed by Amasis as auxiliaries in his army. He had had a quarrel
with Amasis, and had fled to Persia, intending to join Cambyses in the
expedition which he was contemplating, in order to revenge himself on
the Egyptian king. Phanes said, in telling his story, that he had had
a very narrow escape from Egypt; for, as soon as Amasis had heard that
he had fled, he dispatched one of his swiftest vessels, a galley of
three banks of oars, in hot pursuit of the fugitive. The galley
overtook the vessel in which Phanes had taken passage just as it was
landing in Asia Minor. The Egyptian officers seized it and made Phanes
prisoner. They immediately began to make their preparations for the
return voyage, putting Phanes, in the mean time, under the charge of
guards, who were instructed to keep him very safely. Phanes, however,
cultivated a good understanding with his guards, and presently invited
them to drink wine with him. In the end, he got them intoxicated, and
while they were in that state he made his escape from them, and then,
traveling with great secrecy and caution until he was beyond their
reach, he succeeded in making his way to Cambyses in Susa.

Phanes gave Cambyses a great deal of information in respect to the
geography of Egypt, the proper points of attack, the character and
resources of the king, and communicated, likewise, a great many other
particulars which it was very important that Cambyses should know. He
recommended that Cambyses should proceed to Egypt by land, through
Arabia; and that, in order to secure a safe passage, he should send
first to the King of the Arabs, by a formal embassy, asking permission
to cross his territories with an army, and engaging the Arabians to
aid him, if possible, in the transit. Cambyses did this. The Arabs
were very willing to join in any projected hostilities against the
Egyptians; they offered Cambyses a free passage, and agreed to aid his
army on their march. To the faithful fulfillment of these stipulations
the Arab chief bound himself by a treaty, executed with the most
solemn forms and ceremonies.

The great difficulty to be encountered in traversing the deserts which
Cambyses would have to cross on his way to Egypt was the want of
water. To provide for this necessity, the king of the Arabs sent a
vast number of camels into the desert, laden with great sacks or bags
full of water. These camels were sent forward just before the army of
Cambyses came on, and they deposited their supplies along the route at
the points where they would be most needed. Herodotus, the Greek
traveler, who made a journey into Egypt not a great many years after
these transactions, and who wrote subsequently a full description of
what he saw and heard there, gives an account of another method by
which the Arab king was said to have conveyed water into the desert,
and that was by a canal or pipe, made of the skins of oxen, which he
laid along the ground, from a certain river of his dominions, to a
distance of twelve days' journey over the sands! This story Herodotus
says he did not believe, though elsewhere in the course of his history
he gravely relates, as true history, a thousand tales infinitely more
improbable than the idea of a leathern pipe or hose like this to serve
for a conduit of water.

By some means or other, at all events, the Arab chief provided
supplies of water in the desert for Cambyses's army, and the troops
made the passage safely. They arrived, at length, on the frontiers of
Egypt.[A] Here they found that Amasis, the king, was dead, and
Psammenitus, his son, had succeeded him. Psammenitus came forward to
meet the invaders. A great battle was fought. The Egyptians were
routed. Psammenitus fled up the Nile to the city of Memphis, taking
with him such broken remnants of his army as he could get together
after the battle, and feeling extremely incensed and exasperated
against the invader. In fact, Cambyses had now no excuse or pretext
whatever for waging such a war against Egypt. The monarch who had
deceived his father was dead, and there had never been any cause of
complaint against his son or against the Egyptian people. Psammenitus,
therefore, regarded the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses as a wanton and
wholly unjustifiable aggression, and he determined, in his own mind,
that such invaders deserved no mercy, and that he would show them
none. Soon after this, a galley on the river, belonging to Cambyses,
containing a crew of two hundred men, fell into his hands. The
Egyptians, in their rage, tore these Persians all to pieces. This
exasperated Cambyses in his turn, and the war went on, attended by the
most atrocious cruelties on both sides.

[Footnote A: For the places mentioned in this chapter, and the track
of Cambyses on his expedition, see the map at the commencement of this
volume.]

In fact, Cambyses, in this Egyptian campaign, pursued such a career of
inhuman and reckless folly, that people at last considered him insane.
He began with some small semblance of moderation, but he proceeded, in
the end, to the perpetration of the most terrible excesses of violence
and wrong.

As to his moderation, his treatment of Psammenitus personally is
almost the only instance that we can record. In the course of the war,
Psammenitus and all his family fell into Cambyses's hands as captives.
A few days afterward, Cambyses conducted the unhappy king without the
gates of the city to exhibit a spectacle to him. The spectacle was
that of his beloved daughter, clothed in the garments of a slave, and
attended by a company of other maidens, the daughters of the nobles
and other persons of distinction belonging to his court, all going
down to the river, with heavy jugs, to draw water. The fathers of all
these hapless maidens had been brought out with Psammenitus to
witness the degradation and misery of their children. The maidens
cried and sobbed aloud as they went along, overwhelmed with shame and
terror. Their fathers manifested the utmost agitation and distress.
Cambyses stood smiling by, highly enjoying the spectacle. Psammenitus
alone appeared unmoved. He gazed on the scene silent, motionless, and
with a countenance which indicated no active suffering; he seemed to
be in a state of stupefaction and despair. Cambyses was disappointed,
and his pleasure was marred at finding that his victim did not feel
more acutely the sting of the torment with which he was endeavoring to
goad him.

When this train had gone by, another came. It was a company of young
men, with halters about their necks, going to execution. Cambyses had
ordered that for every one of the crew of his galley that the
Egyptians had killed, ten Egyptians should be executed. This
proportion would require two thousand victims, as there had been two
hundred in the crew. These victims were to be selected from among the
sons of the leading families; and their parents, after having seen
their delicate and gentle daughters go to their servile toil, were now
next to behold their sons march in a long and terrible array to
execution. The son of Psammenitus was at the head of the column. The
Egyptian parents who stood around Psammenitus wept and lamented aloud,
as one after another saw his own child in the train. Psammenitus
himself, however, remained as silent and motionless, and with a
countenance as vacant as before. Cambyses was again disappointed. The
pleasure which the exhibition afforded him was incomplete without
visible manifestations of suffering in the victim for whose torture it
was principally designed.

After this train of captives had passed, there came a mixed collection
of wretched and miserable men, such as the siege and sacking of a city
always produces in countless numbers. Among these was a venerable man
whom Psammenitus recognized as one of his friends. He had been a man
of wealth and high station; he had often been at the court of the
king, and had been entertained at his table. He was now, however,
reduced to the last extremity of distress, and was begging of the
people something to keep him from starving. The sight of this man in
such a condition seemed to awaken the king from his blank and
death-like despair. He called his old friend by name in a tone of
astonishment and pity, and burst into tears.

Cambyses, observing this, sent a messenger to Psammenitus to inquire
what it meant. "He wishes to know," said the messenger, "how it
happens that you could see your own daughter set at work as a slave,
and your son led away to execution unmoved, and yet feel so much
commiseration for the misfortunes of a stranger." We might suppose
that any one possessing the ordinary susceptibilities of the human
soul would have understood without an explanation the meaning of this,
though it is not surprising that such a heartless monster as Cambyses
did not comprehend it. Psammenitus sent him word that he could not
help weeping for his friend, but that his distress and anguish on
account of his children were too great for tears.

The Persians who were around Cambyses began now to feel a strong
sentiment of compassion for the unhappy king, and to intercede with
Cambyses in his favor. They begged him, too, to spare Psammenitus's
son. It will interest those of our readers who have perused our
history of Cyrus to know that Croesus, the captive king of Lydia,
whom they will recollect to have been committed to Cambyses's charge
by his father, just before the close of his life, when he was setting
forth on his last fatal expedition, and who accompanied Cambyses on
this invasion of Egypt, was present on this occasion, and was one of
the most earnest interceders in Psammenitus's favor. Cambyses allowed
himself to be persuaded. They sent off a messenger to order the
execution of the king's son to be stayed; but he arrived too late. The
unhappy prince had already fallen. Cambyses was so far appeased by the
influence of these facts, that he abstained from doing Psammenitus or
his family any further injury.

He, however, advanced up the Nile, ravaging and plundering the country
as he went on, and at length, in the course of his conquests, he
gained possession of the tomb in which the embalmed body of Amasis was
deposited. He ordered this body to be taken out of its sarcophagus,
and treated with every mark of ignominy. His soldiers, by his orders,
beat it with rods, as if it could still feel, and goaded it, and cut
it with swords. They pulled the hair out of the head by the roots, and
loaded the lifeless form with every conceivable mark of insult and
ignominy. Finally, Cambyses ordered the mutilated remains that were
left to be burned, which was a procedure as abhorrent to the ideas and
feelings of the Egyptians as could possibly be devised.

Cambyses took every opportunity to insult the religious, or as,
perhaps, we ought to call them, the superstitious feelings of the
Egyptians. He broke into their temples, desecrated their altars, and
subjected every thing which they held most sacred to insult and
ignominy. Among their objects of religious veneration was the sacred
bull called Apis. This animal was selected from time to time, from the
country at large, by the priests, by means of certain marks which they
pretended to discover upon its body, and which indicated a divine and
sacred character. The sacred bull thus found was kept in a magnificent
temple, and attended and fed in a most sumptuous manner. In serving
him, the attendants used vessels of gold.

Cambyses arrived at the city where Apis was kept at a time when the
priests were celebrating some sacred occasion with festivities and
rejoicings. He was himself then returning from an unsuccessful
expedition which he had made, and, as he entered the town, stung with
vexation and anger at his defeat, the gladness and joy which the
Egyptians manifested in their ceremonies served only to irritate him,
and to make him more angry than ever. He killed the priests who were
officiating. He then demanded to be taken into the edifice to see the
sacred animal, and there, after insulting the feelings of the
worshipers in every possible way by ridicule and scornful words, he
stabbed the innocent bull with his dagger. The animal died of the
wound, and the whole country was filled with horror and indignation.
The people believed that this deed would most assuredly bring down
upon the impious perpetrator of it the judgments of heaven.

Cambyses organized, while he was in Egypt, several mad expeditions
into the surrounding countries. In a fit of passion, produced by an
unsatisfactory answer to an embassage, he set off suddenly, and
without any proper preparation, to march into Ethiopia. The provisions
of his army were exhausted before he had performed a fifth part of the
march. Still, in his infatuation, he determined to go on. The soldiers
subsisted for a time on such vegetables as they could find by the way;
when these failed, they slaughtered and ate their beasts of burden;
and finally, in the extremity of their famine, they began to kill and
devour one another; then, at length, Cambyses concluded to return. He
sent off, too, at one time, a large army across the desert toward the
Temple of Jupiter Ammon, without any of the necessary precautions for
such a march. This army never reached their destination, and they
never returned. The people of the Oasis said that they were overtaken
by a sand storm in the desert, and were all overwhelmed.

[Illustration: THE ARMY OF CAMBYSES OVERWHELMED IN THE DESERT.]

There was a certain officer in attendance on Cambyses named
Prexaspes. He was a sort of confidential friend and companion of the
king; and his son, who was a fair, and graceful, and accomplished
youth, was the king's cup-bearer, which was an office of great
consideration and honor. One day Cambyses asked Prexaspes what the
Persians generally thought of him. Prexaspes replied that they
thought and spoke well of him in all respects but one. The king
wished to know what the exception was. Prexaspes rejoined, that it
was the general opinion that he was too much addicted to wine.
Cambyses was offended at this reply; and, under the influence of the
feeling, so wholly unreasonable and absurd, which so often leads men
to be angry with the innocent medium through which there comes to
them any communication which they do not like, he determined to
punish Prexaspes for his freedom. He ordered his son, therefore, the
cup-bearer, to take his place against the wall on the other side of
the room. "Now," said he, "I will put what the Persians say to the
test." As he said this, he took up a bow and arrow which were at his
side, and began to fit the arrow to the string. "If," said he, "I do
not shoot him exactly through the heart, it shall prove that the
Persians are right. If I do, then they are wrong, as it will show
that I do not drink so much as to make my hand unsteady." So saying,
he drew the bow, the arrow flew through the air and pierced the poor
boy's breast. He fell, and Cambyses coolly ordered the attendants to
open the body, and let Prexaspes see whether the arrow had not gone
through the heart.

These, and a constant succession of similar acts of atrocious and
reckless cruelty and folly, led the world to say that Cambyses was
insane.




CHAPTER II.

THE END OF CAMBYSES.

B.C. 523-522

Cambyses's profligate conduct.--He marries his own
sisters.--Consultation of the Persian judges.--Their
opinion.--Smerdis.--Jealousy of Cambyses.--The two magi.--Cambyses
suspicious.--He plans an invasion of Ethiopia.--Island of
Elephantine.--The Icthyophagi.--Classes of savage nations.--Embassadors
sent to Ethiopia.--The presents.--The Ethiopian king detects the
imposture.--The Ethiopian king's opinion of Cambyses's presents.--The
Ethiopian bow.--Return of the Icthyophagi.--Jealousy of Cambyses.--He
orders Smerdis to be murdered.--Cambyses grows more cruel.--Twelve
noblemen buried alive.--Cambyses's cruelty to his sister.--Her
death.--The venerable Croesus.--His advice to Cambyses.--Cambyses's
rage at Croesus.--He attempts to kill him.--The declaration of the
oracle.--Ecbatane, Susa, and Babylon.--Cambyses returns
northward.--He enters Syria.--A herald proclaims Smerdis.--The herald
seized.--Probable explanation.--Rage of Cambyses.--Cambyses mortally
wounded.--His remorse and despair.--Cambyses calls his nobles about
him.--His dying declaration.--Death of Cambyses.--His dying declaration
discredited.


Among the other acts of profligate wickedness which have blackened
indelibly and forever Cambyses's name, he married two of his own
sisters, and brought one of them with him to Egypt as his wife. The
natural instincts of all men, except those whose early life has been
given up to the most shameless and dissolute habits of vice, are
sufficient to preserve them from such crimes as these. Cambyses
himself felt, it seems, some misgivings when contemplating the first
of these marriages; and he sent to a certain council of judges, whose
province it was to interpret the laws, asking them their opinion of
the rightfulness of such a marriage. Kings ask the opinion of their
legal advisers in such cases, not because they really wish to know
whether the act in question is right or wrong, but because, having
themselves determined upon the performance of it, they wish their
counselors to give it a sort of legal sanction, in order to justify
the deed, and diminish the popular odium which it might otherwise
incur.

The Persian judges whom Cambyses consulted on this occasion understood
very well what was expected of them. After a grave deliberation, they
returned answer to the king that, though they could find no law
allowing a man to marry his sister, they found many which authorized a
king of Persia to do whatever he thought best. Cambyses accordingly
carried his plan into execution. He married first the older sister,
whose name was Atossa. Atossa became subsequently a personage of great
historical distinction. The daughter of Cyrus, the wife of Darius, and
the mother of Xerxes, she was the link that bound together the three
most magnificent potentates of the whole Eastern world. How far these
sisters were willing participators in the guilt of their incestuous
marriages we can not now know. The one who went with Cambyses into
Egypt was of a humane, and gentle, and timid disposition, being in
these respects wholly unlike her brother; and it may be that she
merely yielded, in the transaction of her marriage, to her brother's
arbitrary and imperious will.

Besides this sister, Cambyses had brought his brother Smerdis with
him into Egypt. Smerdis was younger than Cambyses, but he was superior
to him in strength and personal accomplishments. Cambyses was very
jealous of this superiority. He did not dare to leave his brother in
Persia, to manage the government in his stead during his absence, lest
he should take advantage of the temporary power thus committed to his
hands, and usurp the throne altogether. He decided, therefore, to
bring Smerdis with him into Egypt, and to leave the government of the
state in the hands of a regency composed of two _magi_. These magi
were public officers of distinction, but, having no hereditary claims
to the crown, Cambyses thought there would be little danger of their
attempting to usurp it. It happened, however, that the name of one of
these magi was Smerdis. This coincidence between the magian's name and
that of the prince led, in the end, as will presently be seen, to very
important consequences.

The uneasiness and jealousy which Cambyses felt in respect to his
brother was not wholly allayed by the arrangement which he thus made
for keeping him in his army, and so under his own personal observation
and command. Smerdis evinced, on various occasions, so much strength
and skill, that Cambyses feared his influence among the officers and
soldiers, and was rendered continually watchful, suspicious, and
afraid. A circumstance at last occurred which excited his jealousy
more than ever, and he determined to send Smerdis home again to
Persia. The circumstance was this:

After Cambyses had succeeded in obtaining full possession of Egypt, he
formed, among his other wild and desperate schemes, the design of
invading the territories of a nation of Ethiopians who lived in the
interior of Africa, around and beyond the sources of the Nile. The
Ethiopians were celebrated for their savage strength and bravery.
Cambyses wished to obtain information respecting them and their
country before setting out on his expedition against them, and he
determined to send spies into their country to obtain it. But, as
Ethiopia was a territory so remote, and as its institutions and
customs, and the language, the dress, and the manners of its
inhabitants were totally different from those of all the other nations
of the earth, and were almost wholly unknown to the Persian army, it
was impossible to send Persians in disguise, with any hope that they
could enter and explore the country without being discovered. It was
very doubtful, in fact, whether, if such spies were to be sent, they
could succeed in reaching Ethiopia at all.

Now there was, far up the Nile, near the cataracts, at a place where
the river widens and forms a sort of bay, a large and fertile island
called Elephantine, which was inhabited by a half-savage tribe called
the Icthyophagi. They lived mainly by fishing on the river, and,
consequently, they had many boats, and were accustomed to make long
excursions up and down the stream. Their name was, in fact, derived
from their occupation. It was a Greek word, and might be translated
"Fishermen."[B] The manners and customs of half-civilized or savage
nations depend entirely, of course, upon the modes in which they
procure their subsistence. Some depend on hunting wild beasts, some on
rearing flocks and herds of tame animals, some on cultivating the
ground, and some on fishing in rivers or in the sea. These four
different modes of procuring food result in as many totally diverse
modes of life: it is a curious fact, however, that while a nation of
hunters differs very essentially from a nation of herdsmen or of
fishermen, though they may live, perhaps, in the same neighborhood
with them, still, all nations of hunters, however widely they may be
separated in geographical position, very strongly resemble one another
in character, in customs, in institutions, and in all the usages of
life. It is so, moreover, with all the other types of national
constitution mentioned above. The Greeks observed these
characteristics of the various savage tribes with which they became
acquainted, and whenever they met with a tribe that lived by fishing,
they called them Icthyophagi.

[Footnote B: Literally, _fish-eaters_.]

Cambyses sent to the Icthyophagi of the island of Elephantine,
requiring them to furnish him with a number of persons acquainted with
the route to Ethiopia and with the Ethiopian language, that he might
send them as an embassy. He also provided some presents to be sent as
a token of friendship to the Ethiopian king. The presents were,
however, only a pretext, to enable the embassadors, who were, in fact,
spies, to go to the capital and court of the Ethiopian monarch in
safety, and bring back to Cambyses all the information which they
should be able to obtain.

The presents consisted of such toys and ornaments as they thought
would most please the fancy of a savage king. There were some purple
vestments of a very rich and splendid dye, and a golden chain for the
neck, golden bracelets for the wrists, an alabaster box of very
precious perfumes, and other similar trinkets and toys. There was also
a large vessel filled with wine.

The Icthyophagi took these presents, and set out on their expedition.
After a long and toilsome voyage and journey, they came to the country
of the Ethiopians, and delivered their presents, together with the
message which Cambyses had intrusted to them. The presents, they said,
had been sent by Cambyses as a token of his desire to become the
friend and ally of the Ethiopian king.

The king, instead of being deceived by this hypocrisy, detected the
imposture at once. He knew very well, he said, what was the motive of
Cambyses in sending such an embassage to him, and he should advise
Cambyses to be content with his own dominions, instead of planning
aggressions of violence, and schemes and stratagems of deceit against
his neighbors, in order to get possession of theirs. He then began to
look at the presents which the embassadors had brought, which,
however, he appeared very soon to despise. The purple vest first
attracted his attention. He asked whether that was the true, natural
color of the stuff, or a false one. The messengers told him that the
linen was dyed, and began to explain the process to him. The mind of
the savage potentate, however, instead of being impressed, as the
messengers supposed he would have been through their description, with
a high idea of the excellence and superiority of Persian art, only
despised the false show of what he considered an artificial and
fictitious beauty. "The beauty of Cambyses's dresses," said he, "is as
deceitful, it seems, as the fair show of his professions of
friendship." As to the golden bracelets and necklaces, the king looked
upon them with contempt. He thought that they were intended for
fetters and chains, and said that, however well they might answer
among the effeminate Persians, they were wholly insufficient to
confine such sinews as he had to deal with. The wine, however, he
liked. He drank it with great pleasure, and told the Icthyophagi that
it was the only article among all their presents that was worth
receiving.

In return for the presents which Cambyses had sent him, the King of
the Ethiopians, who was a man of prodigious size and strength, took
down his bow and gave it to the Icthyophagi, telling them to carry it
to Cambyses as a token of his defiance, and to ask him to see if he
could find a man in all his army who could bend it. "Tell Cambyses,"
he added, "that when his soldiers are able to bend such bows as that,
it will be time for him to think of invading the territories of the
Ethiopians; and that, in the mean time, he ought to consider himself
very fortunate that the Ethiopians were not grasping and ambitious
enough to attempt the invasion of his."

When the Icthyophagi returned to Cambyses with this message, the
strongest men in the Persian camp were of course greatly interested in
examining and trying the bow. Smerdis was the only one that could be
found who was strong enough to bend it; and he, by the superiority to
the others which he thus evinced, gained great renown. Cambyses was
filled with jealousy and anger. He determined to send Smerdis back
again to Persia. "It will be better," thought he to himself, "to incur
whatever danger there may be of his exciting revolt at home, than to
have him present in my court, subjecting me to continual mortification
and chagrin by the perpetual parade of his superiority."

His mind was, however, not at ease after his brother had gone.
Jealousy and suspicion in respect to Smerdis perplexed his waking
thoughts and troubled his dreams. At length, one night, he thought he
saw Smerdis seated on a royal throne in Persia, his form expanded
supernaturally to such a prodigious size that he touched the heavens
with his head. The next day, Cambyses, supposing that the dream
portended danger that Smerdis would be one day in possession of the
throne, determined to put a final and perpetual end to all these
troubles and fears, and he sent for an officer of his court,
Prexaspes--the same whose son he shot through the heart with an arrow,
as described in the last chapter--and commanded him to proceed
immediately to Persia, and there to find Smerdis, and kill him. The
murder of Prexaspes's son, though related in the last chapter as an
illustration of Cambyses's character, did not actually take place till
after Prexaspes returned from this expedition.

Prexaspes went to Persia, and executed the orders of the king by the
assassination of Smerdis. There are different accounts of the mode
which he adopted for accomplishing his purpose. One is, that he
contrived some way to drown him in the sea; another, that he poisoned
him; and a third, that he killed him in the forests, when he was out
on a hunting excursion. At all events, the deed was done, and
Prexaspes went back to Cambyses, and reported to him that he had
nothing further to fear from his brother's ambition.

In the mean time, Cambyses went on from bad to worse in his
government, growing every day more despotic and tyrannical, and
abandoning himself to fits of cruelty and passion which became more
and more excessive and insane. At one time, on some slight
provocation, he ordered twelve distinguished noblemen of his court to
be buried alive. It is astonishing that there can be institutions and
arrangements in the social state which will give one man such an
ascendency over others that such commands can be obeyed. On another
occasion, Cambyses's sister and wife, who had mourned the death of her
brother Smerdis, ventured a reproach to Cambyses for having destroyed
him. She was sitting at table, with some plant or flower in her hand,
which she slowly picked to pieces, putting the fragments on the table.
She asked Cambyses whether he thought the flower looked fairest and
best in fragments, or in its original and natural integrity. "It
looked best, certainly," Cambyses said, "when it was whole." "And
yet," said she, "you have begun to take to pieces and destroy our
family, as I have destroyed this flower." Cambyses sprang upon his
unhappy sister, on hearing this reproof, with the ferocity of a tiger.
He threw her down and leaped upon her. The attendants succeeded in
rescuing her and bearing her away; but she had received a fatal
injury. She fell immediately into a premature and unnatural sickness,
and died.

These fits of sudden and terrible passion to which Cambyses was
subject, were often followed, when they had passed by, as is usual in
such cases, with remorse and misery; and sometimes the officers of
Cambyses, anticipating a change in their master's feelings, did not
execute his cruel orders, but concealed the object of his blind and
insensate vengeance until the paroxysm was over. They did this once in
the case of Croesus. Croesus, who was now a venerable man,
advanced in years, had been for a long time the friend and faithful
counselor of Cambyses's father. He had known Cambyses himself from
his boyhood, and had been charged by his father to watch over him and
counsel him, and aid him, on all occasions which might require it,
with his experience and wisdom. Cambyses, too, had been solemnly
charged by his father Cyrus, at the last interview that he had with
him before his death, to guard and protect Croesus, as his father's
ancient and faithful friend, and to treat him, as long as he lived,
with the highest consideration and honor.

Under these circumstances, Croesus considered himself justified in
remonstrating one day with Cambyses against his excesses and his
cruelty. He told him that he ought not to give himself up to the
control of such violent and impetuous passions; that, though his
Persian soldiers and subjects had borne with him thus far, he might,
by excessive oppression and cruelty, exhaust their forbearance and
provoke them to revolt against him, and that thus he might suddenly
lose his power, through his intemperate and inconsiderate use of it.
Croesus apologized for offering these counsels, saying that he felt
bound to warn Cambyses of his danger, in obedience to the injunctions
of Cyrus, his father.

Cambyses fell into a violent passion at hearing these words. He told
Croesus that he was amazed at his presumption in daring to offer him
advice, and then began to load his venerable counselor with the
bitterest invectives and reproaches. He taunted him with his own
misfortunes, in losing, as he had done, years before, his own kingdom
of Lydia, and then accused him of having been the means, through his
foolish counsels, of leading his father, Cyrus, into the worst of the
difficulties which befell him toward the close of his life. At last,
becoming more and more enraged by the reaction upon himself of his own
angry utterance, he told Croesus that he had hated him for a long
time, and for a long time had wished to punish him; "and now," said
he, "you have given me an opportunity." So saying, he seized his bow,
and began to fit an arrow to the string. Croesus fled. Cambyses
ordered his attendants to pursue him, and when they had taken him, to
kill him. The officers knew that Cambyses would regret his rash and
reckless command as soon as his anger should have subsided, and so,
instead of slaying Croesus, they concealed him. A few days after,
when the tyrant began to express his remorse and sorrow at having
destroyed his venerable friend in the heat of passion, and to mourn
his death, they told him that Croesus was still alive. They had
ventured, they said, to save him, till they could ascertain whether it
was the king's real and deliberate determination that he must die. The
king was overjoyed to find Croesus still alive, but he would not
forgive those who had been instrumental in saving him. He ordered
every one of them to be executed.

Cambyses was the more reckless and desperate in these tyrannical
cruelties because he believed that he possessed a sort of charmed
life. He had consulted an oracle, it seems, in Media, in respect to
his prospects of life, and the oracle had informed him that he would
die at Ecbatane. Now Ecbatane was one of the three great capitals of
his empire, Susa and Babylon being the others. Ecbatane was the most
northerly of these cities, and the most remote from danger. Babylon
and Susa were the points where the great transactions of government
chiefly centered, while Ecbatane was more particularly the private
residence of the kings. It was their refuge in danger, their retreat
in sickness and age. In a word, Susa was their seat of government,
Babylon their great commercial emporium, but Ecbatane was their home.

And thus as the oracle, when Cambyses inquired in respect to the
circumstances of his death, had said that it was decreed by the fates
that he should die at Ecbatane, it meant, as he supposed, that he
should die in peace, in his bed, at the close of the usual period
allotted to the life of man. Considering thus that the fates had
removed all danger of a sudden and violent death from his path, he
abandoned himself to his career of vice and folly, remembering only
the substance of the oracle, while the particular form of words in
which it was expressed passed from his mind.

At length Cambyses, after completing his conquests in Egypt, returned
to the northward along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, until he
came into Syria. The province of Galilee, so often mentioned in the
sacred Scriptures, was a part of Syria. In traversing Galilee at the
head of the detachment of troops that was accompanying him, Cambyses
came, one day, to a small town, and encamped there. The town itself
was of so little importance that Cambyses did not, at the time of his
arriving at it, even know its name. His encampment at the place,
however, was marked by a very memorable event, namely, he met with a
herald here, who was traveling through Syria, saying that he had been
sent from Susa to proclaim to the people of Syria that Smerdis, the
son of Cyrus, had assumed the throne, and to enjoin upon them all to
obey no orders except such as should come from him!

Cambyses had supposed that Smerdis was dead. Prexaspes, when he had
returned from Susa, had reported that he had killed him. He now,
however, sent for Prexaspes, and demanded of him what this
proclamation could mean. Prexaspes renewed, and insisted upon, his
declaration that Smerdis was dead. He had destroyed him with his own
hands, and had seen him buried. "If the dead can rise from the grave,"
added Prexaspes, "then Smerdis may perhaps, raise a revolt and appear
against you; but not otherwise."

Prexaspes then recommended that the king should send and seize the
herald, and inquire particularly of him in respect to the government
in whose name he was acting. Cambyses did so. The herald was taken and
brought before the king. On being questioned whether it was true that
Smerdis had really assumed the government and commissioned him to make
proclamation of the fact, he replied that it was so. He had not seen
Smerdis himself, he said, for he kept himself shut up very closely in
his palace; but he was informed of his accession by one of the magians
whom Cambyses had left in command. It was by him, he said, that he had
been commissioned to proclaim Smerdis as king.

Prexaspes then said that he had no doubt that the two magians whom
Cambyses had left in charge of the government had contrived to seize
the throne. He reminded Cambyses that the name of one of them was
Smerdis, and that probably that was the Smerdis who was usurping the
supreme command. Cambyses said that he was convinced that this
supposition was true. His dream, in which he had seen a vision of
Smerdis, with his head reaching to the heavens, referred, he had no
doubt, to the magian Smerdis, and not to his brother. He began
bitterly to reproach himself for having caused his innocent brother to
be put to death; but the remorse which he thus felt for his crime, in
assassinating an imaginary rival, soon gave way to rage and resentment
against the real usurper. He called for his horse, and began to mount
him in hot haste, to give immediate orders, and make immediate
preparations for marching to Susa.

As he bounded into the saddle, with his mind in this state of
reckless desperation, the sheath, by some accident or by some
carelessness caused by his headlong haste, fell from his sword, and
the naked point of the weapon pierced his thigh. The attendants took
him from his horse, and conveyed him again to his tent. The wound, on
examination, proved to be a very dangerous one, and the strong
passions, the vexation, the disappointment, the impotent rage, which
were agitating the mind of the patient, exerted an influence extremely
unfavorable to recovery. Cambyses, terrified at the prospect of death,
asked what was the name of the town where he was lying. They told him
it was Ecbatane.

He had never thought before of the possibility that there might be
some other Ecbatane besides his splendid royal retreat in Media; but
now, when he learned that was the name of the place where he was then
encamped, he felt sure that his hour was come, and he was overwhelmed
with remorse and despair.

He suffered, too, inconceivable pain and anguish from his wound. The
sword had pierced to the bone, and the inflammation which had
supervened was of the worst character. After some days, the acuteness
of the agony which he at first endured passed gradually away, though
the extent of the injury resulting from the wound was growing every
day greater and more hopeless. The sufferer lay, pale, emaciated, and
wretched, on his couch, his mind, in every interval of bodily agony,
filling up the void with the more dreadful sufferings of horror and
despair.

At length, on the twentieth day after his wound had been received, he
called the leading nobles of his court and officers of his army about
his bedside, and said to them that he was about to die, and that he
was compelled, by the calamity which had befallen him, to declare to
them what he would otherwise have continued to keep concealed. The
person who had usurped the throne under the name of Smerdis, he now
said, was not, and could not be, his brother Smerdis, the son of
Cyrus. He then proceeded to give them an account of the manner in
which his fears in respect to his brother had been excited by his
dream, and of the desperate remedy that he had resorted to in ordering
him to be killed. He believed, he said, that the usurper was Smerdis
the magian, whom he had left as one of the regents when he set out on
his Egyptian campaign. He urged them, therefore, not to submit to his
sway, but to go back to Media, and if they could not conquer him and
put him down by open war, to destroy him by deceit and stratagem, or
in any way whatever by which the end could be accomplished. Cambyses
urged this with so much of the spirit of hatred and revenge beaming in
his hollow and glassy eye as to show that sickness, pain, and the
approach of death, which had made so total a change in the wretched
sufferer's outward condition, had altered nothing within.

Very soon after making this communication to his nobles, Cambyses
expired.

It will well illustrate the estimate which those who knew him best,
formed of this great hero's character, to state, that those who heard
this solemn declaration did not believe one word of it from beginning
to end. They supposed that the whole story which the dying tyrant had
told them, although he had scarcely breath enough left to tell it, was
a fabrication, dictated by his fraternal jealousy and hate. They
believed that it was really the true Smerdis who had been proclaimed
king, and that Cambyses had invented, in his dying moments, the story
of his having killed him, in order to prevent the Persians from
submitting peaceably to his reign.




CHAPTER III.

SMERDIS THE MAGIAN.

B.C. 520

Usurpation of the magians.--Circumstances favoring it.--Murder of
Smerdis not known.--He is supposed to be alive.--Precautions taken
by Smerdis.--Effect of Cambyses's measures.--Opinion in regard to
Smerdis.--Acquiescence of the people.--Dangerous situation of
Smerdis.--Arrangement with Patizithes.--Smerdis lives in
retirement.--Special grounds of apprehension.--Cambyses's
wives.--Smerdis appropriates them.--Phaedyma.--Measures of
Otanes.--Otanes's communications with his daughter.--Her
replies.--Phaedyma discovers the deception.--Otanes and the six
nobles.--Arrival of Darius.--Secret consultations.--Various
opinions.--Views of Darius.--Apology for a falsehood.--Opinion of
Gobryas.--Uneasiness of the magi.--Situation of Prexaspes.--Measures
of the magi.--An assembly of the people.--Decision of Prexaspes.--His
speech from the tower.--Death of Prexaspes.--The conspirators.--The
omen.--The conspirators enter the palace.--Combat with the
magi.--Flight of Smerdis.--Smerdis is killed.--Exultation of the
conspirators.--General massacre of the magians.


Cambyses and his friends had been right in their conjectures that it
was Smerdis the magian who had usurped the Persian throne. This
Smerdis resembled, it was said, the son of Cyrus in his personal
appearance as well as in name. The other magian who had been
associated with him in the regency when Cambyses set out from Persia
on his Egyptian campaign was his brother. His name was Patizithes.
When Cyrus had been some time absent, these magians, having in the
mean time, perhaps, heard unfavorable accounts of his conduct and
character, and knowing the effect which such wanton tyranny must have
in alienating from him the allegiance of his subjects, conceived the
design of taking possession of the empire in their own name. The great
distance of Cambyses and his army from home, and his long-continued
absence, favored this plan. Their own position, too, as they were
already in possession of the capitals and the fortresses of the
country, aided them; and then the name of Smerdis, being the same
with that of the brother of Cambyses, was a circumstance that greatly
promoted the success of the undertaking. In addition to all these
general advantages, the cruelty of Cambyses was the means of
furnishing them with a most opportune occasion for putting their plans
into execution.

The reader will recollect that, as was related in the last chapter,
Cambyses first sent his brother Smerdis home, and afterward, when
alarmed by his dream, he sent Prexaspes to murder him. Now the return
of Smerdis was publicly and generally known, while his assassination
by Prexaspes was kept a profound secret. Even the Persians connected
with Cambyses's court in Egypt had not heard of the perpetration of
this crime, until Cambyses confessed it on his dying bed, and even
then, as was stated in the last chapter, they did not believe it. It
is not probable that it was known in Media and Persia; so that, after
Prexaspes accomplished his work, and returned to Cambyses with the
report of it, it was probably generally supposed that his brother was
still alive, and was residing somewhere in one or another of the royal
palaces.

Such royal personages were often accustomed to live thus, in a state
of great seclusion, spending their time in effeminate pleasures within
the walls of their palaces, parks, and gardens. When the royal
Smerdis, therefore, secretly and suddenly disappeared, it would be
very easy for the magian Smerdis, with the collusion of a moderate
number of courtiers and attendants, to take his place, especially if
he continued to live in retirement, and exhibited himself as little as
possible to public view. Thus it was that Cambyses himself, by the
very crimes which he committed to shield himself from all danger of a
revolt, opened the way which specially invited it, and almost insured
its success. Every particular step that he took, too, helped to
promote the end. His sending Smerdis home; his waiting an interval,
and then sending Prexaspes to destroy him; his ordering his
assassination to be secret--these, and all the other attendant
circumstances, were only so many preliminary steps, preparing the way
for the success of the revolution which was to accomplish his ruin. He
was, in a word, his own destroyer. Like other wicked men, he found, in
the end, that the schemes of wickedness which he had malignantly aimed
at the destruction of others, had been all the time slowly and surely
working out his own.

The people of Persia, therefore, were prepared by Cambyses's own acts
to believe that the usurper Smerdis was really Cyrus's son, and, next
to Cambyses, the heir to the throne. The army of Cambyses, too, in
Egypt, believed the same. It was natural that they should do so for
they placed no confidence whatever in Cambyses's dying declarations;
and since intelligence, which seemed to be official, came from Susa
declaring that Smerdis was still alive, and that he had actually taken
possession of the throne, there was no apparent reason for doubting
the fact. Besides, Prexaspes, as soon as Cambyses was dead, considered
it safer for him to deny than to confess having murdered the prince.
He therefore declared that Cambyses's story was false, and that he had
no doubt that Smerdis, the monarch in whose name the government was
administered at Susa, was the son of Cyrus, the true and rightful heir
to the throne. Thus all parties throughout the empire acquiesced
peaceably in what they supposed to be the legitimate succession.

In the mean time, the usurper had placed himself in an exceedingly
dizzy and precarious situation, and one which it would require a
great deal of address and skillful management to sustain. The plan
arranged between himself and his brother for a division of the
advantages which they had secured by their joint and common cunning
was, that Smerdis was to enjoy the ease and pleasure, and Patizithes
the substantial power of the royalty which they had so stealthily
seized. This was the safest plan. Smerdis, by living secluded, and
devoting himself to retired and private pleasures, was the more likely
to escape public observation; while Patizithes, acting as his prime
minister of state, could attend councils, issue orders, review troops,
dispatch embassies, and perform all the other outward functions of
supreme command, with safety as well as pleasure. Patizithes seems to
have been, in fact, the soul of the whole plan. He was ambitious and
aspiring in character, and if he could only himself enjoy the actual
exercise of royal power, he was willing that his brother should enjoy
the honor of possessing it. Patizithes, therefore, governed the realm,
acting, however, in all that he did, in Smerdis's name.

Smerdis, on his part, was content to take possession of the palaces,
the parks, and the gardens of Media and Persia, and to live in them
in retired and quiet luxury and splendor. He appeared seldom in
public, and then only under such circumstances as should not expose
him to any close observation on the part of the spectators. His
figure, air, and manner, and the general cast of his countenance, were
very much like those of the prince whom he was attempting to
personate. There was one mark, however, by which he thought that there
was danger that he might be betrayed, and that was, his ears had been
cut off. This had been done many years before, by command of Cyrus, on
account of some offense of which he had been guilty. The marks of the
mutilation could, indeed, on public occasions, be concealed by the
turban, or helmet, or other head-dress which he wore; but in private
there was great danger either that the loss of the ears, or the
studied effort to conceal it, should be observed. Smerdis was,
therefore, very careful to avoid being seen in private, by keeping
himself closely secluded. He shut himself up in the apartments of his
palace at Susa, within the citadel, and never invited the Persian
nobles to visit him there.

Among the other means of luxury and pleasure which Smerdis found in
the royal palaces, and which he appropriated to his own enjoyment,
were Cambyses's wives. In those times, Oriental princes and
potentates--as is, in fact, the case at the present day, in many
Oriental countries--possessed a great number of wives, who were bound
to them by different sorts of matrimonial ties, more or less
permanent, and bringing them into relations more or less intimate with
their husband and sovereign. These wives were in many respects in the
condition of slaves: in one particular they were especially so,
namely, that on the death of a sovereign they descended, like any
other property, to the heir, who added as many of them as he pleased
to his own seraglio. Until this was done, the unfortunate women were
shut up in close seclusion on the death of their lord, like mourners
who retire from the world when suffering any great and severe
bereavement.

The wives of Cambyses were appropriated by Smerdis to himself on his
taking possession of the throne and hearing of Cambyses's death. Among
them was Atossa, who has already been mentioned as the daughter of
Cyrus, and, of course, the sister of Cambyses as well as his wife. In
order to prevent these court ladies from being the means, in any way,
of discovering the imposture which he was practicing, the magian
continued to keep them all closely shut up in their several separate
apartments, only allowing a favored few to visit him, one by one, in
turn, while he prevented their having any communication with one
another.

The name of one of these ladies was Phaedyma. She was the daughter of a
Persian noble of the highest rank and influence, named Otanes. Otanes,
as well as some other nobles of the court, had observed and reflected
upon the extraordinary circumstances connected with the accession of
Smerdis to the throne, and the singular mode of life that he led in
secluding himself, in a manner so extraordinary for a Persian monarch,
from all intercourse with his nobles and his people. The suspicions of
Otanes and his associates were excited, but no one dared to
communicate his thoughts to the others. At length, however, Otanes,
who was a man of great energy as well as sagacity and discretion,
resolved that he would take some measures to ascertain the truth.

He first sent a messenger to Phaedyma, his daughter, asking of her
whether it was really Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, who received her when
she went to visit the king. Phaedyma, in return, sent her father word
that she did not know, for she had never seen Smerdis, the son of
Cyrus, before the death of Cambyses. She therefore could not say, of
her own personal knowledge, whether the king was the genuine Smerdis
or not. Otanes then sent to Phaedyma a second time, requesting her to
ask the queen Atossa. Atossa was the sister of Smerdis the prince, and
had known him from his childhood. Phaedyma sent back word to her father
that she could not speak to Atossa, for she was kept closely shut up
in her own apartments, without the opportunity to communicate with any
one. Otanes then sent a third time to his daughter, telling her that
there was one remaining mode by which she might ascertain the truth,
and that was, the next time that she visited the king, to feel for his
ears when he was asleep. If it was Smerdis the magian, she would find
that he had none. He urged his daughter to do this by saying that, if
the pretended king was really an impostor, the imposture ought to be
made known, and that she, being of noble birth, ought to have the
courage and energy to assist in discovering it. To this Phaedyma
replied that she would do as her father desired, though she knew that
she hazarded her life in the attempt. "If he has no ears," said she,
"and if I awaken him in attempting to feel for them, he will kill me;
I am sure that he will kill me on the spot."

The next time that it came to Phaedyma's turn to visit the king, she
did as her father had requested. She passed her hand very cautiously
beneath the king's turban, and found that his ears had been cut off
close to his head. Early in the morning she communicated the knowledge
of the fact to her father.

[Illustration: PHAEDYMA FEELING FOR SMERDIS'S EARS.]

Otanes immediately made the case known to two of his friends, Persian
nobles, who had, with him, suspected the imposture, and had consulted
together before in respect to the means of detecting it. The question
was, what was now to be done. After some deliberation, it was agreed
that each of them should communicate the discovery which they had
made to one other person, such as each should select from among the
circle of his friends as the one on whose resolution, prudence, and
fidelity he could most implicitly rely. This was done, and the number
admitted to the secret was thus increased to six. At this juncture it
happened that Darius, the son of Hystaspes, the young man who has
already been mentioned as the subject of Cyrus's dream, came to
Susa. Darius was a man of great prominence and popularity. His
father, Hystaspes, was at that time the governor of the province of
Persia, and Darius had been residing with him in that country. As
soon as the six conspirators heard of his arrival, they admitted him
to their councils, and thus their number was increased to seven.

They immediately began to hold secret consultations for the purpose of
determining how it was best to proceed, first binding themselves by
the most solemn oaths never to betray one another, however their
undertaking might end. Darius told them that he had himself discovered
the imposture and usurpation of Smerdis, and that he had come from
Persia for the purpose of slaying him; and that now, since it appeared
that the secret was known to so many, he was of opinion that they
ought to act at once with the utmost decision. He thought there would
be great danger in delay.

Otanes, on the other hand, thought that they were not yet ready for
action. They must first increase their numbers. Seven persons were too
few to attempt to revolutionize an empire. He commended the courage
and resolution which Darius displayed, but he thought that a more
cautious and deliberate policy would be far more likely to conduct
them to a safe result.

Darius replied that the course which Otanes recommended would
certainly ruin them. "If we make many other persons acquainted with
our plans," said he, "there will be some, notwithstanding all our
precautions, who will betray us, for the sake of the immense rewards
which they well know they would receive in that case from the king.
No," he added, "we must act ourselves, and alone. We must do nothing
to excite suspicion, but must go at once into the palace, penetrate
boldly into Smerdis's presence, and slay him before he has time to
suspect our designs."

"But we can not get into his presence," replied Otanes. "There are
guards stationed at every gate and door, who will not allow us to
pass. If we attempt to kill them, a tumult will be immediately raised,
and the alarm given, and all our designs will thus be baffled."

"There will be little difficulty about the guards," said Darius. "They
know us all, and, from deference to our rank and station, they will
let us pass without suspicion, especially if we act boldly and
promptly, and do not give them time to stop and consider what to do.
Besides, I can say that I have just arrived from Persia with
important dispatches for the king, and that I must be admitted
immediately into his presence. If a falsehood must be told, so let it
be. The urgency of the crisis demands and sanctions it."

It may seem strange to the reader, considering the ideas and habits of
the times, that Darius should have even thought it necessary to
apologize to his confederates for his proposal of employing falsehood
in the accomplishment of their plans; and it is, in fact, altogether
probable that the apology which he is made to utter is his
historian's, and not his own.

The other conspirators had remained silent during this discussion
between Darius and Otanes; but now a third, whose name was Gobryas,
expressed his opinion in favor of the course which Darius recommended.
He was aware, he said, that, in attempting to force their way into the
king's presence and kill him by a sudden assault, they exposed
themselves to the most imminent danger; but it was better for them to
die in the manly attempt to bring back the imperial power again into
Persian hands, where it properly belonged, than to acquiesce any
further in its continuance in the possession of the ignoble Median
priests who had so treacherously usurped it.

To this counsel they all finally agreed, and began to make
arrangements for carrying their desperate enterprise into execution.

In the mean time, very extraordinary events were transpiring in
another part of the city. The two magi, Smerdis the king and
Patizithes his brother, had some cause, it seems, to fear that the
nobles about the court, and the officers of the Persian army, were not
without suspicions that the reigning monarch was not the real son of
Cyrus. Rumors that Smerdis had been killed by Prexaspes, at the
command of Cambyses, were in circulation. These rumors were
contradicted, it is true, in private, by Prexaspes, whenever he was
forced to speak of the subject; but he generally avoided it; and he
spoke, when he spoke at all, in that timid and undecided tone which
men usually assume when they are persisting in a lie. In the mean
time, the gloomy recollections of his past life, the memory of his
murdered son, remorse for his own crime in the assassination of
Smerdis, and anxiety on account of the extremely dangerous position in
which he had placed himself by his false denial of it, all conspired
to harass his mind with perpetual restlessness and misery, and to
make life a burden.

In order to do something to quiet the suspicions which the magi feared
were prevailing, they did not know how extensively, they conceived the
plan of inducing Prexaspes to declare in a more public and formal
manner what he had been asserting timidly in private, namely, that
Smerdis had not been killed. They accordingly convened an assembly of
the people in a court-yard of the palace, or perhaps took advantage of
some gathering casually convened, and proposed that Prexaspes should
address them from a neighboring tower. Prexaspes was a man of high
rank and of great influence, and the magi thought that his public
espousal of their cause, and his open and decided contradiction of the
rumor that he had killed Cambyses's brother, would fully convince the
Persians that it was really the rightful monarch that had taken
possession of the throne.

But the strength even of a strong man, when he has a lie to carry,
soon becomes very small. That of Prexaspes was already almost
exhausted and gone. He had been wavering and hesitating before, and
this proposal, that he should commit himself so formally and solemnly,
and in so public a manner, to statements wholly and absolutely
untrue, brought him to a stand. He decided, desperately, in his own
mind, that he would go on in his course of falsehood, remorse, and
wretchedness no longer. He, however, pretended to accede to the
propositions of the magi. He ascended the tower, and began to address
the people. Instead, however, of denying that he had murdered Smerdis,
he fully confessed to the astonished audience that he had really
committed that crime; he openly denounced the reigning Smerdis as an
impostor, and called upon all who heard him to rise at once, destroy
the treacherous usurper, and vindicate the rights of the true Persian
line. As he went on, with vehement voice and gestures, in this speech,
the utterance of which he knew sealed his own destruction, he became
more and more excited and reckless. He denounced his hearers in the
severest language if they failed to obey his injunctions, and
imprecated upon them, in that event, all the curses of Heaven. The
people listened to this strange and sudden phrensy of eloquence in
utter amazement, motionless and silent; and before they or the
officers of the king's household who were present had time even to
consider what to do, Prexaspes, coming abruptly to the conclusion of
his harangue, threw himself headlong from the parapet of the tower,
and came down among them, lifeless and mangled, on the pavement below.

Of course, all was now tumult and commotion in the court-yard, and it
happened to be just at this juncture that the seven conspirators came
from the place of their consultation to the palace, with a view of
executing their plans. They were soon informed of what had taken
place. Otanes was now again disposed to postpone their attempt upon
the life of the king. The event which had occurred changed, he said,
the aspect of the subject, and they must wait until the tumult and
excitement should have somewhat subsided. But Darius was more eager
than ever in favor of instantaneous action. He said that there was not
a moment to be lost; for the magi, so soon as they should be informed
of the declarations and of the death of Prexaspes, would be alarmed,
and would take at once the most effectual precautions to guard against
any sudden assault or surprise.

These arguments, at the very time in which Darius was offering them
with so much vehemence and earnestness, were strengthened by a very
singular sort of confirmation; for while the conspirators stood
undetermined, they saw a flock of birds moving across the sky, which,
on their more attentively regarding them, proved to be seven hawks
pursuing two vultures. This they regarded an omen, intended to signify
to them, by a divine intimation, that they ought to proceed. They
hesitated, therefore, no longer.

They went together to the outer gates of the palace. The action of the
guards who were stationed there was just what Darius had predicted
that it would be. Awed by the imposing spectacle of the approach of
seven nobles of the highest distinction, who were advancing, too, with
an earnest and confident air, as if expecting no obstacle to their
admission, they gave way at once, and allowed them to enter. The
conspirators went on until they came to the inner apartments, where
they found eunuchs in attendance at the doors. The eunuchs resisted,
and demanded angrily why the guards had let the strangers in. "Kill
them," said the conspirators, and immediately began to cut them down.
The magi were within, already in consternation at the disclosures of
Prexaspes, of which they had just been informed. They heard the tumult
and the outcries of the eunuchs at the doors, and seized their arms,
the one a bow and the other a spear. The conspirators rushed in. The
bow was useless in the close combat which ensued, and the magian who
had taken it turned and fled. The other defended himself with his
spear for a moment, and wounded severely two of his assailants. The
wounded conspirators fell. Three others of the number continued the
unequal combat with the armed magian, while Darius and Gobryas rushed
in pursuit of the other.

The flying magian ran from one apartment to another until he reached a
dark room, into which the blind instinct of fear prompted him to rush,
in the vain hope of concealment. Gobryas was foremost; he seized the
wretched fugitive by the waist, and struggled to hold him, while the
magian struggled to get free. Gobryas called upon Darius, who was
close behind him, to strike. Darius, brandishing his sword, looked
earnestly into the obscure retreat, that he might see where to strike.

"Strike!" exclaimed Gobryas. "Why do you not strike?"

"I can not see," said Darius, "and I am afraid of wounding you."

"No matter," said Gobryas, struggling desperately all the time with
his frantic victim. "Strike quick, if you kill us both."

Darius struck. Gobryas loosened his hold, and the magian fell upon the
floor, and there, stabbed again through the heart by Darius's sword,
almost immediately ceased to breathe.

They dragged the body to the light, and cut off the head. They did the
same with the other magian, whom they found that their confederates
had killed when they returned to the apartments where they had left
them contending. The whole body of the conspirators then, except the
two who were wounded, exulting in their success, and wild with the
excitement which such deeds always awaken, went forth into the streets
of the city, bearing the heads upon pikes as the trophies of their
victory. They summoned the Persian soldiers to arms, and announced
every where that they had ascertained that the king was a priest and
an impostor, and not their legitimate sovereign, and that they had
consequently killed him. They called upon the people to kill the
magians wherever they could find them, as if the whole class were
implicated in the guilt of the usurping brothers.

The populace in all countries are easily excited by such denunciations
and appeals as these. The Persians armed themselves, and ran to and
fro every where in pursuit of the unhappy magians, and before night
vast numbers of them were slain.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ACCESSION OF DARIUS.

B.C. 520

Confusion at Susa.--No heir to the throne.--Five days'
interregnum.--Provisional government.--Consultation of the
confederates.--Otanes in favor of a republic.--Otanes's
republic.--Principles of representation.--Large assemblies.--Nature
of ancient republics.--Nature of a representative
republic.--Megabyzus.--He opposes the plan of Otanes.--Speech of
Megabyzus.--He proposes an oligarchy.--Speech of Darius.--He advocates
a monarchy.--Four of the seven confederates concur with Darius.--Otanes
withdraws.--Agreement made by the rest.--Singular mode of deciding
which should be the king.--The groom Oebases.--His method of making
Darius's horse neigh.--Probable truth or falsehood of this
account.--Ancient statesmen.--Their character and position.--The
conspirators governed, in their decision, by superstitious
feelings.--The conspirators do homage to Darius.--The equestrian
statue.


For several days after the assassination of the magi the city was
filled with excitement, tumults, and confusion. There was no heir, of
the family of Cyrus, entitled to succeed to the vacant throne, for
neither Cambyses, nor Smerdis his brother, had left any sons. There
was, indeed, a daughter of Smerdis, named Parmys, and there were also
still living two daughters of Cyrus. One was Atossa, whom we have
already mentioned as having been married to Cambyses, her brother, and
as having been afterward taken by Smerdis the magian as one of his
wives. These princesses, though of royal lineage, seem neither of them
to have been disposed to assert any claims to the throne at such a
crisis. The mass of the community were stupefied with astonishment at
the sudden revolution which had occurred. No movement was made toward
determining the succession. For five days nothing was done.

During this period, all the subordinate functions of government in
the provinces, cities, and towns, and among the various garrisons and
encampments of the army, went on, of course, as usual, but the general
administration of the government had no head. The seven confederates
had been regarded, for the time being, as a sort of provisional
government, the army and the country in general, so far as appears,
looking to them for the means of extrication from the political
difficulties in which this sudden revolution had involved them, and
submitting, in the mean time, to their direction and control. Such a
state of things, it was obvious, could not long last; and after five
days, when the commotion had somewhat subsided, they began to consider
it necessary to make some arrangements of a more permanent character,
the power to make such arrangements as they thought best resting with
them alone. They accordingly met for consultation.

Herodotus the historian,[C] on whose narrative of these events we have
mainly to rely for all the information respecting them which is now
to be attained, gives a very minute and dramatic account of the
deliberations of the conspirators on this occasion. The account is, in
fact, too dramatic to be probably true.

[Footnote C: An account of Herodotus, and of the circumstances under
which he wrote his history, which will aid the reader very much in
forming an opinion in respect to the kind and degree of confidence
which it is proper to place in his statements, will be found in the
first chapter of our history of Cyrus the Great.]

Otanes, in this discussion, was in favor of establishing a republic.
He did not think it safe or wise to intrust the supreme power again to
any single individual. It was proved, he said, by universal
experience, that when any one person was raised to such an elevation
above his fellow-men, he became suspicious, jealous, insolent, and
cruel. He lost all regard for the welfare and happiness of others, and
became supremely devoted to the preservation of his own greatness and
power by any means, however tyrannical, and to the accomplishment of
the purposes of his own despotic will. The best and most valuable
citizens were as likely to become the victims of his oppression as the
worst. In fact, tyrants generally chose their favorites, he said, from
among the most abandoned men and women in their realms, such
characters being the readiest instruments of their guilty pleasures
and their crimes. Otanes referred very particularly to the case of
Cambyses as an example of the extreme lengths to which the despotic
insolence and cruelty of a tyrant could go. He reminded his colleagues
of the sufferings and terrors which they had endured while under his
sway, and urged them very strongly not to expose themselves to such
terrible evils and dangers again. He proposed, therefore, that they
should establish a republic, under which the officers of government
should be elected, and questions of public policy be determined, in
assemblies of the people.

It must be understood, however, by the reader, that a republic, as
contemplated and intended by Otanes in this speech, was entirely
different from the mode of government which that word denotes at the
present day. They had little idea, in those times, of the principle of
representation, by which the thousand separate and detached
communities of a great empire can choose _delegates_, who are to
deliberate, speak, and act for them in the assemblies where the great
governmental decisions are ultimately made. By this principle of
representation, the people can really all share in the exercise of
power. Without it they can not, for it is impossible that the people
of a great state can ever be brought together in one assembly; nor,
even if it were practicable to bring them thus together, would it be
possible for such a concourse to deliberate or act. The action of any
assembly which goes beyond a very few hundred in numbers, is always,
in fact, the action exclusively of the small knot of leaders who call
and manage it. Otanes, therefore, as well as all other advocates of
republican government in ancient times, meant that the supreme power
should be exercised, not by the great mass of the people included
within the jurisdiction in question, but by such a portion of certain
privileged classes as could be brought together in the capital. It was
such a sort of republic as would be formed in this country if the
affairs of the country at large, and the municipal and domestic
institutions of all the states, were regulated and controlled by laws
enacted, and by governors appointed, at great municipal meetings held
in the city of New York.

This was, in fact, the nature of all the republics of ancient times.
They were generally small, and the city in whose free citizens the
supreme power resided, constituted by far the most important portion
of the body politic. The Roman republic, however, became at one period
very large. It overspread almost the whole of Europe; but, widely
extended as it was in territory, and comprising innumerable states
and kingdoms within its jurisdiction, the vast concentration of power
by which the whole was governed, vested entirely and exclusively in
noisy and tumultuous assemblies convened in the Roman forum.

Even if the idea of a representative system of government, such as is
adopted in modern times, and by means of which the people of a great
and extended empire can exercise, conveniently and efficiently, a
general sovereignty held in common by them all, had been understood in
ancient times, it is very doubtful whether it could, in those times,
have been carried into effect, for want of certain facilities which
are enjoyed in the present age, and which seem essential for the safe
and easy action of so vast and complicated a system as a great
representative government must necessarily be. The regular transaction
of business at public meetings, and the orderly and successful
management of any extended system of elections, requires a great deal
of writing; and the general circulation of newspapers, or something
exercising the great function which it is the object of newspapers to
fulfill, that of keeping the people at large in some degree informed
in respect to the progress of public affairs, seems essential to the
successful working of a system of representative government comprising
any considerable extent of territory.

However this may be, whether a great representative system would or
would not have been practicable in ancient times if it had been tried,
it is certain that it was never tried. In all ancient republics, the
sovereignty resided, essentially, in a privileged class of the people
of the capital. The territories governed were provinces, held in
subjection as dependencies, and compelled to pay tribute; and this was
the plan which Otanes meant to advocate when recommending a republic,
in the Persian council.

The name of the second speaker in this celebrated consultation was
Megabyzus. He opposed the plan of Otanes. He concurred fully, he said,
in all that Otanes had advanced in respect to the evils of a monarchy,
and to the oppression and tyranny to which a people were exposed whose
liberties and lives were subject to the despotic control of a single
human will. But in order to avoid one extreme, it was not necessary to
run into the evils of the other. The disadvantages and dangers of
popular control in the management of the affairs of state were
scarcely less than those of a despotism. Popular assemblies were
always, he said, turbulent, passionate, capricious. Their decisions
were controlled by artful and designing demagogues. It was not
possible that masses of the common people could have either the
sagacity to form wise counsels, or the energy and steadiness to
execute them. There could be no deliberation, no calmness, no secrecy
in their consultations. A populace was always governed by excitements,
which spread among them by a common sympathy; and they would give way
impetuously to the most senseless impulses, as they were urged by
their fear, their resentment, their exultation, their hate, or by any
other passing emotion of the hour.

Megabyzus therefore disapproved of both a monarchy and a republic. He
recommended an oligarchy. "We are now," said he, "already seven. Let
us select from the leading nobles in the court and officers of the
army a small number of men, eminent for talents and virtue, and thus
form a select and competent body of men, which shall be the depository
of the supreme power. Such a plan avoids the evils and inconveniences
of both the other systems. There can be no tyranny or oppression
under such a system; for, if any one of so large a number should be
inclined to abuse his power, he will be restrained by the rest. On the
other hand, the number will not be so large as to preclude prudence
and deliberation in counsel, and the highest efficiency and energy in
carrying counsels into effect."

When Megabyzus had completed his speech, Darius expressed his opinion.
He said that the arguments of those who had already spoken appeared
plausible, but that the speakers had not dealt quite fairly by the
different systems whose merits they had discussed, since they had
compared a good administration of one form of government with a bad
administration of another. Every thing human was, he admitted, subject
to imperfection and liable to abuse; but on the supposition that each
of the three forms which had been proposed were equally well
administered, the advantage, he thought, would be strongly on the side
of monarchy. Control exercised by a single mind and will was far more
concentrated and efficient than that proceeding from any conceivable
combination. The forming of plans could be, in that case, more secret
and wary, and the execution of them more immediate and prompt. Where
power was lodged in many hands, all energetic exercise of it was
paralyzed by the dissensions, the animosities and the contending
struggles of envious and jealous rivals. These struggles, in fact,
usually resulted in the predominance of some one, more energetic or
more successful than the rest, the aristocracy or the democracy
running thus, of its own accord, to a despotism in the end, showing
that there were natural causes always tending to the subjection of
nations of men to the control of one single will.

Besides all this, Darius added, in conclusion, that the Persians had
always been accustomed to a monarchy, and it would be a very dangerous
experiment to attempt to introduce a new system, which would require
so great a change in all the habits and usages of the people.

Thus the consultation went on. At the end of it, it appeared that four
out of the seven agreed with Darius in preferring a monarchy. This was
a majority, and thus the question seemed to be settled. Otanes said
that he would make no opposition to any measures which they might
adopt to carry their decision into effect, but that he would not
himself be subject to the monarchy which they might establish. "I do
not wish," he added, "either to govern others or to have others
govern me. You may establish a kingdom, therefore, if you choose, and
designate the monarch in any mode that you see fit to adopt, but he
must not consider me as one of his subjects. I myself, and all my
family and dependents, must be wholly free from his control."

This was a very unreasonable proposition, unless, indeed, Otanes was
willing to withdraw altogether from the community to which he thus
refused to be subject; for, by residing within it, he necessarily
enjoyed its protection, and ought, therefore, to bear his portion of
its burdens, and to be amenable to its laws. Notwithstanding this,
however, the conspirators acceded to the proposal, and Otanes
withdrew.

The remaining six of the confederates then proceeded with their
arrangements for the establishment of a monarchy. They first agreed
that one of their own number should be the king, and that on
whomsoever the choice should fall, the other five, while they
submitted to his dominion, should always enjoy peculiar privileges and
honors at his court. They were at all times to have free access to the
palaces and to the presence of the king, and it was from among their
daughters alone that the king was to choose his wives. These and some
other similar points having been arranged, the manner of deciding
which of the six should be the king remained to be determined. The
plan which they adopted, and the circumstances connected with the
execution of it, constitute, certainly, one of the most extraordinary
of all the strange transactions recorded in ancient times. It is
gravely related by Herodotus as sober truth. How far it is to be
considered as by any possibility credible, the reader must judge,
after knowing what the story is.

They agreed, then, that on the following morning they would all meet
on horseback at a place agreed upon beyond the walls of the city, and
that the one whose horse should neigh first should be the king! The
time when this ridiculous ceremony was to be performed was sunrise.

As soon as this arrangement was made the parties separated, and each
went to his own home. Darius called his groom, whose name was
OEbases, and ordered him to have his horse ready at sunrise on the
next morning, explaining to him, at the same time, the plan which had
been formed for electing the king. "If that is the mode which is to be
adopted," said Oebases, "you need have no concern, for I can
arrange it very easily so as to have the lot fall upon you." Darius
expressed a strong desire to have this accomplished, if it were
possible, and Oebases went away.

The method which Oebases adopted was to lead Darius's horse out to
the ground that evening, in company with another, the favorite
companion, it seems, of the animal. Now the attachment of the horse to
his companion is very strong, and his recollection of localities very
vivid, and Oebases expected that when the horse should approach the
ground on the following morning, he would be reminded of the company
which he enjoyed there the night before, and neigh. The result was as
he anticipated. As the horsemen rode up to the appointed place, the
horse of Darius neighed the first, and Darius was unanimously
acknowledged king.

In respect to the credibility of this famous story, the first thought
which arises in the mind is, that it is utterly impossible that sane
men, acting in so momentous a crisis, and where interests so vast and
extended were at stake, could have resorted to a plan so childish and
ridiculous as this. Such a mode of designating a leader, seriously
adopted, would have done discredit to a troop of boys making
arrangements for a holiday; and yet here was an empire extending for
thousands of miles through the heart of a vast continent, comprising,
probably, fifty nations and many millions of people, with capitals,
palaces, armies, fleets, and all the other appointments and machinery
of an immense dominion, to be appropriated and disposed of absolutely,
and, so far as they could see, forever. It seems incredible that men
possessing such intelligence, and information, and extent of view as
we should suppose that officers of their rank and station would
necessarily acquire, could have attempted to decide such a momentous
question in so ridiculous and trivial a manner. And yet the account is
seriously recorded by Herodotus as sober history, and the story has
been related again and again, from that day to this, by every
successive generation of historians, without any particular question
of its truth.

And it may possibly be that it is true. It is a case in which the
apparent improbability is far greater than the real. In the first
place, it would seem that, in all ages of the world, the acts and
decisions of men occupying positions of the most absolute and exalted
power have been controlled, to a much greater degree, by caprice and
by momentary impulse, than mankind have generally supposed. Looking up
as we do to these vast elevations from below, they seem invested with
a certain sublimity and grandeur which we imagine must continually
impress the minds of those who occupy them, and expand and strengthen
their powers, and lead them to act, in all respects, with the
circumspection, the deliberation, and the far-reaching sagacity which
the emergencies continually arising seem to require. And this is, in
fact, in some degree the case with the statesmen and political leaders
raised to power under the constitutional governments of modern times.
Such statesmen are clothed with their high authority, in one way or
another, by the combined and deliberate action of vast masses of men,
and every step which they take is watched, in reference to its
influence on the condition and welfare of these masses, by many
millions; so that such men live and act under a continual sense of
responsibility, and they appreciate, in some degree, the momentous
importance of their doings. But the absolute and independent
sovereigns of the Old World, who held their power by conquest or by
inheritance, though raised sometimes to very vast and giddy
elevations, seem to have been unconscious, in many instances, of the
dignity and grandeur of their standing, and to have considered their
acts only as they affected their own personal and temporary interests.
Thus, though placed on a great elevation, they took only very narrow
and circumscribed views; they saw nothing but the objects immediately
around them; and they often acted, accordingly, in the most frivolous
and capricious manner.

It was so, undoubtedly, with these six conspirators. In deciding which
of their number should be king, they thought nothing of the interests
of the vast realms, and of the countless millions of people whose
government was to be provided for. The question, as they considered
it, was doubtless merely which of them should have possession of the
royal palaces, and be the center and the object of royal pomp and
parade in the festivities and celebrations of the capital.

And in the mode of decision which they adopted, it may be that some
degree of superstitious feeling mingled. The action and the voices of
animals were considered, in those days, as supernatural omens,
indicating the will of heaven. These conspirators may have expected,
accordingly, in the neighing of the horse, a sort of divine
intimation in respect to the disposition of the crown. This idea is
confirmed by the statement which the account of this transaction
contains, that immediately after the neighing of Darius's horse, it
thundered, although there were no clouds in the sky from which the
thunder could be supposed naturally to come. The conspirators, at all
events, considered it solemnly decided that Darius was to be king.
They all dismounted from their horses and knelt around him, in
acknowledgment of their allegiance and subjection.

It seems that Darius, after he became established on his throne,
considered the contrivance by which, through the assistance of his
groom, he had obtained the prize, not as an act of fraud which it was
incumbent on him to conceal, but as one of brilliant sagacity which he
was to avow and glory in. He caused a magnificent equestrian statue to
be sculptured, representing himself mounted on his neighing horse.
This statue he set up in a public place with this inscription:

     DARIUS, SON OF HYSTASPES, OBTAINED THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PERSIA
     BY THE SAGACITY OF HIS HORSE AND THE INGENIOUS CONTRIVANCE
     OF OEBASES HIS GROOM.




CHAPTER V.

THE PROVINCES.

B.C. 520

Intaphernes.--He is denied admittance to Darius.--Intaphernes's cruelty
to the two guards.--Darius's apprehensions.--Intaphernes and family
arrested.--They are condemned to die.--Alternative offered to
Intaphernes's wife.--Her strange decision.--Death of Intaphernes.--The
provinces.--The governors.--Their independence.--Power of the
governors.--Oretes, governor of Sardis.--Conversation between Oretes
and Mitrobates.--Polycrates.--Dominion of Polycrates.--Letter of
Amasis.--Suggestion of Amasis.--Adopted by Polycrates.--Polycrates
throws away his ring.--Its singular recovery.--Predictions of
Amasis.--Their fulfillment.--Letter of Oretes.--His hypocrisy.--The
pretended treasure.--Fears of Polycrates's daughter.--Oretes murders
Polycrates.--He commits other murders.--Oretes destroys Darius's
messenger.--Darius is incensed.--Plan of Darius for punishing
Oretes.--His proposal.--Commission of Bagaeus.--His plan.--Oretes
beheaded.--Divisions of Darius's empire.--Tribute of the satrapies.--The
white horses.--The gold of India.--Mode of gathering it.--The wonderful
ants.--Their prodigious size.


Several of the events and incidents which occurred immediately after
the accession of Darius to the throne, illustrate in a striking manner
the degree in which the princes and potentates of ancient days were
governed by caprice and passionate impulse even in their public acts.
One of the most remarkable of these was the case of Intaphernes.

Intaphernes was one of the seven conspirators who combined to depose
the magian and place Darius on the throne. By the agreement which they
made with each other before it was decided which should be the king,
each of them was to have free access to the king's presence at all
times. One evening, soon after Darius became established on his
throne, Intaphernes went to the palace, and was proceeding to enter
the apartment of the king without ceremony, when he was stopped by two
officers, who told him that the king had retired. Intaphernes was
incensed at the officers' insolence, as he called it. He drew his
sword, and cut off their noses and their ears. Then he took the bridle
off from his horse at the palace gate, and tied the officers together;
and then, leaving them in this helpless and miserable condition, he
went away.

The officers immediately repaired to the king, and presented
themselves to him, a frightful spectacle, wounded and bleeding, and
complaining bitterly of Intaphernes as the author of the injuries
which they had received. The king was at first alarmed for his own
safety. He feared that the conspirators had all combined together to
rebel against his authority, and that this daring insult offered to
his personal attendants, in his very palace, was the first outbreak of
it. He accordingly sent for the conspirators one by one, to ask of
them whether they approved of what Intaphernes had done. They promptly
disavowed all connection with Intaphernes in the act, and all approval
of it, and declared their determination to adhere to the decision that
they had made, by which Darius had been placed on the throne.

Darius then, after taking proper precautions to guard against any
possible attempts at resistance, sent soldiers to seize Intaphernes,
and also his son, and all of his family, relatives, and friends who
were capable of bearing arms; for he suspected that Intaphernes had
meditated a rebellion, and he thought that, if so, these men would
most probably be his accomplices. The prisoners were brought before
him. There was, indeed, no proof that they were engaged in any plan of
rebellion, nor even that any plan of rebellion whatever had been
formed; but this circumstance afforded them no protection. The
liberties and the lives of all subjects were at the supreme and
absolute disposal of these ancient kings. Darius thought it possible
that the prisoners had entertained, or might entertain, some
treasonable designs, and he conceived that he should, accordingly,
feel safer if they were removed out of the way. He decreed, therefore,
that they must all die.

While the preparations were making for the execution, the wife of
Intaphernes came continually to the palace of Darius, begging for an
audience, that she might intercede for the lives of her friends.
Darius was informed of this, and at last, pretending to be moved with
compassion for her distress, he sent her word that he would pardon one
of the criminals for her sake, and that she might decide which one it
should be. His real motive in making this proposal seems to have been
to enjoy the perplexity and anguish which the heart of a woman must
suffer in being compelled thus to decide, in a question of life and
death, between a husband and a son.

The wife of Intaphernes did not decide in favor of either of these.
She gave the preference, on the other hand, to a brother. Darius was
very much surprised at this result, and sent a messenger to her to
inquire how it happened that she could pass over and abandon to their
fate her husband and her son, in order to save the life of her
brother, who was certainly to be presumed less near and dear to her.
To which she gave this extraordinary reply, that the loss of her
husband and her son might perhaps be repaired, since it was not
impossible that she might be married again, and that she might have
another son; but that, inasmuch as both her father and mother were
dead, she could never have another brother. The death of her present
brother would, therefore, be an irreparable loss.

The king was so much pleased with the novelty and unexpectedness of
this turn of thought, that he gave her the life of her son in addition
to that of her brother. All the rest of the family circle of
relatives and friends, together with Intaphernes himself, he ordered
to be slain.

Darius had occasion to be so much displeased, too, shortly after his
accession to the throne, with the governor of one of his provinces,
that he was induced to order him to be put to death. The circumstances
connected with this governor's crime, and the manner of his execution,
illustrate very forcibly the kind of government which was administered
by these military despots in ancient times. It must be premised that
great empires, like that over which Darius had been called to rule,
were generally divided into provinces. The inhabitants of these
provinces, each community within its own borders, went on, from year
to year, in their various pursuits of peaceful industry, governed
mainly, in their relations to each other, by the natural sense of
justice instinctive in man, and by those thousand local institutions
and usages which are always springing up in all human communities
under the influence of this principle. There were governors stationed
over these provinces, whose main duty it was to collect and remit to
the king the tribute which the province was required to furnish him.
These governors were, of course, also to suppress any domestic
outbreak of violence, and to repel any foreign invasion which might
occur. A sufficient military force was placed at their disposal to
enable them to fulfill these functions. They paid these troops, of
course, from sums which they collected in their provinces under the
same system by which they collected the tribute. This made them, in a
great measure, independent of the king in the maintenance of their
armies. They thus intrenched themselves in their various capitals at
the head of these troops, and reigned over their respective dominions
almost as if they were kings themselves. They had, in fact, very
little connection with the supreme monarch, except to send him the
annual tribute which they had collected from their people, and to
furnish, also, their quota of troops in case of a national war. In the
time of our Savior, Pilate was such a governor, intrusted by the
Romans with the charge of Judea, and Matthew was one of the tax
gatherers employed to collect the tribute.

Of course, the governors of such provinces, as we have already said,
were, in a great measure, independent of the king. He had, ordinarily,
no officers of justice whose jurisdiction could control, peacefully,
such powerful vassals. The only remedy in most cases, when they were
disobedient and rebellious, was to raise an army and go forth to make
war upon them, as in the case of any foreign state. This was attended
with great expense, and trouble, and hazard. The governors, when
ambitious and aspiring, sometimes managed their resources with so much
energy and military skill as to get the victory over their sovereign
in the contests in which they engaged with them, and then they would
gain vast accessions to the privileges and powers which they exercised
in their own departments; and they would sometimes overthrow their
discomfited sovereign entirely, and take possession of his throne
themselves in his stead.

Oretes was the name of one of these governors in the time of Darius.
He had been placed by Cyrus, some years before, in charge of one of
the provinces into which the kingdom of Lydia had been divided. The
seat of government was Sardis.[D] He was a capricious and cruel
tyrant, as, in fact, almost all such governors were. We will relate
an account of one of the deeds which he performed some time before
Darius ascended the throne, and which sufficiently illustrates his
character.

[Footnote D: For the position of Sardis, and of other places mentioned
in this chapter, see the map at the commencement of the volume, and
also that at the commencement of chapter xi.]

He was one day sitting at the gates of his palace in Sardis, in
conversation with the governor of a neighboring territory who had come
to visit him. The name of this guest was Mitrobates. As the two
friends were boasting to one another, as such warriors are accustomed
to do, of the deeds of valor and prowess which they had respectively
performed, Mitrobates said that Oretes could not make any great
pretensions to enterprise and bravery so long as he allowed the Greek
island of Samos, which was situate at a short distance from the Lydian
coast, to remain independent, when it would be so easy to annex it to
the Persian empire. "You are afraid of Polycrates, I suppose," said
he. Polycrates was the king of Samos.

Oretes was stung by this taunt, but, instead of revenging himself on
Mitrobates, the author of it, he resolved on destroying Polycrates,
though he had no reason other than this for any feeling of enmity
toward him.

Polycrates, although the seat of his dominion was a small island in
the AEgean Sea, was a very wealthy, and powerful, and prosperous
prince. All his plans and enterprises had been remarkably successful.
He had built and equipped a powerful fleet, and had conquered many
islands in the neighborhood of his own. He was projecting still wider
schemes of conquests, and hoped, in fact, to make himself the master
of all the seas.

A very curious incident is related of Polycrates, which illustrates
very strikingly the childish superstition which governed the minds of
men in those ancient days. It seems that in the midst of his
prosperity, his friend and ally, the King of Egypt--for these events,
though narrated here, occurred before the invasion of Egypt by
Cambyses--sent to him a letter, of which the following is the purport.

     "_Amasis, king of Egypt, to Polycrates._

     "It always gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to hear
     of the prosperity of a friend and ally, unless it is too
     absolutely continuous and uninterrupted. Something like an
     alternation of good and ill fortune is best for man; I have
     never known an instance of a very long-continued course of
     unmingled and uninterrupted success that did not end, at
     last, in overwhelming and terrible calamity. I am anxious,
     therefore, for you, and my anxiety will greatly increase if
     this extraordinary and unbroken prosperity should continue
     much longer. I counsel you, therefore, to break the current
     yourself, if fortune will not break it. Bring upon yourself
     some calamity, or loss, or suffering, as a means of averting
     the heavier evils which will otherwise inevitably befall
     you. It is a general and substantial welfare only that can
     be permanent and final."

Polycrates seemed to think there was good sense in this suggestion. He
began to look around him to see in what way he could bring upon
himself some moderate calamity or loss, and at length decided on the
destruction of a very valuable signet ring which he kept among his
treasures. The ring was made with very costly jewels set in gold, and
was much celebrated both for its exquisite workmanship and also for
its intrinsic value. The loss of this ring would be, he thought, a
sufficient calamity to break the evil charm of an excessive and
unvaried current of good fortune. Polycrates, therefore, ordered one
of the largest vessels in his navy, a fifty-oared galley, to be
equipped and manned, and, embarking in it with a large company of
attendants, he put to sea. When he was at some distance from the
island, he took the ring, and in the presence of all his attendants,
he threw it forth into the water, and saw it sink, to rise, as he
supposed, no more.

But Fortune, it seems, was not to be thus outgeneraled. A few days
after Polycrates had returned, a certain fisherman on the coast took,
in his nets, a fish of very extraordinary size and beauty; so
extraordinary, in fact, that he felt it incumbent on him to make a
present of it to the king. The servants of Polycrates, on opening the
fish for the purpose of preparing it for the table, to their great
astonishment and gratification, found the ring within. The king was
overjoyed at thus recovering his lost treasure; he had, in fact,
repented of his rashness in throwing it away, and had been bitterly
lamenting its loss. His satisfaction and pleasure were, therefore,
very great in regaining it; and he immediately sent to Amasis an
account of the whole transaction, expecting that Amasis would share in
his joy.

Amasis, however, sent word back to him in reply, that he considered
the return of the ring in that almost miraculous manner as an
extremely unfavorable omen. "I fear," said he, "that it is decreed by
the Fates that you must be overwhelmed, at last, by some dreadful
calamity, and that no measures of precaution which you can adopt will
avail to avert it. It seems to me, too," he added, "that it is
incumbent on me to withdraw from all alliance and connection with you,
lest I should also, at last, be involved in your destined
destruction."

Whether this extraordinary story was true, or whether it was all
fabricated after the fall of Polycrates, as a dramatic embellishment
of his history, we can not now know. The result, however, corresponded
with these predictions of Amasis, if they were really made; for it was
soon after these events that the conversation took place at Sardis
between Oretes and Mitrobates, at the gates of the palace, which led
Oretes to determine on effecting Polycrates's destruction.

In executing the plans which he thus formed, Oretes had not the
courage and energy necessary for an open attack on Polycrates, and he
consequently resolved on attempting to accomplish his end by treachery
and stratagem.

The plan which he devised was this: He sent a messenger to Polycrates
with a letter of the following purport:

     "_Oretes, governor of Sardis, to Polycrates of Samos._

     "I am aware, sire, of the plans which you have long been
     entertaining for extending your power among the islands and
     over the waters of the Mediterranean, until you shall have
     acquired the supreme and absolute dominion of the seas. I
     should like to join you in this enterprise. You have ships
     and men, and I have money. Let us enter into an alliance
     with each other. I have accumulated in my treasuries a large
     supply of gold and silver, which I will furnish for the
     expenses of the undertaking. If you have any doubt of my
     sincerity in making these offers, and of my ability to
     fulfill them, send some messenger in whom you have
     confidence, and I will lay the evidence before him."

Polycrates was much pleased at the prospect of a large accession to
his funds, and he sent the messenger, as Oretes had proposed. Oretes
prepared to receive him by filling a large number of boxes nearly full
with heavy stones, and then placing a shallow layer of gold or silver
coin at the top. These boxes were then suitably covered and secured,
with the fastenings usually adopted in those days, and placed away in
the royal treasuries. When the messenger arrived, the boxes were
brought out and opened, and were seen by the messenger to be full, as
he supposed, of gold and silver treasure. The messenger went back to
Polycrates, and reported that all which Oretes had said was true; and
Polycrates then determined to go to the main land himself to pay
Oretes a visit, that they might mature together their plans for the
intended campaigns. He ordered a fifty-oared galley to be prepared to
convey him.

His daughter felt a presentiment, it seems, that some calamity was
impending. She earnestly entreated her father not to go. She had had a
dream, she said, about him, which had frightened her excessively, and
which she was convinced portended some terrible danger. Polycrates
paid no attention to his daughter's warnings. She urged them more and
more earnestly, until, at last, she made her father angry, and then
she desisted. Polycrates then embarked on board his splendid galley,
and sailed away. As soon as he landed in the dominions of Oretes, the
monster seized him and put him to death, and then ordered his body to
be nailed to a cross, for exhibition to all passers by, as a public
spectacle. The train of attendants and servants that accompanied
Polycrates on this expedition were all made slaves, except a few
persons of distinction, who were sent home in a shameful and
disgraceful manner. Among the attendants who were detained in
captivity by Oretes was a celebrated family physician, named
Democedes, whose remarkable and romantic adventures will be the
subject of the next chapter.

Oretes committed several other murders and assassinations in this
treacherous manner, without any just ground for provocation. In these
deeds of violence and cruelty, he seems to have acted purely under the
influence of that wanton and capricious malignity which the possession
of absolute and irresponsible power so often engenders in the minds of
bad men. It is doubtful, however, whether these cruelties and crimes
would have particularly attracted the attention of Darius, so long as
he was not himself directly affected by them. The central government,
in these ancient empires, generally interested itself very little in
the contentions and quarrels of the governors of the provinces,
provided that the tribute was efficiently collected and regularly
paid.

A case, however, soon occurred, in Oretes's treacherous and bloody
career, which arrested the attention of Darius and aroused his ire.
Darius had sent a messenger to Oretes, with certain orders, which, it
seems, Oretes did not like to obey. After delivering his dispatches
the bearer set out on his return, and was never afterward heard of.
Darius ascertained, to his own satisfaction at least, that Oretes had
caused his messenger to be waylaid and killed, and that the bodies
both of horse and rider had been buried, secretly, in the solitudes of
the mountains, in order to conceal the evidences of the deed.

Darius determined on punishing this crime. Some consideration was,
however, required, in order to determine in what way his object could
best be effected. The province of Oretes was at a great distance from
Susa, and Oretes was strongly established there, at the head of a
great force. His guards were bound, it is true, to obey the orders of
Darius, but it was questionable whether they would do so. To raise an
army and march against the rebellious governor would be an expensive
and hazardous undertaking, and perhaps, too, it would prove that such
a measure was not necessary. All things considered, Darius determined
to try the experiment of acting, by his own direct orders, upon the
troops and guards in Oretes's capital, with the intention of resorting
subsequently to an armed force of his own, if that should be at last
required.

He accordingly called together a number of his officers and nobles,
selecting those on whose resolution and fidelity he could most
confidently rely, and made the following address to them:

"I have an enterprise which I wish to commit to the charge of some one
of your number who is willing to undertake it, which requires no
military force, and no violent measures of any kind, but only wisdom,
sagacity, and courage. I wish to have Oretes, the governor of Sardis,
brought to me, dead or alive. He has perpetrated innumerable crimes,
and now, in addition to all his other deeds of treacherous violence,
he has had the intolerable insolence to put to death one of my
messengers. Which of you will volunteer to bring him, dead or alive,
to me?"

This proposal awakened a great enthusiasm among the nobles to whom it
was addressed. Nearly thirty of them volunteered their services to
execute the order. Darius concluded to decide between these
competitors by lot. The lot fell upon a certain man named Bagaeus, and
he immediately began to form his plans and make his arrangements for
the expedition.

He caused a number of different orders to be prepared, beginning with
directions of little moment, and proceeding to commands of more and
more weighty importance, all addressed to the officers of Oretes's
army and to his guards. These orders were all drawn up in writing with
great formality, and were signed by the name of Darius, and sealed
with his seal; they, moreover, named Bagaeus as the officer selected by
the king to superintend the execution of them. Provided with these
documents, Bagaeus proceeded to Sardis, and presented himself at the
court of Oretes. He presented his own personal credentials, and with
them some of his most insignificant orders. Neither Oretes nor his
guards felt any disposition to disobey them. Bagaeus, being thus
received and recognized as the envoy of the king, continued to present
new decrees and edicts, from time to time, as occasions occurred in
which he thought the guards would be ready to obey them, until he
found the habit, on their part, of looking to him as the
representative of the supreme power sufficiently established; for
their disposition to obey him was not merely tested, it was
strengthened by every new act of obedience. When he found, at length,
that his hold upon the guards was sufficiently strong, he produced his
two final decrees, one ordering the guards to depose Oretes from his
power, and the other to behead him. Both the commands were obeyed.

The events and incidents which have been described in this chapter
were of no great importance in themselves, but they illustrate, more
forcibly than any general description would do the nature and the
operation of the government exercised by Darius throughout the vast
empire over which he found himself presiding.

Such personal and individual contests and transactions were not all
that occupied his attention. He devoted a great deal of thought and of
time to the work of arranging, in a distinct and systematic manner,
the division of his dominions into provinces, and to regulating
precisely the amount of tribute to be required of each, and the modes
of collecting it. He divided his empire into twenty great districts,
each of which was governed by a ruler called a _satrap_. He fixed the
amount of tribute which each of these districts was to pay, making it
greater or less as the soil and the productions of the country varied
in fertility and abundance. In some cases this tribute was to be paid
in gold, in others in silver, and in others in peculiar commodities,
natural to the country of which they were required. For example, one
satrapy, which comprised a country famous for its horses, was obliged
to furnish one white horse for every day in the year. This made three
hundred and sixty annually, that being the number of days in the
Persian year. Such a supply, furnished yearly, enabled the king soon
to have a very large troop of white horses; and as the horses were
beautifully caparisoned, and the riders magnificently armed, the body
of cavalry thus formed was one of the most splendid in the world.

The satrapies were numbered from the west toward the east. The western
portion of Asia Minor constituted the first, and the East Indian
nations the twelfth and last. The East Indians had to pay their
tribute in ingots of gold. Their country produced gold.

As it is now forever too late to separate the facts from the fiction
of ancient history, and determine what is to be rejected as false and
what received as true, our only resource is to tell the whole story
just as it comes down to us, leaving it to each reader to decide for
himself what he will believe. In this view of the subject, we will
conclude this chapter by relating the manner in which it was said in
ancient times that these Indian nations obtained their gold.

The gold country was situated in remote and dreary deserts, inhabited
only by wild beasts and vermin, among which last there was, it seems,
a species of ants, which were of enormous size, and wonderful
fierceness and voracity, and which could run faster than the fleetest
horse or camel. These ants, in making their excavations, would bring
up from beneath the surface of the ground all the particles of gold
which came in their way, and throw them out around their hills. The
Indians then would penetrate into these deserts, mounted on the
fleetest camels that they could procure, and leading other camels, not
so fleet, by their sides. They were provided, also, with bags for
containing the golden sands. When they arrived at the ant hills, they
would dismount, and, gathering up the gold which the ants had
discarded, would fill their bags with the utmost possible dispatch,
and then mount their camels and ride away. The ants, in the mean time,
would take the alarm, and begin to assemble to attack them; but as
their instinct prompted them to wait until considerable numbers were
collected before they commenced their attack, the Indians had time to
fill their bags and begin their flight before their enemies were
ready. Then commenced the chase, the camels running at their full
speed, and the swarms of ants following, and gradually drawing nearer
and nearer. At length, when nearly overtaken, the Indians would
abandon the camels that they were leading, and fly on, more swiftly,
upon those which they rode. While the ants were busy in devouring the
victims thus given up to them, the authors of all the mischief would
make good their escape, and thus carry off their gold to a place of
safety. These famous ants were bigger than foxes!

[Illustration: THE INDIAN GOLD HUNTER.]




CHAPTER VI.

THE RECONNOITERING OF GREECE.

B.C. 519

The reconnoitering party.--The physician Democedes.--Story of
Democedes.--His boyhood.--Democedes at AEgina.--At Athens.--At the court
of Polycrates.--Democedes a captive.--He is sent to Darius.--Democedes
is cast into prison.--His wretched condition.--Darius sprains his
ankle.--The Egyptian physicians baffled.--Sufferings of Darius.--He
sends for Democedes.--Democedes's denial.--He treats the sprain
successfully.--Darius's recovery.--The golden fetters.--Democedes
released.--Honors conferred on him.--Atossa cured by Democedes.--His
conditions.--Atossa with Darius.--She suggests the invasion of
Greece.--The exploring party.--Democedes appointed guide.--Designs of
Democedes.--Darius baffled.--The expedition sets out.--City of
Sidon.--The sea voyage.--The Grecian coasts examined.--Arrival at
Tarentum.--Suspicions of the authorities.--The Persians seized.--Escape
of Democedes.--Release of the Persians.--Tumult at Crotona.--Conduct
of Democedes.--The expedition returns.--Misfortunes.--Cillus.--Arrival
at Susa.--Reception by Darius.


The great event in the history of Darius--the one, in fact, on account
of which it was, mainly, that his name and his career have been so
widely celebrated among mankind, was an attempt which he made, on a
very magnificent scale, for the invasion and conquest of Greece.
Before commencing active operations in this grand undertaking, he sent
a reconnoitering party to examine and explore the ground. This
reconnoitering party met with a variety of extraordinary adventures in
the course of its progress, and the history of it will accordingly
form the subject of this chapter.

The guide to this celebrated reconnoitering party was a certain Greek
physician named Democedes. Though Democedes was called a Greek, he
was, really, an Italian by birth. His native town was Crotona, which
may be found exactly at the ball of the foot on the map of Italy. It
was by a very singular series of adventures that he passed from this
remote village in the west, over thousands of miles by land and sea,
to Susa, Darius's capital. He began by running away from his father
while he was still a boy. He said that he was driven to this step by
the intolerable strictness and cruelty of his father's government.
This, however, is always the pretext of turbulent and ungovernable
young men, who abandon their parents and their homes when the favors
and the protection necessary during their long and helpless infancy
have been all received, and the time is beginning to arrive for making
some return.

Democedes was ingenious and cunning, and fond of roving adventure. In
running away from home, he embarked on board a ship, as such
characters generally do at the present day, and went to sea. After
meeting with various adventures, he established himself in the island
of AEgina, in the AEgean sea, where he began to practice as a physician,
though he had had no regular education in that art. In his practice he
evinced so much medical skill, or, at least, exercised so much
adroitness in leading people to believe that he possessed it, as to
give him very soon a wide and exalted reputation. The people of AEgina
appointed him their physician, and assigned him a large salary for
his services in attending upon the sick throughout the island. This
was the usual practice in those days. A town, or an island, or any
circumscribed district of country, would appoint a physician as a
public officer, who was to devote his attention, at a fixed annual
salary, to any cases of sickness which might arise in the community,
wherever his services were needed, precisely as physicians serve in
hospitals and public institutions in modern times.

Democedes remained at AEgina two years, during which time his celebrity
increased and extended more and more, until, at length, he received an
appointment from the city of Athens, with the offer of a greatly
increased salary. He accepted the appointment, and remained in Athens
one year, when he received still more advantageous offers from
Polycrates, the king of Samos, whose history was given so fully in the
last chapter.

Democedes remained for some time in the court of Polycrates, where he
was raised to the highest distinction, and loaded with many honors. He
was a member of the household of the king, enjoyed his confidence in a
high degree, and attended him, personally, on all his expeditions. At
last, when Polycrates went to Sardis, as is related in the last
chapter, to receive the treasures of Oretes, and concert with him the
plans for their proposed campaigns, Democedes accompanied him as
usual; and when Polycrates was slain, and his attendants and followers
were made captive by Oretes, the unfortunate physician was among the
number. By this reverse, he found that he had suddenly fallen from
affluence, ease, and honor, to the condition of a neglected and
wretched captive in the hands of a malignant and merciless tyrant.

Democedes pined in this confinement for a long time; when, at length,
Oretes himself was killed by the order of Darius, it might have been
expected that the hour of his deliverance had arrived. But it was not
so; his condition was, in fact, made worse, and not better by it; for
Bagaeus, the commissioner of Darius, instead of inquiring into the
circumstances relating to the various members of Oretes's family, and
redressing the wrongs which any of them might be suffering, simply
seized the whole company, and brought them all to Darius in Susa, as
trophies of his triumph, and tokens of the faithfulness and efficiency
with which he had executed the work that Darius had committed to his
charge. Thus Democedes was borne away, in hopeless bondage, thousands
of miles farther from his native land than before, and with very
little prospect of being ever able to return. He arrived at Susa,
destitute, squalid, and miserable. His language was foreign, his rank
and his professional skill unknown, and all the marks which might
indicate the refinement and delicacy of the modes of life to which he
had been accustomed were wholly disguised by his present destitution
and wretchedness. He was sent with the other captives to the prisons,
where he was secured, like them, with fetters and chains, and was soon
almost entirely forgotten.

He might have taken some measures for making his character, and his
past celebrity and fame as a physician known; but he did not dare to
do this, for fear that Darius might learn to value his medical skill,
and so detain him as a slave for the sake of his services. He thought
that the chance was greater that some turn of fortune, or some
accidental change in the arrangements of government might take place,
by which he might be set at liberty, as an insignificant and worthless
captive, whom there was no particular motive for detaining, than if
he were transferred to the king's household as a slave, and his value
as an artisan--for medical practice was, in those days, simply an
art--were once known. He made no effort, therefore, to bring his true
character to light, but pined silently in his dungeon, in rags and
wretchedness, and in a mental despondency which was gradually sinking
into despair.

About this time, it happened that Darius was one day riding furiously
in a chase, and coming upon some sudden danger, he attempted to leap
from his horse. He fell and sprained his ankle. He was taken up by the
attendants, and carried home. His physicians were immediately called
to attend to the case. They were Egyptians. Egypt was, in fact,
considered the great seat and centre of learning and of the arts in
those days, and no royal household was complete without Egyptian
physicians.

The learning and skill, however, of the Egyptians in Darius's court
were entirely baffled by the sprain. They thought that the joint was
dislocated, and they turned and twisted the foot with so much
violence, in their attempts to restore the bones to their proper
position, as greatly to increase the pain and the inflammation.
Darius spent a week in extreme and excruciating suffering. He could
not sleep day nor night, but tossed in continual restlessness and
anguish on his couch, made constantly worse instead of better by every
effort of his physicians to relieve him.

At length somebody informed him that there was a Greek physician among
the captives that came from Sardis, and recommended that Darius should
send for him. The king, in his impatience and pain, was ready for any
experiment which promised the least hope of relief, and he ordered
that Democedes should be immediately summoned. The officers
accordingly went to the prison and brought out the astonished captive,
without any notice or preparation, and conducted him, just as he was,
ragged and wretched, and shackled with iron fetters upon his feet,
into the presence of the king. The fetters which such captives wore
were intended to allow them to walk, slowly and with difficulty, while
they impeded the movements of the feet so as effectually to prevent
any long or rapid flight, or any escape at all from free pursuers.

Democedes, when questioned by Darius, denied at first that he
possessed any medical knowledge or skill. Darius was, however, not
deceived by these protestations. It was very customary, in those days
of royal tyranny, for those who possessed any thing valuable to
conceal the possession of it: concealment was often their only
protection. Darius, who was well aware of this tendency, did not
believe the assurances of Democedes, and in the irritation and
impatience caused by his pain, he ordered the captive to be taken out
and put to the torture, in order to make him confess that he was
really a physician.

Democedes yielded without waiting to be actually put to the test. He
acknowledged at once, for fear of the torture, that he had had some
experience in medical practice, and the sprained ankle was immediately
committed to his charge. On examining the case, he thought that the
harsh and violent operations which the Egyptian physicians had
attempted were not required. He treated the inflamed and swollen joint
in the gentlest manner. He made fomenting and emollient applications,
which soothed the pain, subdued the inflammation, and allayed the
restlessness and the fever. The royal sufferer became quiet and calm,
and in a short time fell asleep.

In a word, the king rapidly recovered; and, overwhelmed with gratitude
toward the benefactor whose skill had saved him from such suffering,
he ordered that, in place of his single pair of iron fetters, he
should have two pairs of fetters of gold!

It might at first be imagined that such a strange token of regard as
this could be intended only as a jest and an insult; but there is no
doubt that Darius meant it seriously as a compliment and an honor. He
supposed that Democedes, of course, considered his condition of
captivity as a fixed and permanent one; and that his fetters were not,
in themselves, an injustice or disgrace, but the necessary and
unavoidable concomitant of his lot, so that the sending of golden
fetters to a slave was very naturally, in his view, like presenting a
golden crutch to a cripple. Democedes received the equivocal donation
with great good nature. He even ventured upon a joke on the subject to
the convalescent king. "It seems, sire," said he "that in return for
my saving your limb and your life, you double my servitude. You have
given me two chains instead of one."

The king, who was now in a much better humor to be pleased than when,
writhing in anguish, he had ordered Democedes to be put to the
torture, laughed at this reply, and released the captive from the
bonds entirely. He ordered him to be conducted by the attendants to
the apartments of the palace, where the wives of Darius and the other
ladies of the court resided, that they might see him and express their
gratitude. "This is the physician," said the eunuchs, who introduced
him, "that cured the king." The ladies welcomed him with the utmost
cordiality, and loaded him with presents of gold and silver as he
passed through their apartments. The king made arrangements, too,
immediately, for providing him with a magnificent house in Susa, and
established him there in great luxury and splendor, with costly
furniture and many attendants, and all other marks of distinction and
honor. In a word, Democedes found himself, by means of another
unexpected change of fortune, suddenly elevated to a height as lofty
as his misery and degradation had been low. He was, however, a captive
still.

The Queen Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who has already been
mentioned as the wife of Cambyses and of Smerdis the magian, was one
of the wives of Darius. Her sister Antystone was another. A third was
Phaedyma, the daughter of Otanes, the lady who had been so
instrumental, in connection with Atossa, in the discovery of the
magian imposture. It happened that, some time after the curing of
Darius's sprain, Atossa herself was sick. Her malady was of such a
nature, that for some time she kept it concealed, from a feeling of
delicacy.[E] At length, terrified by the danger which threatened her,
she sent for Democedes, and made her case known to him. He said that
he could cure her, but she must first promise to grant him, if he did
so, a certain favor which he should ask. She must promise beforehand
to grant it, whatever it might be. It was nothing, he said, that
should in any way compromise her honor.

[Footnote E: It was a tumor of the breast, which became, at length, an
open ulcer, and began to spread and enlarge in a very formidable
manner.]

Atossa agreed to these conditions, and Democedes undertook her case.
Her malady was soon cured; and when she asked him what was the favor
which he wished to demand, he replied,

"Persuade Darius to form a plan for the invasion of Greece, and to
send me, with a small company of attendants, to explore the country,
and obtain for him all the necessary preliminary information. In this
way I shall see my native land once more."

Atossa was faithful in her promise. She availed herself of the first
favorable opportunity, when it became her turn to visit the king, to
direct his mind, by a dexterous conversation, toward the subject of
the enlargement of his empire. He had vast forces and resources, she
said, at his command, and might easily enter upon a career of conquest
which would attract the admiration of the world. Darius replied that
he had been entertaining some views of that nature. He had thought, he
said, of attacking the Scythians: these Scythians were a group of
semi-savage nations on the north of his dominions. Atossa represented
to him that subduing the Scythians would be too easy a conquest, and
that it would be a far nobler enterprise, and more worthy of his
talents and his vast resources, to undertake an expedition into
Europe, and attempt the conquest of Greece. "You have all the means at
your command essential for the success of such an undertaking, and you
have in your court a man who can give you, or can obtain for you, all
the necessary information in respect to the country, to enable you to
form the plan of your campaigns."

The ambition of Darius was fired by these suggestions. He began
immediately to form projects and schemes. In a day or two he organized
a small party of Persian officers of distinction, in whom he had great
confidence, to go on an exploring tour into Greece. They were provided
with a suitable company of attendants, and with every thing necessary
for their journey, and Democedes was directed to prepare to go with
them as their guide. They were to travel simply as a party of Persian
noblemen, on an excursion of curiosity and pleasure, concealing their
true design; and as Democedes their guide, though born in Italy, was
in all important points a Greek, and was well acquainted with the
countries through which they were to pass, they supposed that they
could travel every where without suspicion. Darius charged the
Persians to keep a diligent watch over Democedes, and not to allow
him, on any account to leave them, but to bring him back to Susa
safely with them on their return.

As for Democedes, he had no intention whatever of returning to Persia,
though he kept his designs of making his escape entirely concealed.
Darius, with seeming generosity, said to him, while he was making his
preparations, "I recommend to you to take with you all your private
wealth and treasures, to distribute, for presents, among your friends
in Greece and Italy. I will bestow more upon you here on your return."
Democedes regarded this counsel with great suspicion. He imagined that
the king, in giving him this permission, wished to ascertain, by
observing whether he would really take with him all his possessions,
the existence of any secret determination in his mind not to come back
to Susa. If this were Darius's plan, it was defeated by the sagacious
vigilance and cunning of the physician. He told the king, in reply,
that he preferred to leave his effects in Persia, that they might be
ready for his use on his return. The king then ordered a variety of
costly articles to be provided and given to Democedes, to be taken
with him and presented to his friends in Greece and Italy. They
consisted of vessels of gold and silver, pieces of Persian armor of
beautiful workmanship, and articles of dress, expensive and splendid.
These were all carefully packed, and the various other necessary
preparations were made for the long journey.

At length the expedition set out. They traveled by land westward,
across the continent, till they reached the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean Sea. The port at which they arrived was Sidon, the city
so often mentioned in the Scriptures as a great pagan emporium of
commerce. The city of Sidon was in the height of its glory at this
time, being one of the most important ports of the Mediterranean for
all the western part of Asia. Caravans of travelers came to it by
land, bringing on the backs of camels the productions of Arabia,
Persia, and all the East; and fleets of ships by sea, loaded with the
corn, and wine, and oil of the Western nations.

At Sidon the land journey of the expedition was ended. Here they
bought two large and splendid ships, galleys of three banks of oars,
to convey them to Greece. These galleys were for their own personal
accommodation. There was a third vessel, called a transport, for the
conveyance of their baggage, which consisted mainly of the packages of
rich and costly presents which Darius had prepared. Some of these
presents were for the friends of Democedes, as has been already
explained, and others had been provided as gifts and offerings from
the king himself to such distinguished personages as the travelers
might visit on their route. When the vessels were ready, and the
costly cargo was on board, the company of travelers embarked, and the
little fleet put to sea.

The Grecian territories are endlessly divided and indented by the
seas, whose irregular and winding shores form promontories,
peninsulas, and islands without number, which are accessible in every
part by water. The Persian explorers cruised about among these coasts
under Democedes's guidance, examining every thing, and noting
carefully all the information which they could obtain, either by
personal observation or by inquiring of others, which might be of
service to Darius in his intended invasion. Democedes allowed them to
take their own time, directing their course, however, steadily, though
slowly, toward his own native town of Crotona. The expedition landed
in various places, and were every where well received. It was not for
the interest of Democedes that they should yet be intercepted. In
fact, the name and power of Darius were very much feared, or, at
least, very highly respected in all the Grecian territory, and the
people were little inclined to molest a peaceful party of Persians
traveling like ordinary tourists, and under the guidance, too, of a
distinguished countryman of their own, whose name was, in some degree,
a guarantee for the honesty and innocence of their intentions. At
length, however, after spending some time in the Grecian seas, the
little squadron moved still farther west, toward the coast of Italy,
and arrived finally at Tarentum. Tarentum was the great port on the
Grecian side of Italy. It was at the head of the spacious bay which
sets up between the heel and the ball of the foot of the boot-shaped
peninsula. Crotona, Democedes's native town, to which he was now
desirous to return, was southwest of Tarentum, about two hundred miles
along the shore.[F]

[Footnote F: For the situation of these places, see the map at the
commencement of chapter xi.]

It was a very curious and extraordinary circumstance that, though the
expedition had been thus far allowed to go and come as its leaders
pleased, without any hinderance or suspicion, yet now, the moment that
they touched a point from which Democedes could easily reach his home,
the authorities on shore, in some way or other, obtained some
intimation of the true character of their enterprise. The Prince of
Tarentum seized the ships. He made the Persians themselves prisoners
also, and shut them up; and, in order effectually to confine the
ships, he took away the helms from them, so that they could not be
steered, and were thus entirely disabled. The expedition being thus,
for the time at least, broken up, Democedes said, coolly, that he
would take the opportunity to make a little excursion along the coast,
and visit his friends at Crotona!

It was another equally suspicious circumstance in respect to the
probability that this seizure was the result of Democedes's
management, that, as soon as he was safely away, the Prince of
Tarentum set his prisoners at liberty, releasing, at the same time,
the ships from the seizure, and sending the helms on board. The
Persians were indignant at the treatment which they had received, and
set sail immediately along the coast toward Crotona in pursuit of
Democedes. They found him in the market-place in Crotona, haranguing
the people, and exciting, by his appearance and his discourse, a great
and general curiosity. They attempted to seize him as a fugitive, and
called upon the people of Crotona to aid them, threatening them with
the vengeance of Darius if they refused. A part of the people were
disposed to comply with this demand, while others rallied to defend
their townsman. A great tumult ensued; but, in the end, the party of
Democedes was victorious. He was not only thus personally rescued,
but, as he informed the people that the transport vessel which
accompanied the expedition contained property that belonged to him,
they seized that too, and gave it up to Democedes, saying to the
Persians that, though they must give up the transport, the galleys
remained at their service to convey them back to their own country
whenever they wished to go.

The Persians had now no other alternative but to return home. They
had, it is true, pretty nearly accomplished the object of their
undertaking; but, if any thing remained to be done, they could not now
attempt it with any advantage, as they had lost their guide, and a
great portion of the effects which had been provided by Darius to
enable them to propitiate the favor of the princes and potentates into
whose power they might fall. They accordingly began to make
preparations for sailing back again to Sidon, while Democedes
established himself in great magnificence and splendor in Crotona.
When, at length, the Persians were ready to sail, Democedes wished
them a very pleasant voyage, and desired them to give his best
respects to Darius, and inform him that he could not return at present
to Persia, as he was making arrangements to be married!

The disasters which had befallen these Persian reconnoiterers thus far
were only the beginning of their troubles. Their ships were driven by
contrary winds out of their course, and they were thrown at last upon
the coast of Iapygia, a country occupying the heel of Italy. Here they
were seized by the inhabitants and made slaves. It happened that there
was living in this wild country at that time a man of wealth and of
cultivation, who had been exiled from Tarentum on account of some
political offenses. His name was Cillus. He heard the story of these
unhappy foreigners, and interested himself in their fate. He thought
that, by rescuing them from their captivity and sending them home, he
should make Darius his friend, and secure, perhaps, his aid in
effecting his own restoration to his native land. He accordingly paid
the ransom which was demanded for the captives, and set them free. He
then aided them in making arrangements for their return to Persia, and
the unfortunate messengers found their way back at last to the court
of Darius, without their guide, without any of the splendid
appointments with which they had gone forth, but stripped of every
thing, and glad to escape with their lives.

They had some cause to fear, too, the anger of Darius, for the
insensate wrath of a tyrant is awakened as often by calamity as by
crime. Darius, however, was in this instance graciously disposed. He
received the unfortunate commissioners in a favorable manner. He took
immediate measures for rewarding Cillus for having ransomed them. He
treasured up, too, the information which they had obtained respecting
Greece, though he was prevented by circumstances, which we will
proceed to describe, from immediately putting into execution his plans
of invasion and conquest there.




CHAPTER VII.

THE REVOLT OF BABYLON.

B.C. 516-514

City of Babylon.--The captive Jews.--Wickedness of the
Babylonians.--Causes of discontent.--Preparations of the Babylonians
for revolt.--Their secrecy.--Time chosen for revolt.--Story of
Syloson.--Syloson's red cloak.--He gives it to Darius.--Syloson goes
to Susa.--Interview with Darius.--Request of Syloson.--Darius grants
it.--Citadel of Samos.--Measures of Maeandrius.--Hypocrisy
of Maeandrius.--His brother Charilaus.--Reproaches of
Charilaus.--Character of Maeandrius.--Attack of Charilaus.--Slaughter
of the Samians.--Revolt of Babylon.--Insults and jeers of the
Babylonians.--Ancient mode of warfare.--Modern warfare.--Taunt of the
Babylonians.--Fabricating prodigies.--The mule of Zopyrus.--Interview
with Darius.--Desperate plan of Zopyrus.--He mutilates
himself.--Darius's astonishment.--Final arrangements.--Zopyrus
leaves the Persian camp.--Success of Zopyrus's stratagem.--His
piteous story.--The three victories.--Zopyrus intrusted with power
in Babylon.--Zopyrus admits the Persians.--Fall of Babylon.


The city of Babylon, originally the capital of the Assyrian empire,
was conquered by Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy, when he
annexed the Assyrian empire to his dominions. It was a vast and a very
magnificent and wealthy city; and Cyrus made it, for a time, one of
his capitals.

When Cyrus made this conquest of Babylon, he found the Jews in
captivity there. They had been made captive by Nebuchadnezzar, a
previous king of Babylon, as is related in the Scriptures. The holy
prophets of Judea had predicted that after seventy years the captives
should return, and that Babylon itself should afterward be destroyed.
The first prediction was fulfilled by the victory of Cyrus. It
devolved on Darius to execute the second of these solemn and
retributive decrees of heaven.

Although Darius was thus the instrument of divine Providence in the
destruction of Babylon, he was unintentionally and unconsciously so.
In the terrible scenes connected with the siege and the storming of
the ill-fated city, it was the impulse of his own hatred and revenge
that he was directly obeying; he was not at all aware that he was, at
the same time, the messenger of the divine displeasure. The wretched
Babylonians, in the storming and destruction of their city, were
expiating a double criminality. Their pride, their wickedness, their
wanton cruelty toward the Jews, had brought upon them the condemnation
of God, while their political treason and rebellion, or, at least,
what was considered treason and rebellion aroused the implacable
resentment of their king.

The Babylonians had been disposed to revolt even in the days of Cyrus.
They had been accustomed to consider their city as the most noble and
magnificent capital in the world, and they were displeased that Cyrus
did not make it the seat and center of his empire. Cyrus preferred
Susa; and Babylon, accordingly, though he called it one of his
capitals, soon fell to the rank of a provincial city. The nobles and
provincial leaders that remained there began accordingly to form plans
for revolting from the Persian dominion, with a view of restoring
their city to its ancient position and renown.

They had a very favorable opportunity for maturing their plans, and
making their preparations for the execution of them during the time of
the magian usurpation; for while the false Smerdis was on the throne,
being shut up and concealed in his palace at Susa, the affairs of the
provinces were neglected; and when Darius and his accomplices
discovered the imposture and put Smerdis to death, there was
necessarily required, after so violent a revolution, a considerable
time before the affairs of the empire demanding attention at the
capital could be settled, so as to allow the government to turn their
thoughts at all toward the distant dependencies. The Babylonians
availed themselves of all these opportunities to put their city in the
best condition for resisting the Persian power. They strengthened
their defenses, and accumulated great stores of provisions, and took
measures for diminishing that part of the population which would be
useless in war. These measures were all concerted and carried into
effect in the most covert and secret manner; and the tidings came at
last to Susa that Babylon had openly revolted, before the government
of Darius was aware even of the existence of any disaffection.

The time which the Babylonians chose for their rebellion at last was
one when the movable forces which Darius had at command were at the
west, engaged in a campaign on the shores of Asia Minor. Darius had
sent them there for the purpose of restoring a certain exile and
wanderer named Syloson to Samos, and making him the monarch of it.
Darius had been induced thus to interpose in Syloson's behalf by the
following very extraordinary circumstances.

Syloson was the brother of Polycrates, whose unhappy history has
already been given. He was exiled from Samos some time before Darius
ascended the throne, and he became, consequently, a sort of soldier of
fortune, serving, like other such adventurers, wherever there was the
greatest prospect of glory and pay. In this capacity he followed the
army of Cambyses into Egypt in the memorable campaign described in the
first chapter of this volume. It happened, also, that Darius himself,
who was then a young noble in the Persian court, and yet of no
particular distinction, as there was then no reason to imagine that he
would ever be elevated to the throne, was also in Cambyses's army, and
the two young men became acquainted with one another there.

While the army was at Memphis, an incident occurred in which these two
personages were actors, which, though it seemed unimportant at the
time, led, in the end, to vast and momentous results. The incident was
this:

Syloson had a very handsome red cloak, which, as he appeared in it one
day, walking in the great square at Memphis, strongly attracted the
admiration of Darius. Darius asked Syloson if he would sell him the
cloak. Syloson said that he would not sell it, but would give it to
him. He thought, probably, that Darius would decline receiving it as a
present. If he did entertain that idea, it seems he was mistaken.
Darius praised him for his generosity, and accepted the gift.

Syloson was then sorry that he had made so inconsiderate an offer, and
regretted very much the loss of his cloak. In process of time, the
campaign of Cambyses in Egypt was ended, and Darius returned to
Persia, leaving Syloson in the west. At length the conspiracy was
formed for dethroning Smerdis the magian, as has already been
described, and Darius was designated to reign in his stead. As the
news of the young noble's elevation spread into the western world, it
reached Syloson. He was much pleased at receiving the intelligence,
and he saw immediately that there was a prospect of his being able to
derive some advantage, himself, from the accession of his old
fellow-soldier to the throne.

He immediately proceeded to Susa. He applied at the gates of the
palace for admission to the presence of the king. The porter asked him
who he was. He replied that he was a Greek who had formerly done
Darius a service, and he wished to see him. The porter carried the
message to the king. The king could not imagine who the stranger
should be. He endeavored in vain to recall to mind any instance in
which he had received a favor from a Greek. At length he ordered the
attendant to call the visitor in.

Syloson was accordingly conducted into the king's presence. Darius
looked upon him, but did not know him. He directed the interpreters to
inquire what the service was which he had rendered the king, and when
he had rendered it. The Greek replied by relating the circumstance of
the cloak. Darius recollected the cloak, though he had forgotten the
giver. "Are you, indeed," said he, "the man who made me that present?
I thought then that you were very generous to me, and you shall see
that I do not undervalue the obligation now. I am at length,
fortunately, in a situation to requite the favor, and I will give you
such an abundance of gold and silver as shall effectually prevent your
being sorry for having shown a kindness to Darius Hystaspes."

Syloson thanked the king in reply, but said that he did not wish for
gold and silver. Darius asked him what reward he did desire. He
replied that he wished Samos to be restored to him: "Samos," said he,
"was the possession of my brother. When he went away from the island,
he left it temporarily in the hands of Maeandrius, an officer of his
household. It still remains in the possession of this family, while I,
the rightful heir, am a homeless wanderer and exile, excluded from my
brother's dominions by one of his slaves."

Darius immediately determined to accede to Syloson's request. He
raised an army and put it under the command of Otanes, who, it will be
recollected, was one of the seven conspirators that combined to
dethrone Smerdis the magian. He directed Otanes to accompany Syloson
to Samos, and to put him in possession of the island. Syloson was
particularly earnest in his request that no unnecessary violence
should be used, and no blood shed, or vindictive measures of any kind
adopted. Darius promised to comply with these desires, and gave his
orders to Otanes accordingly.

Notwithstanding this, however, the expedition resulted in the almost
total destruction of the Samian population, in the following manner.
There was a citadel at Samos, to which the inhabitants retired when
they learned that Otanes had embarked his troops in ships on the
coast, and was advancing toward the island. Maeandrius was vexed and
angry at the prospect of being deprived of his possessions and his
power; and, as the people hated him on account of his extortion and
tyranny, he hated them in return, and cared not how much suffering his
measures might be the means of bringing upon them. He had a
subterranean and secret passage from the citadel to the shore of the
sea, where, in a secluded cove, were boats or vessels ready to take
him away. Having made these arrangements to secure his own safety, he
proceeded to take such a course and adopt such measures as should tend
most effectually to exasperate and offend the Persians, intending to
escape, himself, at the last moment, by this subterranean retreat,
and to leave the inhabitants of the island at the mercy of their
infuriated enemies.

He had a brother whom he had shut up in a dungeon, and whose mind,
naturally depraved, and irritated by his injuries, was in a state of
malignant and furious despair. Maeandrius had pretended to be willing
to give up the island to the Persians. He had entered into
negotiations with them for this purpose, and the Persians considered
the treaty as in fact concluded. The leaders and officers of the army
had assembled, accordingly, before the citadel in a peaceful attitude,
waiting merely for the completion of the forms of surrender, when
Charilaus, Maeandrius's captive brother, saw them, by looking out
between the bars of his window, in the tower in which he was confined.
He sent an urgent message to Maeandrius, requesting to speak to him.
Maeandrius ordered the prisoner to be brought before him. The haggard
and wretched-looking captive, rendered half insane by the combined
influence of the confinement he had endured, and of the wild
excitement produced by the universal panic and confusion which reigned
around him, broke forth against his brother in the boldest and most
violent invectives. He reproached him in the most bitter terms for
being willing to yield so ingloriously, and without a struggle, to an
invading foe, whom he might easily repel. "You have courage and energy
enough, it seems," said he, "to make war upon an innocent and
defenseless brother, and to keep him for years in chains and in a
dungeon, but when an actual enemy appears, though he comes to despoil
you of all your possessions, and to send you into hopeless exile, and
though, if you had the ordinary courage and spirit of a man, you could
easily drive him away, yet you dare not face him. If you are too
cowardly and mean to do your duty yourself, give me your soldiers, and
I will do it for you. I will drive these Persians back into the sea
with as much pleasure as it would give me to drive you there!"

Such a nature as that of Maeandrius can not be stung into a proper
sense of duty by reproaches like these. There seem to have been in his
heart no moral sensibilities of any kind, and there could be, of
course, no compunctions for the past, and no awakening of new and
better desires for the future. All the effect which was produced upon
his mind by these bitter denunciations was to convince him that to
comply with his brother's request would be to do the best thing now in
his power for widening, and extending, and making sure the misery and
mischief which were impending. He placed his troops, therefore, under
his brother's orders; and while the infuriated madman sallied forth at
the head of them to attack the astonished Persians on one side of the
citadel, Maeandrius made his escape through the under-ground passage on
the other. The Persians were so exasperated at what appeared to them
the basest treachery, that, as soon as they could recover their arms
and get once more into battle array, they commenced a universal
slaughter of the Samians. They spared neither age, sex, nor condition;
and when, at last, their vengeance was satisfied, and they put the
island into Syloson's hands, and withdrew, he found himself in
possession of an almost absolute solitude.

[Illustration: THE BABYLONIANS DERIDING DARIUS.]

It was while Otanes was absent on this enterprise, having with him a
large part of the disposable forces of the king, that the Babylonians
revolted. Darius was greatly incensed at hearing the tidings.
Sovereigns are always greatly incensed at a revolt on the part of
their subjects. The circumstances of the case, whatever they may be,
always seem to them to constitute a peculiar aggravation of the
offense. Darius was indignant that the Babylonians had attempted to
take advantage of his weakness by rebelling when his armies were
away. If they had risen when his armies were around him, he would
have been equally indignant with them for having dared to brave his
power.

He assembled all the forces at his disposal, and advanced to Babylon.
The people of the city shut their gates against him, and derided him.
They danced and capered on the walls, making all sorts of gestures
expressive of contempt and defiance, accompanied with shouts and
outcries of ridicule and scorn. They had great confidence in the
strength of their defenses, and then, besides this, they probably
regarded Darius as a sort of usurper, who had no legitimate title to
the throne, and who would never be able to subdue any serious
resistance which might be offered to the establishment of his power.
It was from these considerations that they were emboldened to be
guilty of the folly of taunting and insulting their foes from the city
walls.

Such incidents as this, of personal communications between masses of
enemies on the eve of a battle, were very common in ancient warfare,
though impossible in modern times. In those days, when the missiles
employed were thrown chiefly by the strength of the human arm alone,
the combatants could safely draw near enough together for each side to
hear the voices and to see the gesticulations of the other. Besiegers
could advance sufficiently close to a castle or citadel to parley
insultingly with the garrison upon the walls, and yet be safe from the
showers of darts and arrows which were projected toward them in
return. But all this is now changed. The reach of cannon, and even of
musketry, is so long, that combatants, approaching a conflict, are
kept at a very respectful distance apart, until the time arrives in
which the actual engagement is to begin. They reconnoiter each other
with spy-glasses from watch-towers on the walls, or from eminences in
the field, but they can hold no communication except by a formal
embassy, protected by a flag of truce, which, with its white and
distant fluttering, as it slowly advances over the green fields, warns
the gunners at the battery or on the bastion to point their artillery
another way.

The Babylonians, on the walls of their city, reproached and taunted
their foes incessantly. "Take our advice," said they, "and go back
where you came from. You will only lose your time in besieging
Babylon. When mules have foals, you will take the city, and not till
then."

The expression "when mules have foals" was equivalent in those days to
our proverbial phrase, "when the sky falls," being used to denote any
thing impossible or absurd, inasmuch as mules, like other hybrid
animals, do not produce young. It was thought in those times
absolutely impossible that they should do so; but it is now well known
that the case is not impossible, though very rare.

It seems to have added very much to the interest of an historical
narrative in the minds of the ancient Greeks, to have some prodigy
connected with every great event; and, in order to gratify this
feeling, the writers appear in some instances to have fabricated a
prodigy for the occasion, and in others to have elevated some unusual,
though by no means supernatural circumstance, to the rank and
importance of one. The prodigy connected with this siege of Babylon
was the foaling of a mule. The mule belonged to a general in the army
of Darius, named Zopyrus. It was after Darius had been prosecuting the
siege of the city for a year and a half, without any progress
whatever toward the accomplishment of his end. The army began to
despair of success. Zopyrus, with the rest, was expecting that the
siege would be indefinitely prolonged, or, perhaps, absolutely
abandoned, when his attention was strongly attracted to the phenomenon
which had happened in respect to the mule. He remembered the taunt of
the Babylonian on the wall, and it seemed to him that the whole
occurrence portended that the time had now arrived when some way might
be devised for the capture of the city.

Portents and prophecies are often the causes of their own fulfillment,
and this portent led Zopyrus to endeavor to devise some means to
accomplish the end in view. He went first, however, to Darius, to
converse with him upon the subject, with a view of ascertaining how
far he was really desirous of bringing the siege to a termination. He
wished to know whether the object was of sufficient importance in
Darius's mind to warrant any great sacrifice on his own part to effect
it.

He found that it was so. Darius was extremely impatient to end the
siege and to capture the city; and Zopyrus saw at once that, if he
could in any way be the means of accomplishing the work, he should
entitle himself, in the highest possible degree, to the gratitude of
the king.

He determined to go himself into Babylon as a pretended deserter from
Darius, with a view to obtaining an influence and a command within the
city, which should enable him afterward to deliver it up to the
besiegers; and, in order to convince the Babylonians that his
desertion was real, he resolved to mutilate himself in a manner so
dreadful as would effectually prevent their imagining that the
injuries which he suffered were inflicted by any contrivance of his
own. He accordingly cut off his hair and his ears, and mutilated his
face in a manner too shocking to be here detailed, inflicting injuries
which could never be repaired. He caused himself to be scourged, also,
until his whole body was covered with cuts and contusions. He then
went, wounded and bleeding as he was, into the presence of Darius, to
make known his plans.

Darius expressed amazement and consternation at the terrible
spectacle. He leaped from his throne and rushed toward Zopyrus,
demanding who had dared to maltreat one of his generals in such a
manner. When Zopyrus replied that he had himself done the deed, the
king's astonishment was greater than before. He told Zopyrus that he
was insane. Some sudden paroxysm of madness had come over him. Zopyrus
replied that he was not insane; and he explained his design. His plan,
he said, was deliberately and calmly formed, and it should be steadily
and faithfully executed. "I did not make known my design to you," said
he, "before I had taken the preliminary steps, for I knew that you
would prevent my taking them. It is now too late for that, and nothing
remains but to reap, if possible, the advantage which may be derived
from what I have done."

He then arranged with Darius the plans which he had formed, so far as
he needed the co-operation of the king in the execution of them. If he
could gain a partial command in the Babylonian army, he was to make a
sally from the city gates on a certain day, and attack a portion of
the Persian army, which Darius was to leave purposely exposed, in
order that he might gain credit with the Babylonians by destroying
them. From this he supposed that the confidence which the Babylonians
would repose in him would increase, and he might consequently receive
a greater command. Thus he might, by acting in concert with Darius
without, gradually gain such an ascendency within the city as finally
to have power to open the gates and let the besiegers in. Darius was
to station a detachment of a thousand men near a certain gate, leaving
them imperfectly armed, on the tenth day after Zopyrus entered the
city. These Zopyrus was to destroy. Seven days afterward, two thousand
more were to be stationed in a similar manner at another point; and
these were also to be destroyed by a second sally. Twenty days after
this, four thousand more were to be similarly exposed. Thus seven
thousand innocent and defenseless men would be slaughtered, but that,
as Zopyrus said, would be "of no consequence." The lives of men were
estimated by heroes and conquerors in those days only at their
numerical value in swelling the army roll.

These things being all arranged, Zopyrus took leave of the King to go
to Babylon. As he left the Persian camp, he began to run, looking
round behind him continually, as if in flight. Some men, too,
pretended to pursue him. He fled toward one of the gates of the city.
The sentinels on the walls saw him coming. When he reached the gate,
the porter inside of it talked with him through a small opening, and
heard his story. The porter then reported the case to the superior
officers, and they commanded that the fugitive should be admitted.
When conducted into the presence of the magistrates, he related a
piteous story of the cruel treatment which he had received from
Darius, and of the difficulty which he had experienced in making his
escape from the tyrant's hands. He uttered, too, dreadful imprecations
against Darius, and expressed the most eager determination to be
revenged. He informed the Babylonians, moreover, that he was well
acquainted with all Darius's plans and designs, and with the
disposition which he had made of his army; and that, if they would, in
a few days, when his wounds should have in some measure healed, give
him a small command, he would show them, by actual trial, what he
could do to aid their cause.

They acceded to this proposition, and furnished Zopyrus, at the end of
ten days, with a moderate force. Zopyrus, at the head of this force,
sallied forth from the gate which had been previously agreed upon
between him and Darius, and fell upon the unfortunate thousand that
had been stationed there for the purpose of being destroyed. They were
nearly defenseless, and Zopyrus, though his force was inferior, cut
them all to pieces before they could be re-enforced or protected, and
then retreated safely into the city again. He was received by the
Babylonians with the utmost exultation and joy. He had no difficulty
in obtaining, seven days afterward, the command of a larger force,
when, sallying forth from another gate, as had been agreed upon by
Darius, he gained another victory, destroying, on this occasion, twice
as many Persians as before. These exploits gained the pretended
deserter unbounded fame and honor within the city. The populace
applauded him with continual acclamations; and the magistrates invited
him to their councils, offered him high command, and governed their
own plans and measures by his advice. At length, on the twentieth day,
he made his third sally, at which time he destroyed and captured a
still greater number than before. This gave him such an influence and
position within the city, in respect to its defense, that he had no
difficulty in getting intrusted with the keys of certain gates--those,
namely, by which he had agreed that the army of Darius should be
admitted.

When the time arrived, the Persians advanced to the attack of the city
in that quarter, and the Babylonians rallied as usual on the walls to
repel them. The contest had scarcely begun before they found that the
gates were open, and that the columns of the enemy were pouring in.
The city was thus soon wholly at the mercy of the conqueror. Darius
dismantled the walls, carried off the brazen gates, and crucified
three thousand of the most distinguished inhabitants; then
establishing over the rest a government of his own, he withdrew his
troops and returned to Susa. He bestowed upon Zopyrus, at Susa, all
possible rewards and honors. The marks of his wounds and mutilations
could never be effaced, but Darius often said that he would gladly
give up twenty Babylons to be able to efface them.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE INVASION OF SCYTHIA.

B.C. 513

Darius's authority fully established throughout his
dominions.--The Scythians.--Ancient account of them.--Pictures of
savage life.--Their diversity.--Social instincts of man.--Their
universality.--Moral sentiments of mankind.--Religious
depravity.--Advice of Artabanus.--Emissaries sent forward.--The
petition of Oebazus.--Darius's wanton cruelty.--Place of
rendezvous.--The fleet of galleys.--Darius's march through Asia
Minor.--Monuments.--Arrival at the Bosporus.--The bridge of
boats.--Reward of Mandrocles.--The group of statuary.--The Cyanean
Islands.--Darius makes an excursion to them.--The two
monuments.--Inscriptions on them.--The troops cross the
bridge.--Movements of the fleet.--The River Tearus.--Its wonderful
sources.--The cairn.--Primitive mode of census-taking.--Instinctive
feeling of dependence on a supernatural power.--Strange religious
observance.--Arrival at the Danube.--Orders to destroy the
bridge.--Counsel of the Grecian general.--The bridge is
preserved.--Guard left to protect it.--Singular mode of
reckoning.--Probable reason for employing it.--Darius's determination
to return before the knots should be all untied.


In the reigns of ancient monarchs and conquerors, it often happened
that the first great transaction which called forth their energies was
the suppression of a rebellion within their dominions, and the second,
an expedition against some ferocious and half-savage nations beyond
their frontiers. Darius followed this general example. The suppression
of the Babylonian revolt established his authority throughout the
whole interior of his empire. If that vast, and populous, and wealthy
city was found unable to resist his power, no other smaller province
or capital could hope to succeed in the attempt. The whole empire of
Asia, therefore, from the capital at Susa, out to the extreme limits
and bounds to which Cyrus had extended it, yielded without any further
opposition to his sway. He felt strong in his position, and being
young and ardent in temperament, he experienced a desire to exercise
his strength. For some reason or other, he seems to have been not
quite prepared yet to grapple with the Greeks, and he concluded,
accordingly, first to test his powers in respect to foreign invasion
by a war upon the Scythians. This was an undertaking which required
some courage and resolution; for it was while making an incursion into
the country of the Scythians that Cyrus, his renowned predecessor, and
the founder of the Persian empire, had fallen.

The term Scythians seems to have been a generic designation, applied
indiscriminately to vast hordes of half-savage tribes occupying those
wild and inhospitable regions of the north, that extended along the
shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, and the banks of the Danube. The
accounts which are given by the ancient historians of the manners and
customs of these people, are very inconsistent and contradictory; as,
in fact, the accounts of the characters of savages, and of the habits
and usages of savage life, have always been in every age. It is very
little that any one cultivated observer can really know, in respect to
the phases of character, the thoughts and feelings, the sentiments,
the principles and the faith, and even the modes of life, that prevail
among uncivilized aborigines living in forests, or roaming wildly over
uninclosed and trackless plains. Of those who have the opportunity to
observe them, accordingly, some extol, in the highest degree, their
rude but charming simplicity, their truth and faithfulness, the
strength of their filial and conjugal affection, and their superiority
of spirit in rising above the sordid sentiments and gross vices of
civilization. They are not the slaves, these writers say, of appetite
and passion. They have no inordinate love of gain; they are patient in
enduring suffering, grateful for kindness received, and inflexibly
firm in their adherence to the principles of honor and duty. Others,
on the other hand, see in savage life nothing but treachery, cruelty,
brutality, and crime. Man in his native state, as they imagine, is but
a beast, with just intelligence enough to give effect to his
depravity. Without natural affection, without truth, without a sense
of justice, or the means of making law a substitute for it, he lives
in a scene of continual conflict, in which the rights of the weak and
the defenseless are always overborne by brutal and tyrannical power.

The explanation of this diversity is doubtless this, that in savage
life, as well as in every other state of human society, all the
varieties of human conduct and character are exhibited; and the
attention of each observer is attracted to the one or to the other
class of phenomena, according to the circumstances in which he is
placed when he makes his observations, or the mood of mind which
prevails within him when he records them. There must be the usual
virtues of social life, existing in a greater or less degree, in all
human communities; for such principles as a knowledge of the
distinction of right and wrong, the idea of property and of individual
rights, the obligation resting on every one to respect them, the sense
of justice, and of the ill desert of violence and cruelty, are all
_universal instincts of the human soul_, as universal and as essential
to humanity as maternal or filial affection, or the principle of
conjugal love. They were established by the great Author of nature as
constituent elements in the formation of man. Man could not continue
to exist, as a gregarious animal, without them. It would accordingly
be as impossible to find a community of men without these moral
sentiments generally prevalent among them, as to find vultures or
tigers that did not like to pursue and take their prey, or deer
without a propensity to fly from danger. The laws and usages of
civilized society are the expression and the result of these
sentiments, not the origin and foundation of them; and violence,
cruelty, and crime are the exceptions to their operation, very few, in
all communities, savage or civilized, in comparison with the vast
preponderance of cases in which they are obeyed.

This view of the native constitution of the human character, which it
is obvious, on very slight reflection, must be true, is not at all
opposed, as it might at first appear to be, by the doctrine of the
theological writers in the Christian Church in respect to the native
depravity of man; for the depravity here referred to is a religious
depravity, an alienation of the heart from God, and a rebellious and
insubmissive spirit in respect to his law. Neither the Scriptures nor
the theological writers who interpret them ever call in question the
universal existence and prevalence of those instincts that are
essential to the social welfare of man.

But we must return to the Scythians.

The tribes which Darius proposed to attack occupied the countries
north of the Danube. His route, therefore, for the invasion of their
territories would lead him through Asia Minor, thence across the
Hellespont or the Bosporus into Thrace, and from Thrace across the
Danube. It was a distant and dangerous expedition.

Darius had a brother named Artabanus. Artabanus was of opinion that
the enterprise which the king was contemplating was not only distant
and dangerous, but that the country of the Scythians was of so little
value that the end to be obtained by success would be wholly
inadequate to compensate for the exertions, the costs, and the hazards
which he must necessarily incur in the prosecution of it. But Darius
was not to be dissuaded. He thanked his brother for his advice, but
ordered the preparations for the expedition to go on.

He sent emissaries forward, in advance, over the route that his army
was destined to take, transmitting orders to the several provinces
which were situated on the line of his march to prepare the way for
the passage of his troops. Among other preparations, they were to
construct a bridge of boats across the Bosporus at Chalcedon. This
work was intrusted to the charge and superintendence of an engineer of
Samos named Mandrocles. The people of the provinces were also to
furnish bodies of troops, both infantry and cavalry, to join the army
on its march.

The soldiers that were enlisted to go on this remote and dangerous
expedition joined the army, as is usual in such cases, some willingly,
from love of adventure, or the hope of opportunities for plunder, and
for that unbridled indulgence of appetite and passion which soldiers
so often look forward to as a part of their reward; others from hard
compulsion, being required to leave friends and home, and all that
they held dear, under the terror of a stern and despotic edict which
they dared not disobey. It was even dangerous to ask for exemption.

As an instance of this, it is said that there was a Persian named
Oebazus, who had three sons that had been drafted into the army.
Oebazus, desirous of not being left wholly alone in his old age,
made a request to the king that he would allow one of the sons to
remain at home with his father. Darius appeared to receive this
petition favorably. He told Oebazus that the request was so very
modest and considerate that he would grant more than he asked. He
would allow all three of his sons to remain with him. Oebazus
retired from the king's presence overjoyed at the thought that his
family was not to be separated at all. Darius ordered his guards to
kill the three young men, and to send the dead bodies home, with a
message to their father that his sons were restored to him, released
forever from all obligation to serve the king.

The place of general rendezvous for the various forces which were to
join in the expedition, consisting of the army which marched with
Darius from Susa, and also of the troops and ships which the maritime
provinces of Asia Minor were to supply on the way, was on the shores
of the Bosporus, at the point where Mandrocles had constructed the
bridge.[G] The people of Ionia, a region situated in Asia Minor, on
the shores of the AEgean Sea, had been ordered to furnish a fleet of
galleys, which they were to build and equip, and then send to the
bridge. The destination of this fleet was to the Danube. It was to
pass up the Bosporus into the Euxine Sea, now called the Black Sea,
and thence into the mouth of the river. After ascending the Danube to
a certain point, the men were to land and build a bridge across that
river, using, very probably, their galleys for this purpose. In the
mean time, the army was to cross the Bosporus by the bridge which had
been erected there by Mandrocles, and pursue their way toward the
Danube by land, through the kingdom of Thrace. By this arrangement, it
was supposed that the bridge across the Danube would be ready by the
time that the main body of the army arrived on the banks of the river.
The idea of thus building in Asia Minor a bridge for the Danube, in
the form of a vast fleet of galleys, to be sent round through the
Black Sea to the mouths of the river, and thence up the river to its
place of destination, was original and grand. It strikingly marks the
military genius and skill which gave the Greeks so extended a fame,
for it was by the Greeks that the exploit was to be performed.

[Footnote G: For the track of Darius on this expedition, see the map
at the commencement of this volume.]

Darius marched magnificently through Asia Minor, on his way to the
Bosporus, at the head of an army of seventy thousand men. He moved
slowly, and the engineers and architects that accompanied him built
columns and monuments here and there, as he advanced, to commemorate
his progress. These structures were covered with inscriptions, which
ascribed to Darius, as the leader of the enterprise, the most
extravagant praise. At length the splendid array arrived at the place
of rendezvous on the Bosporus, where there was soon presented to view
a very grand and imposing scene.

The bridge of boats was completed, and the Ionian fleet, consisting of
six hundred galleys, was at anchor near it in the stream. Long lines
of tents were pitched upon the shore, and thousands of horsemen and of
foot soldiers were drawn up in array, their banners flying, and their
armor glittering in the sun, and all eager to see and to welcome the
illustrious sovereign who had come, with so much pomp and splendor, to
take them under his command. The banks of the Bosporus were
picturesque and high, and all the eminences were crowded with
spectators, to witness the imposing magnificence of the spectacle.

Darius encamped his army on the shore, and began to make the
preparations necessary for the final departure of the expedition. He
had been thus far within his own dominions. He was now, however, to
pass into another quarter of the globe, to plunge into new and unknown
dangers, among hostile, savage, and ferocious tribes. It was right
that he should pause until he had considered well his plans, and
secured attention to every point which could influence success.

He first examined the bridge of boats. He was very much pleased with
the construction of it. He commended Mandrocles for his skill and
fidelity in the highest terms, and loaded him with rewards and honors.
Mandrocles used the money which Darius thus gave him in employing an
artist to form a piece of statuary which should at once commemorate
the building of the bridge and give to Darius the glory of it. The
group represented the Bosporus with the bridge thrown over it, and the
king on his throne reviewing his troops as they passed over the
structure. This statuary was placed, when finished, in a temple in
Greece, where it was universally admired. Darius was very much pleased
both with the idea of this sculpture on the part of Mandrocles, and
with the execution of it by the artist. He gave the bridge builder new
rewards; he recompensed the artist, also, with similar munificence. He
was pleased that they had contrived so happy a way of at the same time
commemorating the bridging of the Bosporus and rendering exalted honor
to him.

The bridge was situated about the middle of the Bosporus; and as the
strait itself is about eighteen miles long, it was nine miles from the
bridge to the Euxine Sea. There is a small group of islands near the
mouth of this strait, where it opens into the sea, which were called
in those days the Cyanean Islands. They were famed in the time of
Darius for having once been floating islands, and enchanted. Their
supernatural properties had disappeared, but there was one attraction
which still pertained to them. They were situated beyond the limits of
the strait, and the visitor who landed upon them could take his
station on some picturesque cliff or smiling hill, and extend his view
far and wide over the blue waters of the Euxine Sea.

Darius determined to make an excursion to these islands while the
fleet and the army were completing their preparations at the bridge.
He embarked, accordingly, on board a splendid galley, and, sailing
along the Bosporus till he reached the sea, he landed on one of the
islands. There was a temple there, consecrated to one of the Grecian
deities. Darius, accompanied by his attendants and followers, ascended
to this temple, and, taking a seat which had been provided for him
there, he surveyed the broad expanse of water which extended like an
ocean before him, and contemplated the grandeur of the scene with the
greatest admiration and delight.

At length he returned to the bridge, where he found the preparations
for the movement of the fleet and of the army nearly completed. He
determined, before leaving the Asiatic shores, to erect a monument to
commemorate his expedition, on the spot from which he was to take his
final departure. He accordingly directed two columns of white marble
to be reared, and inscriptions to be cut upon them, giving such
particulars in respect to the expedition as it was desirable thus to
preserve. These inscriptions contained his own name in very
conspicuous characters as the leader of the enterprise; also an
enumeration of 

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