Herodotus was born a Persian subject, probably sometime in the early fifth century about the end of the Ionian Revolt. No doubt he heard many stories about the revolt during his childhood. By his own claim he also traveled widely in the western half of the Persian Empire (as well as in other places), and he knew the Persians and their empire well (see also Box 9.1).
He provides a long account of darius' rise to the throne by means of a conspiracy together with six other Persian noblemen against an alleged pretender to the throne (III 68sqq.). A second account of that conspiracy also exists, composed by darius himself and carved into the cliff-face at Behistun in Iran.
Figure 9.2 Darius’ inscription at Behistun. Unlike with modern monuments such as Mt. Rushmore or Stone Mountain, people were not actually meant to view the inscription or the reliefs since they cannot be seen from the plain below. Source: Hara1603, Http:// Commons. wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Bisotun_Iran_Relief_Achamenid_Period. JPG (accessed 14 January 2013)
Herodotus' Greek versions - with one exception - are fair renderings of the original Persian forms. The sixth name, however, is almost, but not quite correct, and the mistake reveals how Herodotus came by this particular piece of information.
A high-ranking nobleman by the name of Aspacana did exist at Darius' court, only he was not one of the co-conspirators. (DNd Kent; the letter "c" here represents the sound "tch" in "match"; Herodotus reproduced it with "th" in Greek). What happened here was that Herodotus' immediate source, who relayed the information to Herodotus orally and clearly knew the story as inscribed at Behistun, was relying on his memory instead of looking it up. Five names he rattled off accurately, but, stuck on the sixth, racked his brains and in the end came up with the similar-sounding name of another nobleman associated with Darius. The mistake was the sort which only a well-informed source could have made, and it shows that Herodotus gathered information from well-informed sources.
For precisely this reason Herodotus' material on the Persian Empire (as well as on the ancient Near East by extension) must be taken seriously. Mistakes and misrepresentations there are, but much sound information as well.
Left the overall tribute, Herodotus says, more or less the same as before (Hdt. VI 42). The Persians did not, then, impose any punitive indemnity on the defeated Greeks.
Finally, Darius’ new military commander in the region, Mardonius, established democracies (how “democratic” they were is, again, an open question - see chap. 8 and Box 13.1) in the Greek cities, excluding Samos however. Herodotus concedes that many of his readers may view this claim skeptically, but insists that this is indeed what happened (Hdt. VI 43). In other words, the Persians who, as Artaphernes’ actions demonstrate, were concerned to get at every possible root of the revolt, eventually decided that the ultimate cause of the revolt had nothing to do with the intrigues of Aristagoras and Histiaeus, but rather with the unpopularity of the tyrants’ regimes which they themselves had been propping up. This the Persians now sought to address. Their actions do them and their empire credit and show more clearly than anything else why this particular empire enjoyed greater stability and longer life than any other in the Near East.
World History
