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Nearer and nearer they approached, and entered the city; and, amid enthusiastic shouts, the monarch was escorted to the royal palace. Darius the Mede was far from being a man of stern moral worth and true decision of character. He was rather weak in mind and easily flattered. Nevertheless he was a man of tender feelings, and cruelty was no part of his nature.
He appears to have been the first Mede who was thus trusted by the Persian kings after the overthrow of the conspiracy of the Median Magi against the Persians immediately before Darius obtained the throne. Datis received instructions to complete the subjugation of Greece, and especial orders were given him with regard to Eretria and Athens.
The first, the Babylonian, was in being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the Roman closed the series. This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or Medo-Persian is the second if I recollect aright.
The Mede, we ourselves know, had time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese, without any force of yours worthy of the name advancing to meet him. But this was a distant enemy.
And the two little armies of foot-soldiers the Persians had no cavalry defeat the innumerable horsemen of the Mede, take the old king, keep him in honourable captivity, and so change, one legend says, in a single battle, the fortunes of the whole East. And then begins that series of conquests of which we know hardly anything, save the fact that they were made.
These overtures were confined to the Athenians alone, and the Spartans were fearful lest they should be accepted. The Athenians, however, generously refused them. Gold, said they, hath no amount, earth no territory how beautiful soever that could tempt the Athenians to accept conditions from the Mede for the servitude of Greece.
These, hoping to strengthen their individual power by the success of the Mede, kept down by force the people, and brought him into the town. The city as a whole was not its own mistress when it so acted, and ought not to be reproached for the errors that it committed while deprived of its constitution.
XXV. An earnest and deliberate council was now held, in which it was resolved to direct the victorious army against Thebes, and demand the persons of those who had sided with the Mede. Fierce as had been the hostility of that state to the Hellenic liberties, its sin was that of the oligarchy rather than the people.
I knew it would be of no use to say any more to Grandmamma: she is a perfect Mede and Persian when she have once declared her royal pleasure. And my Aunt Dorothea will never interfere. My Uncle Charles is the only one who dare say another word, and it was a question if he would. He is good-natured enough, but so careless that I could not feel at all certain of enlisting him. Oh dear!
At the conclusion of his reign he was menaced by a singular conspiracy. The Median magi conspired in his absence from the seat of empire to elevate a Mede to the throne. Cambyses, under the impulse of jealous and superstitious fears, had lately put to death Smerdis, his brother.
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