For seven months did Smerdis reign without opposition, seconded by his brother Patizeithês; and if he manifested his distrust of the haughty Persians around him, by neither inviting them into his palace nor showing himself out of it, he at the same time studiously conciliated the favor of the subject provinces, by remission of tribute and of military service for three years.[400] Such a departure from the Persian principle of government was in itself sufficient to disgust the warlike and rapacious Achæmenids at Susa. But it seems that their suspicions as to his genuine character had never been entirely set at rest, and in the eighth month those suspicions were converted into certainty. According to what seems to have been the Persian usage, he had taken to himself the entire harem of his predecessor, among whose wives was numbered Phædymê, daughter of a distinguished Persian, named Otanês. At the instance of her father, Phædymê undertook the dangerous task of feeling the head of Smerdis while he slept, and thus detected the absence of ears.[401] Otanês, possessed of the decisive information, lost no time in concerting, with five other noble Achæmenids, means for ridding themselves of a king who was at once a Mede, a Magian, and a man without ears;[402] Darius, son of Hystaspês, the satrap of Persis proper, arriving just in time to join the conspiracy as the seventh. How these seven noblemen slew Smerdis in his palace at Susa,—how they subsequently debated among themselves whether they should establish in Persia a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy,—how, after the first of the three had been resolved upon, it was determined that the future king, whichever he might be, should be bound to take his wives only from the families of the seven conspirators,—how Darius became king, from the circumstance of his horse being the first to neigh among those of the conspirators at a given spot, by the stratagem of the groom Œbarês,—how Otanês, standing aside beforehand from this lottery for the throne, reserved for himself as well as for his descendants perfect freedom and exemption from the rule of the future king, whichsoever might draw the prize,—all these incidents may be found recounted by Herodotus with his usual vivacity, but with no small addition of Hellenic ideas as well as of dramatic ornament. [400] Herodot. iii, 67. [401] Herodot. iii, 68-69. [402] Herodot. iii, 69-73. ἀρχόμεθα μὲν ἐόντες Πέρσαι, ὑπὸ Μήδου ἀνδρὸς μάγου, καὶ τούτου ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντος. Compare the description of the insupportable repugnance of the Greeks of Kyrênê to be governed by the _lame_ Battus (Herodot. iv, 161).