Before, however, these results were accomplished—­while the fortune of war still hung in the balance—­a fresh danger threatened.  Encouraged by the disaffection which appeared to be so general, and which had at length reached the very citadel of the Empire, Babylon revolted for the second time.  A man, named Aracus, an Armenian by descent, but settled in Babylonia, headed the insurrection, and, adopting the practice of personation so usual at the time, assumed the name and style of “Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabonidus.”  Less alarmed on this occasion than at the time of the first revolt, the king was content to send a Median general against the new pretender.  This officer, who is called Intaphres, speedily chastised the rebels, capturing Babylon, and taking Aracus prisoner.  Crucifixion was again the punishment awarded to the rebel leader.

A season of comparative tranquillity seems now to have set in; and it may have been in this interval that Darius found time to chastise the remoter governors, who without formally declaring themselves independent, or assuming the title of king, had done acts savoring of rebellion.  Oroetes, the governor of Sardis, who had comported himself strangely even under Cambyses, having ventured to entrap and put to death an ally of that monarch’s, Polycrates of Samos, had from the time of the Magian revolution assumed an attitude quite above that of a subject.  Having a quarrel with Mitrobates, the governor of a neighboring province, he murdered him and annexed his territory.  When Darius sent a courier to him with a message the purport of which he disliked, he set men to waylay and assassinate him.  It was impossible to overlook such acts; and Darius must have sent an army into Asia Minor, if one of his nobles had not undertaken to remove Oroetes in another way.  Arming himself with several written orders bearing the king’s seal, he went to Sardis, and gradually tried the temper of the guard which the satrap kept round his person.  When he found them full of respect for the royal authority and ready to do whatever the king commanded, he produced an order for the governor’s execution, which they carried into effect immediately.

The governor of Egypt, Aryandes, had shown a guilty ambition in a more covert way.  Understanding that Darius had issued a gold coinage of remarkable purity, he, on his own authority and without consulting the king, issued a silver coinage of a similar character.  There is reason to believe that he even placed his name upon his coins; an act which to the Oriental mind distinctly implied a claim of independent sovereignty.  Darius taxed him with a design to revolt, and put him to death on the charge, apparently without exciting any disturbance.