The Athenian rivalry with Sparta started early: in 510, when Athens was ruled by a tyrant, the Alcmaeonids, now led by Cleisthenes, appealed for help to the Spartans who, seeing the chance to make Athens a client state, drove out the autocrat. Instead Cleisthenes dispensed with the Spartans and then promised new powers to the people who had supported him. Athens depended on its navy; its triremes needed rowers; and that meant the people had to be consulted. Cleisthenes devised the rule of the people – democracy – by an assembly (ecclesia) of all the male citizens (excluding women and slaves).* Real democracy was regarded as election by lottery: the ruling Council of Five Hundred was chosen by lot. Only the ten commanders – strategoi – were chosen annually by a show of hands or by a vote using pebbles. Devised by a member of the most ambitious family in Athens, people power was never quite as democratic as it seemed – not with the Alcmaeonids involved.*
In 547, as he negotiated his anti-Cyrus alliance, Croesus thrice consulted Pyphia, high priestess of the Delphic Oracle, via his Athenian ally Alcmaeon, focusing on war with Persia. Her oracular reply was a masterpiece of ambiguity: if he attacked Persia, he would destroy a great empire. Cyrus marched immediately. In 546, when the kings fought, Cyrus placed his dromedaries, which carried his supplies, at the front, thereby panicking Croesus’ cavalry. Croesus was executed, and Cyrus dispatched Arbaku to mop up the Greek cities of Ionia, the Aegean coast.
Only Babylon held out, but its empire was mired in crisis. In 539, Cyrus routed the Babylonians. Now King of the World, he paraded into Babylon on a white stallion accompanied by his son Cambyses and held a durbar for the princes of his vast new empire at which the ex-king Nabonidus was executed. Now he showed respect for the Babylonian elite – including the top banking family, the Egibi* – and careful reverence for Marduk in his temple of Esgila where he buried a clay cylinder that recast his career of conquest and killing as the liberation of Babylon and all his subject peoples.*
Yet his empire would be different from that of Tiglath-Pileser and Nebuchadnezzar. All deportees could return home. All could worship their own gods and manage local affairs – provided they absolutely obeyed the King of the World and paid his taxes. In 537, 40,000 Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple: no wonder some regarded Cyrus as the anointed one, the Messiah.
Now finally he could relax in his new palace and gardens – pairidaeza, origin of the word paradise* – at his capital at Pathragarda (Pasargadae). His empire was now the largest the world had seen, but could he keep it together? Cyrus accepted no limits. Egypt was next, but in the east a Scythian queen based on the steppes between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was raiding his lands. She too had to be destroyed. Summoning his sons, he appointed Cambyses, king of Babylon, as his successor and assigned the second boy Bardis to rule Bactria before he himself set off.
The queen’s name was Tomyris (Tahmirih), which simply means brave. Women leaders were much more common among the nomadic tribes of Scythians* in the north and the Arabs in the south than among the settled peoples, because their women fought alongside the men on equal terms: 37 per cent of Scythian warriors found in tombs were women with bodies trained to ride and fire arrows, wearing armour and golden headdresses, lying beside horses in golden trappings – just like the men. The Greek myth of the one-breasted she-warriors, the Amazons, was based on the Scythians.
These were the people that Cyrus now pursued, but somehow the septuagenarian world conqueror was himself killed. Tomyris crucified and beheaded him in the Scythian manner, stuffing his head into a wineskin filled with blood with the words, ‘I warned you I’d quench your thirst for blood, and so I shall.’*
She made a cup out of his head.
At a king’s death, the sacred fires were extinguished. In 529 BC, the Persians brought back what was left of Cyrus, but a royal funeral in which the waxed body was borne on a golden chariot was impossible.*
DARIUS AND BUDDHA: THE WHEEL
The news that Cyrus had ‘gone away from the throne’ shook the empire. Cyrus’ son, Cambyses II, underwent the ritual investiture that combined sacred blessing and tribal glory at the shrine of the goddess Anahita (the Persian equivalent of Ishtar) in Pasargadae. A Great King underwent a metamorphosis, throwing aside his own clothes and choosing a throne name, donning the robe of Cyrus, drinking magical (and intoxicating) elixirs of sacred terebinth and distilled milk cooked up by the magi, taking the sceptre, then being crowned with the kidaris or royal tiara, before all the courtiers threw themselves to their knees in obeisance.
Cambyses planned to finish his father’s work and take Egypt. He had to prove himself fast. First he married his two elder sisters, Atossa and Roxane, to prevent them marrying anyone else, appointing his strapping brother Bardiya, a muscled bowman extraordinaire known as Strongbody, as satrap of Bactria – and culling all opposition. Accompanied by Strongbody and a well-connected young courtier Darius, and raising a force that reflected his family’s astonishing multinational empire, pointy-hatted Scythians, Medes, Persians and a Phoenician navy, he conquered Egypt and killed the pharaoh yet treated Egyptian traditions respectfully. He planned to attack Carthage (a plan vetoed by his Phoenician sailors, who refused to attack their compatriots) and instead marched down the Nile and into Nubia and Ethiopia. His successes were remarkable, yet he did not inspire loyalty.* Jealous of Strongbody, Cambyses sent him back to Persia, then, tormented by stories of his treason, ordered his killing. In 522, Strongbody declared himself king, while in Cambyses’ own retinue a cabal of seven respected khans, all related to the dynasty, plotted against him. The youngest of them was Darius (Da¯rayavauš, or Holder of Good), aged twenty-two, grandson of the khan of the Haxamanishiya clan who had served Cyrus as quiver bearer and was now Cambyses’ lance bearer. Even though he was the junior member, he was tall, charismatic, athletic and remarkably confident: he emerged as the candidate for king.
As Cambyses rushed home, he met with an unfortunate accident: dismounting from his horse, he cut himself with his dagger and died of gangrene. Darius later wrote that Cambyses ‘died his own death’ – whatever that means. One has to wonder if the Seven quietly killed him. Now they galloped for home, where Strongbody had married his surviving sister Atossa but alienated his own nobles. The Seven arrived at his fortress near the sacred mountain Bisitun, where Strongbody was cavorting with a concubine. A eunuch let the hit squad into the royal chamber where the half-naked Strongbody put up such a fight with a stool that it took all Seven to subdue him. Darius’ brother Artafarna delivered the fatal stab. The Seven met at dawn on horseback to decide who was to be king. Whosever horse neighed first would be he. Darius ordered his groom to dip his fingers into a mare’s vulva first and then, just as sun rose, to wave them temptingly under the nose of his stallion, which then neighed. The other six fell to their knees before the prince, who now adopted the throne name Darius. More likely he had been the king-designate from the start.* The Seven agreed that the rest of them could always have access to Darius even if he was in bed with a girl.