triana, the Khoramnians,
the Parthians, and the Carmanians, under the suzerainty of his brother.
Cambyses, it is clear, inherited the whole empire, but intrigues
gathered round Smerdis, and revolts broke out in the provinces, incited,
so it was said, whether rightly or wrongly, by his partisans.* The new
king was possessed of a violent, merciless temper, and the Persians
subsequently emphasised the fact by saying that Cyrus had been a
father to them, Cambyses a master. The rebellions were repressed with a
vigorous hand, and finally Smerdis disappeared by royal order, and the
secret of his fate was so well kept, that it was believed, even by his
mother and sisters, that he was merely imprisoned in some obscure Median
fortress.**

* Herodotus speaks of peoples subdued by Cambyses in Asia,
and this allusion can only refer to a revolt occurring after
the death of Cyrus, before the Egyptian expedition; these
troubles are explicitly recorded in Xenophon.

** The inscription of Behistun says distinctly that Cambyses
had his brother Bardiya put to death before the Egyptian
expedition; on the other hand, Herodotus makes the murder
occur during the Egyptian expedition and Ctesias after this
expedition. Ctesias' version of the affair adds that
Cambyses, the better to dissimulate his crime, ordered the
murderer Sphendadates to pass himself off as Tanyoxarkes, as
there was a great resemblance between the two: Sphendadates
--the historian goes on to say--was exiled to Bactriana,
and it was not until five years afterwards that the mother
of the two princes heard of the murder and of the
substitution. These additions to the story are subsequent
developments suggested by the traditional account of the
Pseudo-Smerdis. In recent times several authorities have
expressed the opinion that all that is told us of the murder
of Smerdis and about the Pseudo-Smerdis is merely a legend,
invented by Darius or those about him in order to justify
his usurpation in the eyes of the people: the Pseudo-Smerdis
would be Smerdis himself, who revolted against Cambyses, and
was then, after he had reigned a few months, assassinated by
Darius. Winckler acknowledges "that certainty is impossible
in such a case;" and, in reality, all ancient tradition is
against his hypothesis, and it is best to accept Herodotus'
account