Kitap 3
For when he learned of Polycrates' death, first he set up an altar to Zeus the Liberator and marked out around it that sacred enclosure which is still to be seen in the suburb of the city; when this had been done, he called an assembly of all the citizens, and addressed them thus:
“To me, as you know, have come Polycrates' scepter and all of his power, and it is in my power now to rule you. But I, so far as it lies in me, shall not do myself what I blame in my neighbor. I always disliked it that Polycrates or any other man should lord it over men like himself. Polycrates has fulfilled his destiny, and inviting you to share his power I proclaim equality.
Only I claim for my own privilege that six talents of Polycrates' wealth be set apart for my use, and that I and my descendants keep the priesthood of Zeus the Liberator, whose temple I have founded, and now I give you freedom.”
Such was Maeandrius' promise to the Samians. But one of them arose and answered: “But you are not even fit to rule us, low-born and vermin, but you had better give an account of the monies that you have handled.”
This was the speech of Telesarchus, a man of consequence among the citizens. But Maeandrius, realizing that if he let go of the sovereignty someone else would make himself sovereign instead, resolved not to let it go. Withdrawing into the acropolis, he sent for the citizens individually as if he would give an account of the money; then he seized and bound them.
So they were imprisoned, and afterwards Maeandrius fell sick. His brother Lycaretus thought him likely to die, and, so that he might the more easily make himself master of +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos , he put all the prisoners to death. They had, it would seem, no desire to be free.
So when the Persians brought Syloson back to +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos , no one raised a hand against them, but Maeandrius and those of his faction offered to evacuate the island under a flag of truce; Otanes agreed to this, and after the treaty was made, the Persians of highest rank sat down on seats facing the acropolis.
Now Maeandrius the sovereign had a crazy brother named Charilaus, who lay bound in the dungeon for some offense; this man heard what was going on, and by peering through the dungeon window saw the Persians sitting there peaceably;
whereupon he cried with a loud voice that he wanted to talk to Maeandrius. His brother, hearing him, had Charilaus loosed and brought before him. No sooner had he been brought than he attempted with reviling and abuse to persuade Maeandrius to attack the Persians. “Although I am your brother, you coward,” he said, “and did no wrong deserving of prison, you have bound and imprisoned me; but when you see the Persians throwing you out of house and home, you have no courage to avenge yourself, though you could so easily beat them?
If you are yourself afraid of them, give me your foreign guards, and I will punish them for coming here; as for you, I will give you safe conduct out of the island.”
This was what Charilaus said; and Maeandrius took his advice, to my thinking not because he was so foolish as to suppose that he would be strong enough to defeat the king, but because he did not want Syloson to recover +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos safe and sound with no trouble.
He wanted therefore by provoking the Persians to weaken +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos as much as he could before surrendering it, for he was well aware that if the Persians were hurt they would be furiously angry with the Samians. Besides, he knew that he could get himself safely off the island whenever he liked, having built a secret passage leading from the acropolis to the sea.
Maeandrius then set sail from +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos ; but Charilaus armed all the guards, opened the acropolis' gates, and attacked the Persians. These supposed that a full agreement had been made, and were taken unawares; the guard fell upon them and killed the Persians of highest rank, those who were carried in litters.
They were engaged in this when the rest of the Persian force came up in reinforcement, and, hard-pressed, the guards retreated into the acropolis.
The Persian captain Otanes, seeing how big a loss the Persians had suffered, deliberately forgot the command given him at his departure by Darius not to kill or enslave any Samian but to deliver the island intact to Syloson; and he commanded his army to kill everyone they took, men and boys alike.
Then, while some of the Persians laid siege to the acropolis, the rest killed everyone they met, inside the temples and outside the temples alike.
Maeandrius sailed to Sparta [22.416,37.83] (inhabited place), Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Lacedaemon , escaping from +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos ; and after he arrived there and brought up the possessions with which he had left his country, it became his habit to make a display of silver and gold drinking cups; while his servants were cleaning these, he would converse with the king of Sparta [22.4417,37.0667] (Perseus) Sparta , Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, and would bring him to his house. As Cleomenes marvelled greatly at the cups whenever he saw them, Maeandrius would tell him to take as many as he liked.
Maeandrius made this offer two or three times; Cleomenes showed his great integrity in that he would not accept; but realizing that there were others in Sparta [22.416,37.83] (inhabited place), Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Lacedaemon from whom Maeandrius would get help by offering them the cups, he went to the ephors and told them it would be best for Sparta [22.4417,37.0667] (Perseus) Sparta if this Samian stranger quit the country, lest he persuade Cleomenes himself or some other Spartan to do evil. The ephors listened to his advice and banished Maeandrius by proclamation.
As for +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos , the Persians swept it clear and turned it over uninhabited to Syloson. But afterwards Otanes, the Persian general, helped to settle the land, prompted by a dream and a disease that he contracted in his genitals.
While the fleet was away at +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos , the Babylonians revolted.According to the course of Herodotus' narrative, the revolt would seem to have taken place some considerable time after Darius' accession (531 B.C.). But the +Bisitun [47.483,34.366] (inhabited place), Bakhtaran, Iran, Asia Behistun inscription apparently makes it one of the earliest events of his reign. They had made very good preparation; for during the reign of the Magus, and the rebellion of the seven, they had taken advantage of the time and the confusion to provision themselves against the siege; and (I cannot tell how) this went undetected.
At last they revolted openly and did this:—sending away all the mothers, each chose one woman, whomever he liked of his domestics, as a bread-maker; as for the rest, they gathered them together and strangled them so they would not consume their bread.
When Darius heard of this, he collected all his forces and led them against Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon , and he marched up to the town and laid siege to it; but the Babylonians thought nothing of the siege. They came up on to the ramparts of the wall and taunted Darius and his army with gesture and word, and one of them uttered this mot:
“Why loiter there, Persians, and not go away? You will take us when mules give birth.” One of the Babylonians said this, by no means expecting that a mule would give birth.
A year and seven months passed, and Darius and his whole army were bitter because they could not take Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon . Yet Darius had used every trick and every device against it. He tried the stratagem by which Cyrus took it, and every other stratagem and device, yet with no success; for the Babylonians kept a vigilant watch, and he could not take them.
But in the twentieth month of the siege a marvellous thing befell Zopyrus, son of that Megabyzus who was one of the seven destroyers of the Magus: one of his food-carrying mules gave birth. Zopyrus would not believe the news; but when he saw the foal for himself, he told those who had seen it to tell no one;
then reflecting he recalled the Babylonian's word at the beginning of the siege—that the city would be taken when mules gave birth—and having this utterance in mind he conceived that Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon might be taken; for the hand of heaven, he supposed, was in the man's word and the birth from his own mule.
As soon as he thought that it was Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon 's fate to fall, he came and inquired of Darius if taking Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon were very important to him; and when he was assured that it was, he then cast about for a plan by which the city's fall would be accomplished by him alone; for good service among the Persians is very much esteemed, and rewarded by high preferment.
He could think of no other way to bring the city down than to mutilate himself and then desert to the Babylonians; so, making light of it, he mutilated himself beyond repair, and after cutting off his nose and ears and cropping his hair as a disfigurement and scourging himself, he came before Darius.
The king reacted very violently to seeing a man so well-respected mutilated, and springing from the throne he uttered a cry and asked Zopyrus who it was who had mutilated him and why.
“There is no man,” he said, “except you, who has enough power to do this to me, and no one but I myself did this, O King, because I felt it terribly that Assyrians were laughing at Persians.”
Darius answered, “Unfeeling man, you give a pretty name to an ugly act if you say that it was on account of those besieged that you did for yourself past cure. Why, you poor fool, will the enemy surrender sooner because you mutilated yourself? How could you not have been out of your mind to disfigure yourself?”
“Had I told you,” said Zopyrus, “what I intended to do, you would not have let me; but now I have done it on my own. Now, then, if you do your part we shall take Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon . I shall desert to the city as I am, and I shall say to them that I suffered this at your hands; and I think that I shall persuade them, and thus gain a command.
Now, on the tenth day after I enter the city, take a thousand men from the part of your army about which you will least care if it is lost, and post them before the gate called the gate of Semiramis; on the seventh day after that, post two thousand more before the gate called the gate of the Ninevites; and when twenty days are past after that seventh, lead out four thousand more and post them before the Chaldean gate, as they call it; allow neither these, nor the others that go before them, to carry any weapons except daggers; leave them these.
But immediately after the twentieth day command the rest of your army to assault the whole circuit of the walls, and post the Persians before the gate of Belus and the gate called Cissian. For I think that once I have done conspicuous things the Babylonians will give me, among other things, the keys of their gates; then it will depend on me and on the Persians to do what is necessary.”
Having given these instructions, he went to the gates, turning and looking back as though he were in fact a deserter. When the watch posted on the towers saw him, they ran down, and opening half the gate a little asked him who he was and why he came; he told them that he was Zopyrus and was deserting to them.
When they heard this, the gatekeepers brought him before the general assembly of the Babylonians, where he made a pitiful sight, saying that he had suffered at the hands of Darius what he had suffered at his own because he had advised the king to lead his army away, since they could find no way to take the city.
“Now,” he said in his speech to them, “I come as a great boon to you, men of Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon , and as a great bane to Darius and to his army and to the Persians; for he shall not get away with having mutilated me so; and I know all the issues of his plans.” This was what he said.
When the Babylonians saw the most well-respected man in Iran [53,32] (nation), Asia Persia without his nose and ears and all lurid with blood from the scourging, they were quite convinced that he was telling them the truth and came as their ally, and were ready to give him all that he asked; and he asked for a command.
When he got this from them, he did exactly as he had arranged with Darius. On the tenth day he led out the Babylonian army, surrounded and slaughtered the thousand whom he had instructed Darius to put in the field first.
Seeing that he produced works equal to his words, the Babylonians were overjoyed and ready to serve him in every way. When the agreed number of days was past, he led out once more a chosen body of Babylonians, and slaughtered the two thousand men of Darius' army.