[411] Herodot. iii, 67-150.
[412] Herodot. i, 130. Ἀστυάγης μέν νυν βασιλεύσας ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα πέντε καὶ τριήκοντα, οὕτω τῆς ἀρχῆς κατεπαύσθη. Μῆδοι δὲ ὑπέκυψαν Πέρσῃσι διὰ τὴν τούτου πικρότητα.... Ὑστέρῳ μέντοι χρόνῳ μετεμέλησέ τέ σφι ταῦτα ποιήσασι, καὶ ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ Δαρείου· ἀποστάντες δὲ, ὀπίσω κατεστράφθησαν, μάχῃ νικηθέντες· τότε δὲ, ἐπὶ Ἀστυάγεος, οἱ Πέρσαι τε καὶ ὁ Κῦρος ἐπαναστάντες τοῖσι Μήδοισι, ἦρχον τὸ ἀπὸ τούτου τῆς Ἀσίης.
This passage—asserting that the Medes, some time after the deposition of Astyagês and the acquisition of Persian supremacy by Cyrus, repented of having suffered their discontent against Astyagês to place this supremacy in the hands of the Persians, revolted from Darius, and were reconquered after a contest—appears to me to have been misunderstood by chronologists. Dodwell, Larcher, and Mr. Fynes Clinton (indeed, most, if not all, of the chronologists) explain it as alluding to a revolt of the Medes against the Persian king Darius Nothus, mentioned in the Hellenica of Xenophon (i, 2, 12), and belonging to the year 408 B. C. See Larcher ad Herodot. i, 130, and his Vie d’Hérodote, prefixed to his translation (p. lxxxix); also Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 408 and 455, and his Appendix, c, 18, p. 316.
The revolt of the Medes alluded to by Herodotus is, in my judgment, completely distinct from the revolt mentioned by Xenophon: to identify the two, as these eminent chronologists do, is an hypothesis not only having nothing to recommend it, but open to grave objection. The revolt mentioned by Herodotus was against Darius son of Hystaspês, not against Darius Nothus; and I have set forth with peculiar care the circumstances connected with the conspiracy and accession of the former, for the purpose of showing that they all decidedly imply that conflict between Median and Persian supremacy, which Herodotus directly announces in the passage now before us.
1. When Herodotus speaks of Darius, without any adjective designation, why should we imagine that he means any other than Darius the son of Hystaspês, on whom he dwells so copiously in his narrative? Once only in the course of his history (ix, 108) another Darius (the young prince, son of Xerxês the First) is mentioned; but with this exception, Darius son of Hystaspês is uniformly, throughout the work, spoken of under his simple name: Darius Nothus is never alluded to at all.
2. The deposition of Astyagês took place in 559 B. C.; the beginning of the reign of Darius occurred in 520 B. C.; now repentance on the part of the Medes, for what they had done at the former of those two epochs, might naturally prompt them to try to repair it in the latter. But between the deposition of Astyagês in 559 B. C., and the revolt mentioned by Xenophon against Darius Nothus in 408 B. C., the interval is more than one hundred and fifty years. To ascribe a revolt which took place in 408 B. C., to repentance for something which had occurred one hundred and fifty years before, is unnatural and far-fetched, if not positively inadmissible.
The preceding arguments go to show that the natural construction of the passage in Herodotus points to Darius son of Hystaspês, and not to Darius Nothus; but this is not all. There are yet stronger reasons why the reference to Darius Nothus should be discarded.
The supposed mention, in Herodotus, of a fact so late as 408 B. C., perplexes the whole chronology of his life and authorship. According to the usual statement of his biography, which every one admits, and which there is no reason to call in question, he was born in 484 B. C. Here, then, is an event alluded to in his history, which occurred when the historian was seventy-six years old, and the allusion to which he must be presumed to have written when about eighty years old, if not more; for his mention of the fact by no means implies that it was particularly recent. Those who adopt this view, do not imagine that he wrote his whole history at that age; but they maintain that he made later additions, of which they contend that this is one. I do not say that this is impossible: we know that Isokratês composed his Panathenaic oration at the age of ninety-four; but it must be admitted to be highly improbable,—a supposition which ought not to be advanced without some cogent proof to support it. But here no proof whatever is produced. Herodotus mentions a revolt of the Medes against Darius,—Xenophon also mentions a revolt of the Medes against Darius; hence, chronologists have taken it as a matter of course, that both authors must allude to the same event; though the supposition is unnatural as regards the text, and still more unnatural as regards the biography, of Herodotus.
In respect to that biography, Mr. Clinton appears to me to have adopted another erroneous opinion; in which, however, both Larcher and Wesseling are against him, though Dahlmann and Heyse agree with him. He maintains that the passage in Herodotus (iii, 15), wherein it is stated that Pausiris succeeded his father Amyrtæus by consent of the Persians in the government of Egypt, is to be referred to a fact which happened subsequent to the year 414 B. C., or the tenth year of Darius Nothus; since it was in that year that Amyrtæus acquired the government of Egypt. But this opinion rests altogether upon the assumption that a certain Amyrtæus, whose name and date occur in Manetho (see Eusebius, Chronicon), is the same person as the Amyrtæus mentioned in Herodotus; which identity is not only not proved, but is extremely improbable, since Mr. Clinton himself admits (F. H. Appendix, p. 317), while maintaining the identity: “He (Amyrtæus) had conducted a war against the Persian government more than fifty years before.” This, though not impossible, is surely very improbable; it is at least equally probable that the Amyrtæus of Manetho was a different person from (perhaps even the grandson of) that Amyrtæus in Herodotus, who had carried on war against the Persians more than fifty wars before; it appears to me, indeed, that this is the more reasonable hypothesis of the two.
I have permitted myself to prolong this note to an unusual length, because the supposed mention of such recent events in the history of Herodotus, as those in the reign of Darius Nothus, has introduced very gratuitous assumptions as to the time and manner in which that history was composed. It cannot be shown that there is a single event of precise and ascertained date, alluded to in his history, later than the capture of the Lacedæmonian heralds in the year 430 B. C. (Herodot. vii, 137: see Larcher, Vie d’Hérodote, p. lxxxix); and this renders the composition of his history as an entire work much more smooth and intelligible.