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