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Accession of Darius - Coggle Diagram
Accession of Darius
Herodotus
after death of Cambyses, false Smerdis reigned for several months, but never left the royal citadel or met with senior Persians which raised suspicion
The wife of the fake Smerdis was tasked by her father with discovering whether the king had ears or not, and he did not. This was significant because years earlier Cyrus had ordered that the Magus Smerdis have his ears cut off for a serious crime so this revealed him as a fake imposter
As soon as the wife's father (Otanes) learnt this, he persuaded six Persian nobles to join him to overthrow the false Smerdis
Darius was the last one to be included, he was a distant relative of Cambyses and had served with him in Egypt
Prexaspes now comes back into the story, he had allied himself with the Magi and they had persuaded him to announce to the people that Smerdis was the real brother of Cambyses. But he declared the truth instead and then threw himself to his death from the tower
some of the seven wanted to call off the attempt, but Darius urged them on and they killed the two Magi and showed their heads to the citizens
five days later the conspirators met to talk and decided that Persia should remain a monarchy. They then agreed that they would ride their horses out of the city before dawn, and the rider of the first horse to neigh after sunrise would be king. This was Darius
How Darius sees it
Bisitun Inscription
the series of events
Cambyses arranged for his brother to be killed in secret and then headed to Egypt but the people became restless and, on March 11th, the fake brother of Cambyses led a rebellion
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no one dared oppose the king as they were afraid of being put to death, but Darius, with the help of Ahuramazda, challenged and killed him and his closest followers with the help of six allies
this differs slightly to Herodotus' account as the story of conspiring and the horse is left out, probably so Darius seems more honorable and the story of help from Ahuramazda is more believable.
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