Note 526 — Chapter III

This highest rank of nobility is called waspur in Pehlevi, and bar bithan is Aramaic. The book of Esther mentions the seven princes of the Persians and Medes, "who may behold the countenance of the king and have the first place in the kingdom," i. 14. The names of the six who aided Darius in slaying Gaumata, as given in Herodotus, agree with the inscription of Behistun, with the exception of one name. Herodotus gives Aspathines for the Ardumanis of Darius. The list of Ctesias is wholly different. If we examine them more closely we find that Ctesias has given the names of the sons of the comrades of Darius for the comrades themselves. Instead of Gobryas he puts Mardonius the son of Gobryas, instead of Otanes Anaphes (so we must read the name Onophes); Anaphes, according to Herod. 7, 62, is the son of Otanes. The name Hydarnes agrees with the inscription and with Herodotus, but the son of Hydarnes had the same name as his father (Herod. 7, 83, 211). The Barisses of Ctesias must be the eldest son of Intaphernes whom Darius allowed to live; he was called after his grandfather, Vayaçpara, as was often the case with the Persians. The Ariarathes, who afterwards governed Cappadocia, claimed to have sprung from Anaphes, whom Darius made satrap or king of Cappadocia. Anaphes was succeeded by a son of the same name; after him came Datames, Ariamnes, Ariarathes I., who governed Cappadocia at the time of Artaxerxes Ochus; his son Ariathes II. crucified Perdiccas in the year 322 B.C. when he had conquered him, though an old man of 82 years; Droysen, "Hellenismus," 22, 95. The Norondobates in Ctesias I cannot explain, unless we ought to read Rhodobates. Mithridates, who in Xenophon's time had been governor of Lycaonia from about 420 B.C., is called a son of Rhodobates (Diog. Laert. 3, 25), and his father and grandfather are said to have been viceroys of Pontus. The ancestor would be one of the seven, to whom the kingdom of Pontus was given for his services; Polyb. 5, 43. Mithridates Eupator calls himself the sixteenth after Darius; Appian, "Bell. Mith." c. 112; cf. Justin, 38, 7. These quotations will be sufficient to show that the rank of the six tribal princes of the Persians, like that of the chief princes, was originally hereditary, as the governorships left to their descendants outside Persia must have remained in their families.