Darius, in his inscriptions on Mount Behistun, has left us the authentic though very compressed history of Cambyses. "Kambujiya, the son of Kurus," he tells us, "was of our race, was previously king here. This Kambujiya had a brother, Bardiya by name, of the same father and mother as Kambujiya. Kambujiya slew this Bardiya. When Kambujiya had slain Bardiya the people did not know that Bardiya was dead. Then Kambujiya marched against Egypt. When Kambujiya marched against Egypt the people became rebellious, and the lie spread both in Persia and in Media and in the other provinces. There was a man, a Magian, Gaumata by name; he rose up from Pisiyauvada, from mount Arakadris, which is there. It was in the month Viyakhna, on the fourteenth day, that he rose up. He lied to the people; I am Bardiya, the son of Kurus, the brother of Kambujiya. Then the whole kingdom rebelled against Kambujiya; it went over to the other, both Persia and Media and the rest of the provinces. He took them for his own; he was king; he seized the empire. In the month Garmapada, on the ninth day, it was that he seized the dominion. Then Kambujiya died, for he took his own life."[190]
Hence we may establish the true course of events in something like the following form. Cyrus made a certain division of the kingdom; under the sovereignty of the elder son he assigned to the younger Chorasmia, Bactria, Parthia, and Carmania, and thus sowed the germ of contention between the brothers. The younger was called Bardiya. This name sounded to the Greek as Berdis, and then it passed into Smerdis, as Bagabukhsa becomes Megabyzus.[191] If Xenophon calls Smerdis Tanaoxares, and Ctesias Tanyoxarkes, this can only be an epithet which the Persians gave to Smerdis. The old Bactrian thanvarakhshathra would mean king of the bow. The Persians might give this name to Smerdis, as their poems celebrate him as the best drawer of the bow; it was this superiority of Smerdis which, according to the poems of the Persians, aroused the jealousy of Cambyses. The tradition of Iran can tell of the three best shots that were ever made:[192]—the best was made by Arshana, the son of Kava Kavata (V. 37, 253); and king Bahram Gor slays his beloved because she does not sufficiently admire his skill with the bow.
Bardiya did not accompany his brother to Egypt; so that he could not have been sent back from thence. On the contrary, Cambyses had conceived a suspicion of him even before the campaign to Egypt; he was afraid that his brother in Bactria would make use of the distance at which he would be to seize the throne in secret, and the more extensive the conquests which Cambyses intended to make in Africa the more dangerous would the possibility appear to him. He caused him to be put to death before he set out to Egypt. His death remained a secret. By whom and how Bardiya was killed, and how the secret was kept, whether by an arrangement such as that described by Ctesias or by some other means, we cannot decide. The kingdom, the Persians, and the princes of the Persians did not know but that Bardiya was alive. But the Magian Gaumata is aware of the fact. Of the writers of the West, Trogus Pompeius alone gives the true name of the usurper in the Grecised form of Cometes. As the name is correct in Trogus, the name of the brother of Cometes, whom he calls Oropastes, may also be correct. But the narrative in the excerpt in Trogus must be so far altered in accordance with the version of Herodotus that Cambyses left Oropastes behind as overseer of the palaces, and that he placed his brother Gaumata on the throne. In Ctesias the man who suggests the murder becomes himself the false Bardiya and the future king. The inscription of Darius speaks only "of the Magian Gaumata," of "his leading adherents." The rebellion of Gaumata was not delayed till the death of Cambyses, as Ctesias supposed. It occurred, as the inscription shows, while he was still on the Nile. During the absence of Cambyses the lie spread in Persia, Media, and the rest of the provinces. The inscription mentions the day on which Gaumata rebelled, and the place where it happened: at Pisiyauvada in mount Arakadris this false Bardiya arose. As the position of this place and mountain is not defined, as is elsewhere the case in the inscription of Darius, by the addition of the name of the country, we may assume that it was in Persia that the false Bardiya, as his interests and the position of affairs required, came forward, and that he first called on the Persians to acknowledge him as king and lord of the realm, as indeed he must have done if he desired success. The inscription does not tell us that Gaumata was a Mede, or that the Medes first recognized him as their king; it merely says: on the fourteenth of the month Viyakhna (i. e. in the spring of the year 522 B.C.) the whole kingdom rose in rebellion against Cambyses, both Persia and Media and the rest of the provinces. We shall see below that even after the fall of Gaumata it was not Media which gave the sign for rebellion against his murderers, but that that country followed the example of the Elamites and Babylonians, and was led by Uvakhshathra, a man of the race of Cyaxares. First Persia, then Media, then the rest of the lands recognized the false Bardiya as their king; "he took from Cambyses Persia, Media, and the rest of the provinces," says the inscription. Then in the month of Garmapada (i. e. in July or August) the false Bardiya was crowned at Pasargadae (V. 358). That Gaumata was recognized as king in Babylonia is not only proved by the assertion of Darius, but also by two Babylonian tablets, which are dated from the 20th Elul and 1st Tisri "in the first year of king Barziya."[193] On the news of the rebellion Cambyses makes Aryandes satrap of Egypt,[194] and sets out against the usurper. On this march, at Ecbatana in Syria, according to Herodotus, i. e. at Batanea or Hamath, or at Babylon, as Ctesias asserts, or on the return to Damascus, according to Josephus,[195] he died.
However dark may be the shadows which fall on the figure of Cambyses, it has received blacker traits than truth can confirm in the legends of Greece and Egypt, and, to some extent, in the poems of Media and Persia. We have mentioned the story which ascribes to him ambitious plans in his boyish years; in the estimate which the Persians form of him according to their poems it is only his love of wine which is reprobated. More important is the judgment which the Persians really passed on Cambyses; Herodotus tells us they called Cyrus the father, but Cambyses, because he was severe and ambitious, they called the master.[196] From this sentence—from despotic severity and violence, whatever may have been the degree in which they were present—it is a long way to the picture of the frantic tyrant which Herodotus has sketched on the basis of these legends and poems. What we know by credible tradition of the crimes of Cambyses, apart from his act against his brother, and the supposed outburst of rage against his sister, is limited to the penalty which he imposed upon Memphis for the murder of the herald and the crew, and the punishment of Sisamnes, one of the seven judges who was found guilty of bribery and unjust judgment. He had him executed, the corpse was flayed, and the judge's seat covered with the skin, on which the son, who was named his successor, was to give judgment.[197] The punishment of Memphis cannot be called cruel in the spirit of these times; and the punishment of the unjust judge is in the manner of an oriental prince who loves justice. The reign of Cambyses was undoubtedly marked by the effort to continue the acts of his father, and in this effort he shows both vigour and resolution. The idea of creating a fleet for the Persian empire was bold and happy, and bore fruits in the submission of Cyprus and Samos without a blow. The preparations for the campaign against Egypt were made with great prudence, and proved adequate and effectual. But even before he set out for Egypt he had cast the lot which decided his life. How far the conduct of his brother, which is suggested in the version of Ctesias, excused the suspicion of Cambyses, we cannot decide. He did not venture to leave the kingdom so long as his brother ruled over the eastern half of it; he feared his rebellion during his absence, and removed him out of the way. The painful secrecy of the deed shows that Cambyses was tormented with remorse and shame for this crime. At the gates of Egypt he conquered in a mighty battle. He used the victory to storm the strong border fortresses of Egypt, and then at once turned against Memphis, the most important city and fortress of the enemy. The treatment of the captive Psammenitus repeats the mild manner of Cyrus towards conquered princes; we have seen above what clemency Cambyses showed after the conquest was completed towards the Egyptians and their temples. In possession of Egypt, he intended to achieve in Africa what his father had done in Asia; far to the south and west the country was to be subject to the Persians. The campaign against Napata led to the conquest of that kingdom. By maintaining this conquest, the supremacy of Persia over Egypt was rendered secure from attacks on that side, and the negro tribes to the south of Napata were kept in obedience, though previously they had been visited by the Pharaohs only in flying incursions. It was at Napata that, according to the tradition preserved by Diodorus, Strabo, and Josephus, Cambyses lost his sister, and with her the hope of an heir, by his own brutal violence, as the songs represent, when his sister reminded him of the death of his brother. But Strabo and Diodorus observe, as has been shown above, that he named the city after his sister "to honour her." No doubt the disquiet of his conscience increased the longer he remained without children. What was to become of the kingdom after his death? The brother, whom he had killed, had only left a daughter.[198] Burdened with new anxiety, if not with new guilt, he turned back from Napata. The disaster, which befell the army at Premnis, and the failure of the expedition against the oasis of Sivah, though it did not involve the loss of 50,000 men, might seem to him proofs that he had brought upon himself the anger of Auramazda and Mithra. Then the Phenicians refused to march against the Carthaginians, and he was unable to compel them. The absence of any heir, the misfortunes which had fallen upon him, increased his inward torments. He became more distrustful, passionate, and savage. He may have sought forgetfulness in wine, but the remedy only increased his violence. He shrank from seeing again his home and the desolate house of Cyrus, and remained inactive and irresolute for a year and a half in Egypt; in spite of the danger which attached to the absence of the ruler of so vast a kingdom.
In Persia and the provinces nothing was known of the death of Bardiya. The neglect of the kingdom, the absence of the king for three years, inspire Gaumata with the courage to make use of his opportunity, and turn the secrecy of the crime against Cambyses. The Persians declare for the brother who is among them, as against the distant king who seemed to have forgotten Persia in Egypt; even the satraps of the other countries soon decide in favour of Bardiya, as for years they had seen nothing of Cambyses. In three months after his appearance Gaumata was formally crowned. The account of the rebellion startled Cambyses from his stupor in Egypt; he placed a satrap over the conquests he had made and hastened to Syria, where he learnt the full amount of the usurper's success. With anger he sees the crown of Cyrus on the head of a miserable pretender. If he is effectually to contend against the opponent who has risen to such power, he must acknowledge himself before the Persians and the kingdom as the murderer of his brother, and even if he makes this shameful confession, will the Persians believe and follow him? Will they not think that he announces the murder in order to thrust his brother from the throne? In despair he perceives that he has destroyed the house of Cyrus, and ruined the work of his father, the fruit of thirty years of effort and struggle. He sees no means of preventing the course of affairs, the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the cause. He acknowledges before the princes of the Persians what he has done, commands them to make good the damage which he has caused, and seals his declaration by taking his own life. Such was the tragical end of the son of the great Cyrus.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] Herod. 3, 27-30.
[177] Herod. 3, 37.
[178] Vol. I. 175. Diod. 1, 49.
[179] Justin. 1, 8.