only purpose of his creation. His nearest subjects, the Persians, were put to death to satisfy his whims; his brother Smerdis was slain at his command; 25 and his sister, lamenting her brother's fate, perished by his own hand.26 Nor were the shameful passions, in which he indulged, betrayed in the murder of his people or his family alone; he sought carnage and conquest amongst strangers; he everywhere broke through the bounds of decency and reverence; and fulfilled the answer of his judges to the letter, in using and abusing his power as he pleased." These things are fit to read only in order to mark how soon the absolute authority of Cyrus became a frenzied despotism in his successors' hands: yet the narration which follows 28 is proof of the limits that could be set upon despotism among the people he cruelly ruled. While he was yet in Egypt, the Magi in Persia set up one of their own number as king under the name of Smerdis, the murdered brother; and as Cambyses, dying shortly after, left no heir, the pretended prince was carelessly or wilfully recognized by the greater part of the nation, although Cambyses had openly proclaimed him an impostor.29

24 ZEWUTOU TOλIŃras, "his own citizens," as Herodotus delicately terms them, III. 36.

25 Herod., III. 30. In Ctesias (De Reb. Pers., 10) the name is different.

26 Herod., III. 32.

27 He was remembered as the Δεσπότης, the tyrant above all others who had ruled in Persia. Herod.,

III. 89. Cyrus was called the Father, Harp.

28 In which the authority of Herodotus (III. 67-88) has been followed rather than that of Ctesias, who relates the same story with some variations. De Reb. Pers., 10-15.

29 Herod., III. 65.

The nobles might be confident in their own power under a king who was insecure upon his throne, and the people would look for favor from the monarch whom their priests revered, and who to them might really seem to be the son of Cyrus, their hero and their benefactor. The new king showed that he counted upon the good will of his subjects by freeing them from military service and tribute for three years' time; but though the lower classes might have been satisfied by this release from their burdensome duties, their allegiance was insufficient to support the impostor. Not even the Magi, to whom the people were generally submissive, were able to protect the king whom they had chosen from amongst themselves; they had no superstition to support him, and the force of the empire was in other hands. The only hope they could have had was that the king would be protected by the strength of the monarchy he had usurped, not so much to his own advantage as to theirs.

But when Smerdis, after his first decrees, withdrew within the royal palace, amongst the priests of his government and the women of his household, the Persian nobles were suspicious that the crown of Cyrus had been given up too easily to a pretender. They had not loved Cambyses; but he, at least, trusted himself to them, not to the Magi, as his successor was doing. Some, more earnest than the rest, resolved to learn the truth; and discovered, at last, that for eight months they had obeyed a priest whose ears had been cut off by order of their former

king. No sooner was this proved, than some of the most eminent nobles conspired together and slew the impostor in the palace where he had been concealed from the beginning of his reign. It was easier, however, to put Smerdis and his Magi to death than to create another monarch. There was no male descendant of the great Cyrus to put upon the throne, and the new sovereign must needs be chosen from amongst the noble families, to one of which Cyrus had himself belonged. The conspirators met to take counsel with one another; but the language they are reported to have used is not readily recognized as appropriate to men who were nobles by birth, and subjects by education of an absolute master. The Greek historian wrote of Persia, perhaps, as he would of Greece; but if the discourses he imputes to three of the seven conspirators be interpreted according to the Persian spirit, it appears that one. argued for giving all the higher families a share in the government, another that a few only of these families should be admitted to participate in the new establishment, while the third contended for the restoration of the same monarchy to which their forefathers had submitted from time immemorial.

This third conspirator was the famous Darius Hystaspis; and though the harangue which Herodotus ascribes to him may never have been uttered, it contains some sentences that are perfectly suitable to illustrate the view we may still take of the Persian

30 Such is Heeren's explanation is upon the Persians. Vol. I. sect. 2, in his great work, one part of which ch. 1.

monarchy. "I maintain," said Darius, "that monarchy is far preferable to any other kind of authority. None are better to rule than the individual who has been taken as the best of all; and his opinions will, without reproach, direct the affairs of the whole people. If the main body govern, vice must creep in, and the bad will act together until some one of their number shall be strong enough to put them down, and to take the government into his own hands. Whence came our liberty, and who gave it us? I answer, Cyrus. Then, as we became freemen through a single man, I do advise that we keep to the same unbroken power, and to the good laws which we have from our ancestors." We need not stay to criticize the principles of the Persian noble, or to remark that the liberty of which he spoke was the liberty of one class only amongst many. His advice prevailed, and Darius himself was chosen king. 3

"Consider," wrote Plato, within a little more than a century after these events had taken place, "Consider the results of this revolution. . . . . . Darius was no sooner master of the empire, by the consent of his fellow-conspirators, than he divided it into seven portions, of which feeble traces still remain. He then established laws to which he sub

31 A. C. 521. He was elected through mere artifice by the conspirators; but was then accepted by the nation or the nobility at large, -Justin (I. 19) says the people: "Populus quoque universus, sequutus judicium principum, eundem regem constituit."

Justinus, who lived under Augustus the emperor, composed a history, or rather a selection from the History of Trogus Pompeius, concerning all the principal nations of antiquity.

32 In the Laws, Lib. III.

jected his own authority, and by which a sort of equality was introduced. He confirmed union and intercourse between the Persians, and won their hearts by gifts and kindnesses. So they willingly aided him in all his wars, in which he acquired as many countries as Cyrus had left when he died." In this brief passage are contained all the points of importance concerning the Persian institutions. We have the power of the king, tempered by his own laws as well as by the influence of his nobles and the intelligence of his people; we have the nobles predominant over the people, but the people rising in presence of the nobles; we have the wars, also, and the conquests, by which the Persians, as a race, preserved themselves superior to the other nations of the empire. These things we will now examine, excepting so far as we have already inquired into them; and the reign of Darius 33 shall be the period of our research, for reasons to appear, in part, hereafter. The Persian monarchy was not only most firmly established, but is now to be most fairly judged, as it was under Darius Hystaspis.

The authority of the king was as absolute, according to the system which Darius can be said only to have confirmed, as it had been at the time of its first establishment. But we have already seen that deductions are to be made from the statements of writers who were unable or unwilling to acknowledge the checks upon despotism apparently the most

33 He reigned thirty-five years: A. C. 520-486.