History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12)Maspero, G. (Gaston)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12)
Maspero, G. (Gaston)
Civilization, Ancient; Egypt -- History -- To 640 A.D.; History, Ancient; Middle East -- History
*** Herodotus says that Atossa was the daughter of
Kassandane, and the position which she held during three
reigns shows that she must have been so; Justi, however,
calls her the daughter of Amytis. A second daughter is
mentioned by Herodotus, the one whom Cambyses killed in
Egypt by a kick; he gives her no name, but she is probably
the same as the Roxana who according to Ctesias bore a
headless child. The youngest, Artystone, was the favourite
wife of Darius. Josephus speaks of a fourth daughter of
Cyrus called Meroe, but without saying who was the mother of
this princess.
Cambyses was probably born about 558, soon after his father's accession,
and he was his legitimate successor, according to the Persian custom
which assigned the crown to the eldest of the sons born in the purple.
He had been associated, as we have seen, in the Babylonian regal power
immediately after the victory over Nabonidus, and on the eve of his
departure for the fatal campaign against the Massagetse his father,
again in accordance with the Persian law, had appointed him regent. A
later tradition, preserved by Ctesias, relates that on this occasion the
territory had been divided between the two sons: Smerdis, here called
Tanyoxarkes, having received as his share Bactriana, the Khoramnians,
the Parthians, and the Carmanians, under the suzerainty of his brother.
Cambyses, it is clear, inherited the whole empire, but intrigues
gathered round Smerdis, and revolts broke out in the provinces, incited,
so it was said, whether rightly or wrongly, by his partisans.* The new
king was possessed of a violent, merciless temper, and the Persians
subsequently emphasised the fact by saying that Cyrus had been a
father to them, Cambyses a master. The rebellions were repressed with a
vigorous hand, and finally Smerdis disappeared by royal order, and the
secret of his fate was so well kept, that it was believed, even by his
mother and sisters, that he was merely imprisoned in some obscure Median
fortress.**
* Herodotus speaks of peoples subdued by Cambyses in Asia,
and this allusion can only refer to a revolt occurring after
the death of Cyrus, before the Egyptian expedition; these
troubles are explicitly recorded in Xenophon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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