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24 Mihr Yasht, 14–15.
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25 Ibid., 13.
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26 Tentatively identified by some scholars as the Volga.
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27 In Persian, “Kurushkath.” The Jaxartes is the river now known as the Syr Darya, which runs through Kazakhstan.
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28 Cyrus Cylinder, 11.
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29 This account of Cyrus’ death derives from Herodotus (1.204–14), and seems to make the best sense of the many different versions of it that have survived. According to Xenophon, for instance, Cyrus did not even die in battle, but in his own bed, back in Persia: such are the contradictions that plague the sources for Persian history. That Cyrus was seventy when he died is recorded by Cicero (On Divination, 1.23)—again, with what accuracy it is impossible to say for sure. Three score years and ten might perhaps be considered a suspiciously rounded age.
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30 Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 1.4–5.
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31 The practice of khvaetvadatha, or endogamous marriage, had been approved by Zoroaster as a positive religious duty, and it is possible—maybe even likely—that Cambyses’ incestuous marriages reflect the influence of the Prophet’s teaching. As with most things Zoroastrian, however, this must be speculation. The philosopher Antisthenes, an associate of Socrates, claimed that a Persian male habitually “enjoyed intercourse with his mother, his sister, and his daughter”—maybe a garbled retelling of a genuine tradition.
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32 Some of the sources appear to contradict this reading. According to Ctesias, Bardiya was summoned twice by his brother to court, but only came on the third command, and even then reluctantly. According to Herodotus, he was briefly present with Cambyses in Egypt, but then sent back to Persia in disgrace. Neither story seems likely. Bearing in mind what happened subsequently, Bardiya must have been in the eastern half of the empire for most—if not all—of the period that Cambyses was in Egypt, and his role there could only have been as his brother’s lieutenant; anything else would have been politically inadmissible. Evidently, Cambyses felt that he had reason enough to trust Bardiya, and for four years, at least, he was not let down.
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33 This story is found in the seventh book of Polyaenus’ Strategies, written in the second century AD—perhaps a suspiciously late date.
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34 The town of Anthylla. See Herodotus, 2.98.
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35 Herodotus, 3.89.
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36 According to Herodotus, it was his ability to draw a bow that no one else in the court had been able to string that had prompted his expulsion from Egypt in disgrace.
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37 Herodotus, 3.20. The Egyptians and Persians knew Ethiopia as Nubia. According to Herodotus, Cambyses’ invasion of Ethiopia was a catastrophe, but this again seems to reflect his reliance upon Egyptian sources. Persian records make it clear that at least northern Nubia had been brought into the empire.
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38 Specifically, in Babylon.
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39 Precisely when is not clear. This is a considerable frustration, for it is possible that Cambyses died before Bardiya proclaimed himself king, in which case it is also possible that there was never, strictly speaking, an attempted usurpation at all. Some of the later sources imply this, but they should probably be discounted. The tradition that labeled Cambyses the victim of an attempted coup is very strong, and it is hard to make sense of the chaos that engulfed the Persian world on Cambyses’ death if one does presume an orderly succession from brother to brother. Also in favor of this argument is the fact that the last known document from Cambyses’ reign is dated April 18, while the earliest known document which mentions “King Bardiya” is dated the 14th of the same month. This may not be conclusive evidence of a coup, but it is suggestive, at the very least.
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40 It is nowhere explicitly stated that Bardiya was in Ecbatana during the summer months, but since it was the favored summer residence of the Persian monarchs, and we know that the king was definitely in Media in September, it seems a safe assumption.
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41 Darius, the Bisitun inscription (DB 14).
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42 Aeschylus, l.774.
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43 One other scrap of evidence—albeit faint—has been used as evidence against Darius. In his own account of the events of the summer of 522, he employs the curious circumlocution “Afterwards, Cambyses by his own death was dead” (DB 11). As Balcer has pointed out, “It may well be that Cambyses had not simply died, but that for a specific reason his death had caused the framers of the Bisitun texts to emphasise that he had ‘died a death of his own’ when perhaps he had not. Thus, the framers may have left us with the hint that something peculiar had happened to cause Cambyses’ death” (Herodotus and Bisitun, p. 98).
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44 For the active presence of foreign merchants and bankers in Iran, see Zadok.
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45 Strabo, 11.13.7.
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46 This account of Bardiya’s murder is a conflation of Darius’ own and those of various Greek authors. Even though he mislocates the site of the assassination, Herodotus appears on this occasion to have had unusually precise information. Historians have long suspected that the source was Zopyros the Younger, the great-grandson of Megabyzos, one of the seven conspirators. In the 440s BC, Zopyros was an exile in Athens, where he may have met Herodotus, and given him a full account of the coup. The details of Bardiya being with a concubine and defending himself with a stool come from Ctesias (14–15)—and are typically tabloid touches. The claim that it was Darius’ brother who slew Bardiya comes from Aeschylus (776), and is altogether more convincing, since Artaphernes would subsequently become a major player in the affairs of Athens, and his biography must have been widely known. Certainly, the presumption of most historians, that “Artaphernes” is a misspelling of “Intaphernes”—listed by Herodotus as one of the seven conspirators—seems mistaken, particularly since Herodotus’ contemporary, the Ionian ethnographer Hellanicus of Lesbos, also fingered Artaphernes as the man who had struck down Bardiya. Sikyavautish, the site of the assassination, has never been precisely identified, but it was somewhere near modern-day Harsin, just to the south of the Khorasan Highway.
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47 DB 11.
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48 DB 55.
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49 Herodotus, 1.136.
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50 Mihr Yasht, 2.
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