We must accept that intrigue was a reality of court existence and that court conspiracies could quickly escalate into rebellion and open warfare. The Achaemenid court was after all a violent place, as Robert Rollinger’s detailed investigations have shown (Rollinger 2004, 2010). In Rollinger’s studies of the Greek historiographic depiction of violence at the Persian court it transpires that many of the most memorable acts of cruelty are perpetrated by the women of the Achaemenid royal house. This might be read as a literary trope; however, it is important to set the rivalries, intrigues, double-dealings, murders, and executions explored by the Greek authors in the context of dynastic politics. Persia was controlled by an absolute ruler - that is not Orientalist cliche, it is a fact. Absolute monarchies are open to a particular form of political tension which focuses on the royal family and on the noble families which surround the king, and within such institutions the women of the ruling family often rise to positions of political agency, not through any formal route to power, but by other, less recognised means (for cross-cultural comparisons on this theme see Morris 1979; Wan 1988; Anderson 1990; Holdsworth and Courtauld 1995; Rawski 1998; McDermott 1999; Zega 2002; Nelso 2003).
As Michael Fowler and John Marincola have stressed (2002: 292), it is wrong to see Persian royal women merely as literary ‘types’ created by Greek authors. While a connection between the barbarian milieu and violence seems to be essential to the Herodotean view of the world, Ctesias is more than likely to have recorded the real actions of court women, as reflected in other court histories of the same period: the Davidic court history’s depiction of Bathsheba, a principal wife of king David of Israel and the mother of Solomon, shows her to be a powerful guardian of the throne (1 Kings 1; Marsman 2003; Solvang 2003) and the Assyrian royal annals record how Naqia held onto the reins of power and established a sense of concord at court as her grandson Ashurbanipal ascended the throne (Melville 1999). In Persia, Atossa manoeuvred her son Xerxes onto Darius’ throne because she had the power and ability to do so, or at least this was how Herodotus (7.3-4) interpreted Xerxes’ relatively smooth accession to the Persian kingship (on royal women and succession issues see further de Vaux 1961; Bailey 1990; Novotny 2001; Dodson and Hilton 2005; see also Chapter 1).
Particularly intense in its narrative and detail is Herodotus’ story of Xerxes’ wife Amestris and her bitter struggle with his mistress Artaynte (who simultaneously was Xerxes’ niece - being the daughter of his brother Masistes - and daughter-in-law - being married to Crown Prince Darius). (Incidentally, Hazewindus [2004: 102] is wrong to call Artaynte Xerxes’ ‘concubine’, as she is clearly his unofficial lover.) This masterful Herodotean novella (E14) is probably based on a Persian oral tradition (after all, Herodotus certainly does not provide an eyewitness account) but it must have had a historical background insofar as we know that some kind of dispute between Xerxes and his brother ended in the downfall of Masistes and his family. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1983) argued that the tale was based on an indigenous Persian tradition in which Masistes tried to usurp his brother’s throne and it is certainly true that elements of Herodotus’ account have a special meaning when read in a specifically Iranian context. For instance, Artaynte’s desire to possess a beautiful garment made by Amestris is best interpreted when we acknowledge that it was the king’s own robe which she cherished. As we have seen, the royal robe was a powerful symbol of legitimate kingship (Chapter 2) and by demanding this symbolic vestment Artaynte laid claim to sovereignty, not for herself of course, for that was impossible in the Persian tradition, but for her already powerful family (and it is possible that the name of her father, Masistes, derives from the Old Persian madista - ‘the greatest’-giving an added historical dimension to the Herodotean tale of court intrigue). In the story, when Amestris hears of Artaynte’s request, she bides her time (for a year, Herodotus says) until the occasion is right, but then she acts swiftly, bloodily, and with chilling finality. Amestris is intent on securing the succession of her son Darius and she reads Artaynte’s request for the robe as the treacherous act it is, yet her wrath does not focus on Artaynte herself (because she is Prince Darius’ wife and therefore the possible mother of a future Achaemenid heir), but on Artaynte’s (unnamed) mother - Amestris’ equal in dynastic terms. The imperial matriarch turns on a rival dynastic matron and Amestris puts a halt to Masistes’ family ambitions in a demonstrably emblematic way: his wife’s breasts - symbolising her motherhood and dynastic fecundity - are cut off and thrown to the dogs. Since dogs were thought of as dirty scavengers and eaters of refuse and corpses (Proverbs 26:11; 1 Kings 16:4, 21:19; Homer, Odyssey 18.87), their presence at the denouement of Herodotus’ story is particularly telling and can be compared to an episode in the Hebrew Bible where palace dogs are left to eat the corpse of the hated queen Jezebel (2 Kings 9:36-7; on female mutilation in the Near East see further Amos 4:2-3; 2 Kings 8:11-12, 15:16; Hosea 14:1).
Ancient Iranians would have understood the details of this grisly story well, for there was a long tradition of treating the bodies of vanquished foes with acts of demonstrative cruelty. Images of a ‘Persian peace’ propagated by the Achaemenid kings on the reliefs at Persepolis belie the fact that, as the heirs of the great Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Persians readily inherited many kinds of savage punishment documented in Assyrian and later Neo-Babylonian chronicles, such as impaling, decapitation, burning, whipping, strangling, stoning, castration, blinding, cutting of a living body in two, cutting off nose, ears, lips, hands, arms, snipping out the tongue, branding, flaying, crucifixion, and skinning alive. So the punishment Masistes’ wife received at the hands of the vengeful Amestris was consistent with that doled out to other victims in the Near East, and the sex of the victim was not a reason for lighter chastisement.
In spite of these scenes of high drama, it is important to realise that the powerful court women of Herodotus and Ctesias do not dominate men in order to deceive them; nor do they subdue them for their own access to power. In fact, in the Greek sources no royal woman is ever recorded conspiring to treason with over-ambitious eunuchs or courtiers but instead they work within the confines of the court system to vigilantly protect the dynastic bloodline. So it was, for instance, that Parysatis became implicated in the death of the pretender Sogdianus, who threatened Darius Il’s accession to the throne (Ctesias F15 §50), and any treasonable activities from eunuchs could lead to their torture or death - which was always ordered at the express command of the king’s women (the king rarely doled out their fates; see Llewellyn-Jones 2002). Artoxares the Paphlagonian ‘king-maker’, the most powerful of Darius Il’s eunuchs, met his end on the direct orders of Queen Parysatis (Ctesias F15 §54; Brosius 1996: 100; Lewis 1977: 21) and similarly the powerful eunuch Petasakes was blinded, flayed alive, and crucified on the express commands of Amytis, the wife of Cyrus the Great (Ctesias F9 §6). The ability to take the life of powerful court eunuchs demonstrates the personal and political clout of some Achaemenid queens.
It must be conceded, however, that, on occasion, a queen became embroiled in a personal vendetta which had ostensibly nothing to do with the security of the dynasty. After Inarus of Libya failed to free Egypt from Persian rule, the rebel leader and many Greek mercenaries who had aided him were brought to Persia as prisoners but were granted amnesty and safety by Artaxerxes I. But the king’s mother,
Amestris (Xerxes’ widow), was embittered because another of her sons, Achaemenes, had died in the battle against Inarus. Ctesias (F14 §39) depicts her pleading with Artaxerxes for the head of the traitor and he records that ‘because she kept bothering her son about it, she got her way’, although it took her five years to reach her goal: ‘she impaled [Inarus] on three stakes; and she beheaded as many Greeks as she was able to get hold of - fifty in all’. Ctesias categorically states that Amestris carried out this action in revenge for the death of her son, although Artarxerxes seems to have had no intention of avenging his younger brother’s death since it occurred legitimately under the rules of war. Amestris’ five-year-long harassment campaign finally resulted in her longed-for revenge and the restoration of (as she must have perceived it) family honour. Parysatis likewise systematically hunted down and destroyed many individuals connected to the death of Cyrus the Younger despite the fact that he also died in battle. Grief was a powerful catalyst for retribution (Ctesias F17 §66).
Ctesias (F14 §44) also records that when Amestris’ daughter, Princess Amytis, lay dying of a terminal illness, having been tricked into a sexual relationship by her doctor, Apollonides of Cos (who had been commissioned to cure her disease), ‘[Amytis] told her mother to take revenge on Apollonides’ - which is exactly what Amestris did. She imprisoned and tortured the doctor for two months before having him buried alive. Interestingly, although Amestris told King Artaxerxes the full details of his sister’s disgrace, the king gave his mother carte blanche to deal with the situation herself. This is perhaps logical, since the disgrace of Amytis needed to be kept secret within the inner court and judgement on the nature of the doctor’s crime was therefore best committed to the clandestine jurisdiction of the king’s mother.
On the surface we can identify two strands to the way in which royal women used their power to gain revenge: one was to satisfy a personal slight, the other to meet a political affront, although of course the two were often intertwined. However, a third reason can be suggested for why some royal women were drawn to murder or mutilation: simple jealousy and a clash of personalities could also overwhelm dynastic politics. Peirce’s important studies of harem politicking at the Ottoman court have illuminated a dark world in which intense domestic rivalries among the harem women had a direct impact upon imperial policy, as women went head to head with one another out of jealously over rank and status, or to secure their own status, or, predominantly, to solidify the status of their sons. Such revenge killings, punishments, and mutilations were commonplace (Peirce 1993: 2008) and this was much the case in the Achaemind court too.
Ctesias makes clear that an intense rivalry existed between two queens at Artaxerxes Il’s court - his mother, Parysatis, and his wife, Stateira - and the hostility was fuelled by each woman’s desire to hold the place of honour in Artaxerxes Il’s affections, or at least to influence his decisions (E15). Parysatis detested Stateira ‘because she wished to have no one as powerful as herself’ (Plutarch, Artaxerxes 17.4) and Ctesias (F15 §56) relates the injuries that the royal family had inflicted upon Stateira’s natal family, all of whom had been executed by Darius II for treason. As for Stateira, her influence as a genuine power at court can be recognised by the fact that the Egyptian pharaoh sent as a ‘diplomatic gift’ a beautiful young courtesan named Timosa to be her slave (Athenaeus 13.609). Being the mother of three of the king’s sons afforded Stateira even greater prestige at court and she influenced Artaxerxes noticeably. The king often gave in to the repeated importuning of his wife and it was at her behest that Clearchus of Sparta was executed. This brought Stateira into direct conflict with Parysatis, who championed Clearchus’ position at court.
Arguably, Ctesias’ story of Stateira’s poisoning (E16) is too complex to be made up (see also Ctesias F27 §70). Poisonings were common at the Persian court - Xenophon states that courtiers regularly died in court intrigues at the hands of skilled poisoners (E17) - and Parysatis certainly had a reputation for being a crafty exponent of this most deadly of courtly arts (Ctesias F16 §61). So it is significant that we know that the office of royal food-taster functioned prominently at the Persian court (E18). The royal cup-bearer was also a prestigious office held only by the monarch’s most trusted courtiers, like Nehemiah, who performed that duty for Artaxerxes I (Nehemiah 1:11), or the son of the high-ranking Prexaspes, who served at Cambyses’ court (Herodotus 3.34), for the cup-bearer was charged with managing all of the court’s wine-pourers and tasters, although he alone poured the king’s wine into his egg-shaped cup and tasted the monarch’s drink to check that it was poison free (on the elaborate etiquette of handing the king his cup see Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.3.9, 8.4.3). Fear of poison might be a reason why the Great King drank a wine unique to him - the Syrian Chalybonian wine (Athenaeus 2.28d) - and water from Susa contained in special pots (see Chapter 3). Ctesias also reports not only that the Great King and his mother had exclusive access to a special Indian poison kept within the palace for the purpose of causing a swift death but also that they also hoarded precious antidotes against even the deadliest poisons (E19). There was actually a specific death sentence reserved for individuals charged with poisoning: ‘there is a broad stone on which they place the poisoners’ heads and with another stone they pound and crush until their face and head are mashed to a pulp’ (Ctesias F29b §9) and, as Briant (2002: 263) has rightly observed, ‘the existence of this torture implies that the threat of poison was taken seriously’.
Ctesias’ specific report of an Indian poison perhaps reflects the importance of the use of poison at the Indian royal courts, especially that of the near-contemporary ruler Chandragupta. Poison is the focus of Book I of a work called the Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft, economic policy, military strategy, and court politics written by an influential courtier-philosopher named Kautilya. It includes all the precautions to take against the king being poisoned, as well as the remedies if he is. The Arthashastra then dictates the royal punishment for the one who has perpetrated the mischief. All efforts are made to take care of the king inside and outside his palace. The king is in general advised always to remain guarded against poisoning and to be equipped with antidotes for adverse situations (see Shamasatry 1923).
So it was that Parysatis enacted her revenge on Stateira with the aid of poison - and even though Ctesias’ report looks like a plot from a fairy tale, the sharing of a common cup or dish appears to have been a standard way of conducting a poisoning in antiquity (and at later courts), drawing any suspicious attention away from the dish or drink in question (Suetonius, Claudius 44; Tacitus, Annals 13.16, 7.2.2; Levy 2011). Certainly that was Parysatis’ intention, Ctesias explains, because Stateira was vigilant in watching out for assassination attempts, fearing that her mother-in-law might one day make such a move. Plutarch, however, stresses that the two women had started visiting each other’s apartment and had begun to reconcile their hostilities and so, just as Stateira began to relax her guard, Parysatis struck. Not surprisingly Artaxerxes’ revenge upon his mother and her intimates was swift and bloody - and typically masculine.
The works of Herodotus and Ctesias may contain literary cliches which reflect the misogynistic tone of Greek literature in which powerful women were perceived as a threat to the political world of men. But there is truth in their accounts of harem politics if we read these stories in the light of what Wiesehofer (1996: 83) has recognised as ‘a society of tribal origins [where] political marriages contracted in order to ensure loyalty were particularly important, especially since the question of the succession to the throne in the polygamous Persian royal house was liable to assume vital significance’. Revenge murders and honour killings must be seen as a significant and bona fide instruments in the politicking of absolute monarchies, and especially in the dynastic power plays of the inner court.
World History
