The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)

If in the narrative given by Herodotus of the fate of Psammenitus and the campaign of Cambyses against the Ethiopians we perceived Egyptian and Greek traditions, and along with them a poetical source, so in this account of the crimes of Cambyses and his death we have obviously Greek-Egyptian legends and echoes of Iranian poetry existing side by side. To the first we may trace the wounding of Apis, as already observed, and then the explanation of a custom which is hinted at in the Avesta, the marriage with a sister, by the decision of the judges and the example of Cambyses, the oracle of Buto, and its explanation by the Syrian Ecbatana, the reason for the wound in the thigh of Cambyses (the similar wound inflicted on Apis), and, as we shall see, the warning of Crœsus. The legends did not trouble themselves with the contradiction that, though they represent Cambyses as outraging Osiris-Apis, and Ptah, they allow him to ask advice from Egyptian gods – a proceeding which is not made more credible by the fact that Stephanus of Byzantium identifies the Syrian Ecbatana with Bataneia, and observes that the city of Hamath (Amatha) was also called Akmatha, though the invention of the oracle is thus made more intelligible.183 Like his countrymen before him, Herodotus must have been struck by the contrast between the long reign, the achievements and successes of Cyrus, and the short reign and disastrous end of his son. The Egyptian-Greek tradition explained it by the wickedness of Cambyses, and this wickedness is the result of his attack on Apis; the frenzy of Cambyses begins immediately after this with the murder of his brother. In Herodotus the frenzy begins even earlier; the supposed maltreatment of the corpse of Amasis must belong to the period immediately after the victory over the Egyptians, i. e. to the period before the march to the South, and consequently Herodotus represents Cambyses as out of his mind when entering on this campaign, and continuing in his frenzy till he is compelled to return. The reason which he gives for this madness is that Cambyses, though Herodotus represents him in another story as full of ambitious plans from his youth, was afflicted from his birth, as it was said, with a severe disease, which some call "the sacred sickness," and that in great sickness of the body it was not strange that the mind also should be affected.184 By the sacred sickness the Greeks meant epilepsy, or spasmodic attacks in general, which were ascribed to the anger of the gods. With complete consistency Herodotus represents the madness as going on, till Cambyses is seized with anxiety concerning the rebellion of the Magian, and finds himself wounded in the thigh. With this observation he introduces the public confession and remorse – the last words of Cambyses. Other Greeks explain the crimes of Cambyses in a more natural manner. Diodorus is of opinion that he was naturally furious and changeful in his moods; the greatness of the kingdom made him yet wilder and more proud of spirit, and after the capture of Pelusium and Memphis he could not bear his prosperity as a man should.185 The "Laws" (of Plato) lay the blame on the education of Cambyses. In the field from his youth, surrounded by war and danger, Cyrus left the education of his sons to the royal women, and overlooked the fact that his children were not brought up and educated in the customary Persian manner. The women and eunuchs brought them up as if they needed no control, and, while yet mere children, were prosperous and perfect men. No one was allowed to contradict them; all must praise what they said or did; thus they grew up luxurious and uncontrolled; their spirits were over-full of ambition. When after such adulation and uncontrolled freedom they grew up and received the kingdom, one slew the other, enraged at his equal position, and then, maddened by drink and debauchery, lost the dominion owing to the Medes and the so-called eunuch, who despised the foolishness of Cambyses.186

It is more difficult to trace the tendencies of the poetical source which has become united with the legends in the narrative of Herodotus than to separate the legends themselves, and fix the motives which have determined the conception and judgment of the Greeks about Cambyses. From what other source could the vision of Cambyses, the shot into the heart of the cup-bearer, have come, or the conversations of Cambyses with Prexaspes, or the final words of Cambyses? If these traits are only before us as fragments at third or fourth hand, their connection with the narrative of the campaign against the long-lived Ethiopians is undeniable (the bow of the Ethiopians is the point of connection). And if we call to mind that in his last exhortations to his two sons, Cyrus calls down blessings on the son who remains well disposed to his brother, and imprecates curses on the son who is the first to do evil (p. 123), the structure of the poem becomes clear. It founds the misfortune of Cambyses on his disobedience to his father's command, and exhibits the penalty of disobedience and crime committed against a brother. Smerdis is able to draw the bow of the Ethiopian further than Cambyses and all the other Persians. This excites envy and jealousy in his brother, who sends Smerdis back to Persia. Then in a dream he sees him on the throne, and his head reaches to heaven. He sends Prexaspes to Persia, who slays the son of Cyrus in the chase and buries him with his own hand. The instrument of the murder is quickly overtaken by punishment. Had Cambyses slain Prexaspes himself intentionally or in anger, it would be conceivable; but the murder of his son is unintelligible. Only poetical justice could execute vengeance for the fact that Prexaspes had laid his hand on the son of Cyrus, by representing Cambyses as slaying with his own hand, without any personal reason whatever, the son of the man who by his own command had slain his brother, and who is best acquainted with this secret crime, the revelation of which would rouse the hearts of all the Persians against the king. As the poem goes on, it has in store even heavier penalties for the man who has slain the son of Cyrus. But it is not merely the murder of the young Prexaspes which belongs to a poetical source. The same authority represents Cambyses as becoming more and more deeply involved in guilt and crime against his house. When looking on at the two dogs which together got the better of the lion, his sister reminds him of the death of his brother. In his rage he ill-treats her and so destroys his long-cherished hope of posterity. The house of Cyrus is desolate. He has mistrusted his brother without reason – the man whom he has trusted and made the governor of his palace rebels against him; he places his brother on the throne as the younger son of Cyrus, and causes him to be proclaimed as king. In despair at such calamities, at the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the guilty cause, Cambyses ends his days. He pays the penalty of his heavy guilt by confessing and lamenting his offence before the assembly of the chief Persians. The curse of Cyrus is fulfilled. If Herodotus gives the account of the death of Cambyses after the Greek-Egyptian legend, he is obviously following Iranian poetry in the accompanying circumstances and in the speech of the dying Cambyses. We have Iranian conceptions in the answer of Prexaspes: "If the dead can rise, your brother will return"; in the saying of Cambyses to the Persians: "If ye strive earnestly to win back the dominion, the earth will bring forth fruit, and your wives will bear children, and your flocks will increase." Conceptions and ideas of this kind, expressed almost in the same words, have met us frequently in the Avesta. The close of the speech of Cambyses removes the guilt and points to the future, for he charges the Persians, and above all the Achæmenids, to risk everything that the dominion may not again pass to the Medes. If the Persians fight bravely with all the means at their disposal for the dominion, all will go well with them, if not Cambyses prays the gods that the reverse may happen to them; may every Persian die like himself by a most miserable death, i. e. by suicide, which the doctrines of Zarathrustra from their whole tenor must have most severely condemned.

No doubt the Persian epos had to explain the contrast in which the reign of Cambyses stood to that of Cyrus; no doubt it was a fact that the race of Cyrus came to an end in the male line owing to his guilt. It was due to him that his reign was followed by that of an usurper; that rebellion broke out in all quarters, the kingdom became completely disintegrated, and the establishment of Cyrus seemed ruined. The songs of the Persians gave a reason for the sudden change in the manner indicated, by the murder of the brother and its results. But they would not have charged Cambyses with madness or with any other offences than this combination required. They would not have forgotten his services to Persia; the establishment of the Persian power in the Mediterranean, the victory over Egypt, over the Ethiopians of Napata, and the negroes. It was not these poems which branded his campaign to the south as a mad undertaking, and represented it as a failure; they could not have opposed Crœsus as a wise adviser to Cambyses, or allowed Cambyses to speak of the miserable end of Cyrus in the land of the Massagetae. If these elements in the narratives of Herodotus have not come down from Greek-Egyptian tradition, if the warning of Crœsus, in the form in which we have it, was not attached by him to his account of the death of Cambyses, we should have to assume that in this case also the Persian poems came to Herodotus in their Median counterparts – a hypothesis which is excluded by the distinctly ante-Median and Persian traits in the dying speech of Cambyses.

Let us see whether information from other sources puts us in a position to establish the actual connection of affairs free from the admixture of Greek-Egyptian tradition and Persian poetry. Ctesias treated the reign of Cambyses in detail in the twelfth book of his Persian History. Of this only a meagre excerpt has come down to us, according to which the narrative began with the statement that Cambyses, in accordance with the last commands of his father, handed over Chorasmia, Bactria, Parthia, and Carmania to his brother Tanyoxarkes, as Ctesias calls him. Then follows the conquest of Egypt, as given above; and after this we are told: "There was a Magian of the name of Sphendadates who had committed some fault and been scourged by Tanyoxarkes. The Magian went to Cambyses to calumniate his brother, saying that his mind was set on evil. As a proof of defection he alleged that Tanyoxarkes would not come if he were sent for. Cambyses bade his brother come, but he refused, being occupied with other business. Then the Magian became more persistent in his calumnies. Amytis, who saw what was the Magian's object, warned her son Cambyses not to trust him. Cambyses pretended not to trust him, but in reality reposed entire confidence in him. When Cambyses bade his brother come for the third time, he obeyed. Cambyses embraced him, but was none the less determined to put him out of the way; but he was anxious to carry out his design unknown to his mother. The deed was accomplished. The Magian advises the king as follows: He was very like Tanyoxarkes, the king might give orders that his head should be cut off as having accused his brother falsely; he would then secretly slay Tanyoxarkes, and clothe him (the Magian) in his robes, so that he might be taken for him. This was done. Tanyoxarkes died by drinking bull's blood, and the Magian was clothed in his garments and called Tanyoxarkes. This was for a long time concealed from all except Artasyras the Hyrcanian and the eunuchs Bagapates and Izabates, who were most intimate with Cambyses; to them alone had Cambyses ventured to mention the matter. He caused the eunuchs of Tanyoxarkes and Labyzus, the chief of them, to be summoned, showed them the Magian thus attired, and said: Do you believe that this is Tanyoxarkes? Labyzus was astonished and said: What other man are we to think that he is? so greatly did the Magian deceive men by his likeness to Tanyoxarkes. The Magian was now sent to Bactria, and there conducted himself in all respects as Tanyoxarkes. When five years had gone by Amytis learnt what had been done from the eunuch Tibetheus, whom the Magian had caused to be beaten. She asked Cambyses to give up Sphendadates, but he refused. Then she pronounced her curse, took poison, and died. When Cambyses sacrificed, the blood of the sacrificial animals did not flow. He became dejected, and when Roxane bore him a boy without a head, he was even more out of heart, and the Magians interpreted the signs to mean that he could leave no successor. His mother appeared to him in a dream and threatened him for the murder, and this made him more dejected than ever. When he came to Babylon, by way of pastime he chipped a piece of wood with a sword, and so hit the muscle of his thigh, and died on the eleventh day after, when he had reigned eighteen years. Before his death Artasyras and Bagapates had resolved that the Magian should reign; and he reigned after the death of Cambyses."

The length of the reign of Cambyses is incorrect, as indeed almost all the numbers in Ctesias are wrong. It is also a mistake that in his account Cambyses and his brother are the sons of Cyrus and Amytis the daughter of Astyages. As we have said, they were the sons of Cyrus and Cassandane, who died before Cyrus (V. 384). The object of Ctesias was to prove the statements of Herodotus incorrect by opposing them with others. The elevation of Amytis to be the mother of the brothers, and the part which the account of Ctesias ascribes to this supposed mother, shows that Ctesias has here followed a Median version, in which the daughter of Astyages became, not the mother of Cyrus, it is true, but the mother of his successor, the ruler of Persia and Media, – the same version which, as we have already seen, assigns to Amytis the greatest influence on Cyrus, and in the present instance on his son Cambyses. Without doubt this version is derived from a poetical source; that is proved by a number of traits: the calumniation of the brother, the double introduction of the scourging, the three-fold summoning before the king, the conversation of Cambyses with the eunuch, the three-fold increase of the distress of Cambyses, the suicide and curse of Amytis, the signs at sacrifice and the abortion, the appearance of the dead, which fills up the measure and drives Cambyses to death. As in the previous case, in this form of the poems, it was the Median queen who punished Oebares, who incited Cyrus to revolt, for this act and for the death of her father, so here she visits the ruler of the Persians and Medes for his crime. Against this view of the account of Ctesias it may be urged that the Medes would take the side of the Magian more vigorously than that of Amytis, for the Magian was apparently a Mede. Herodotus, at any rate, once represents Gobryas as calling him a Mede.187 Cambyses, it is true, does not call him so, but in his last speech merely urges the Persians not to let the empire revert to the Medes, which means no more than that the empire is not to go back to the Medes on the extinction of the house of Cyrus, when his kingdom is being broken up. We shall see that the usurper was not a Mede, and is only called a Mede by Herodotus because he wrongly thought that all the Magians were exclusively Medes (V. 194). But as the story of Ctesias obviously goes back to a poetical source, we are not carried any further by it in establishing the actual facts of the case.

A third story of the death of Cambyses, that of Trogus, is also retained in an excerpt only. It is apparently taken from the Persian history of Deinon. "Cambyses added Egypt to the kingdom of his father. Enraged at the superstition of the Egyptians, he commanded the temples of Apis and the other gods to be destroyed. He also sent an army to conquer the far-famed temple of Ammon, but it was overwhelmed by storms of sand. Then in a dream he saw his brother as the future king. Terrified by this vision, he did not hesitate to add the murder of a brother to the burning of temples. For this horrible service he sent Cometes, a Magian, one of his trusted servants. Meantime, his sword coming accidentally out of the sheath, he wounded himself deeply in the thigh, and died, as a penalty either for the murder of his brother which he had commanded, or for the burning of the temples. When the Magian heard this he hastened to commit the crime before the news of the death of the king was spread abroad; and when he had killed Smerdis, to whom the throne belonged, he brought in his brother Oropastes. This brother was very like Smerdis in form and feature; and as no one suspected the deception, Oropastes became king instead of Smerdis. The matter was the more secret because among the Persians the king lives in retirement by reason of his majesty."188

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."189

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.190 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:191– 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."192 On the news of the rebellion Cambyses makes Aryandes satrap of Egypt,193 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,194 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.195 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.196 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.197 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.