The empire was in ruins; nine contenders rose to claim the throne. But blessed with irrepressible energy and invincible luck, claiming to be the warrior of Truth, manifestation of Ahura-Mazda, and aided by his six compadres, within two years Darius defeated all contenders, whom he dubbed ‘agents of the Lie’, definition of evil in Zarathustrianism. They were skinned and stuffed, crucified and rectally impaled on the walls of Ecbatana near Mount Bisitun. There, on a blood-red cliff-face, with a winged Ahura-Mazda, chief god of truth, order and war, hovering above him, Darius himself appears, brandishing his bow, sporting the kidaris, the bejewelled robe, and a square-cut plaited beard scented with oil, as he crushes a pretender beneath his foot – ‘I cut off his nose, ears, tongue and tore out one eye’ – while the others writhe in chains awaiting their impalement. The message, in three languages, was pure fake news, obscuring the killings of Cambyses and Strongbody and the usurping of the throne and merging his ancestry with that of Cyrus: ‘I am Darius, King of Kings … a Haxamanishiya. Whoever helped my family, I favoured; whoever was hostile, I eliminated.’
Darius the Great was that most unusual phenomenon, a warlord of panache and stamina who was both visionary and master of detail, so much so that his subjects nicknamed him the Trader. He launched an imperial currency, the daric, but he was also a master of security: his spies – King’s Ears – reported any treason to his secret-police boss entitled the King’s Eye. Constantly travelling in splendour, a maestro of colossal projects, tolerant of other religions (helping the Jews rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem), he built a new capital at Parsa (Persepolis) with enormous throne halls and a ceremonial staircase designed to be ascended, probably by Darius, on horseback, all built with ‘the gold of Sardis and Bactria, lapis and carnelian of Sogdiana, silver and ebony from India, friezes from Ionia, ivory from Ethiopia and India’. As a young man he had married the daughter of one of the Seven, with whom he had three sons, but now he married all the wives and daughters of Cyrus, Cambyses and Strongbody, having children with each. Atossa, Cyrus’ daughter, now married her third Great King. In a marital history brimming with blood and betrayal, both her brother-kings had likely been murdered by her new husband Darius. It was enough either to crush a woman’s spirit or, in her case, to fortify it for she became the mother of three sons, including Xerxes, and a political force.*
Darius’ women and children resided in a protected household: women were invisible in the inscriptions of court life; indeed, since the court was frequently on the road, women travelled in special giant curtained carriages which in camp were placed together to create a familial compound. Yet royal women were potentates who ran their own estates. The family court, protected by trusted eunuchs – African and Colchian (Georgian) boys seized or bought in childhood and then castrated – was run by Darius’ mother Irdabama, who ruled when he was away.
Darius was restless: when he travelled, the courtiers and their wives and families – 15,000 people – went with him. The sacred fire was borne ahead of him, pulled by eight white horses, then came the magi, followed by the empty carriage of Ahura-Mazda, then the crack royal bodyguard the Immortals and the top courtiers, led by the Master of the Thousand, and the Royal Companions, followed in turn by the queen’s household. Wherever he stopped, a palatial round tent would be erected at the centre of a resplendent tented capital.
The empire was a family business, with Darius’ brother, Artafarna, King Stabber, ruling as satrap of Greek Ionia, and most commanders being relatives or descendants of the Seven. But inevitably at least one of the Seven would resent that sacred kingship of their old messmate. Vidafarnâ (Intraphrenes) was outraged when one day refused entry to the royal apartments and cut the ears off the guards. When the rest of the Seven all wisely disavowed him, Darius executed Vidafarnâ and his family. Recalling the death of Cyrus in battle, Darius considered the succession: his sons were raised as warrior princes, growing up in the harem, awoken at dawn by trumpets, tutored by Greek eunuchs and magi, hardened by iced baths, practising horsemanship with spear and bow to enable them to accompany their father on lion hunts and to war. Even the princesses were taught bow shooting, riding and history. Among his many sons, Xerxes (Khshayarsha – He Who Rules Over Heroes) was handsome, brave in war and in the hunt. Male beauty was evidence of Ahura-Mazda’s favour: slaves were trained as beauticians; Persian men wore make-up and eyeliner; false beards and hairpieces were so valuable that they were taxed; beards were curled and anointed with perfumed oil. Getting dressed in the morning was a special ritual.
Darius, like Cyrus, recognized no limits. Once he was secure, the Trader ordered the building of a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, opening Mediterranean trade to Arabia and India. Then in 516 he invaded Afghanistan and India.
As Darius conquered provinces that his successors would rule for centuries – seven satrapies covered modern Afghanistan – the news of his invasion would have reached a prince living in the kingdom of Magada, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, principalities of north-east India, dominated by high castes, Brahmin priests and kshatriya kings and nobles according to the Vedic rituals of what later became Hinduism.* But many of the cities were republics ruled by sanghas, popular assemblies. The prince’s teachings both challenged and dovetailed with these existing religions to found what would become the first world religion.
Siddartha Gautama, the son of a minor ruler, a kshatriya, elder of the Shakya clan, and his wife, a princess of neighbouring Koliya (Nepal), enjoyed the noble lifestyle, at sixteen marrying his first cousin Yasodhara, with whom he had a son Rahula. ‘I lived a spoilt, a very spoilt life.’ But already he contemplated life and death, and was uneasy with his own pleasure-loving existence, deciding to seek enlightenment by embracing asceticism. Following Rahula’s birth, he left his marital home to travel with two friends as a sramana – a seeker.
After studying meditation, he rejected extreme asceticism when he accepted food from a village girl named Sujata. Instead he embraced a Middle Way. Sitting to meditate beneath a pipal tree in a deer park at Sarnath, he awoke with knowledge that human life is frustrating and desperate, cursed with ambition and appetites, but this could be mitigated by the Four Noble Truths and understanding of the dharma, a path of duty that to him meant the cosmic truth that led, after a lifetime of contemplation and suffering following his programme of the Noble Eightfold Path, to nirvana, freedom from endless rebirth. ‘We are what we think,’ preached Gautama. ‘All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.’
Now he formed the first sangha, a coterie of monks who believed they were witnessing the wheel-turning revelations of an exceptional human: the imagery of a chariot wheel turning to change consciousness and power was already part of Indian culture, used in the early Indus cities. They called Gautama’s version the wheel of dharma – the dharmachakra – and hailed him as Buddha, Enlightened One, though he never called himself that, preferring the modest Tathagata, the One Who’s Here. His teachings channelled Vedic ethics and meditations, yet he also threatened the dominance of the Brahmins.
Settling in Kosala, now surrounded by many followers, Buddha was joined by his son Rahula, who became a monk. But Buddha experienced betrayal from within his own family: his cousin Devadatta tried to seize control and kill him. When that failed, Devadatta spun off his own sect.