* Of the two principal accounts, the first is as old as Ctesias, who was followed in general outline by Ephorus, of whose account Diodorus Siculus preserves a summary compilation; the second was circulated by Dinon, and has come down to us through the abbreviation of Pompeius Trogus.  The remains of a third account are met with in Aristotle.  AElian knew a fourth in which the murder was ascribed to the son of Xerxes himself.

The murderer at first became the virtual sovereign, and he exercised his authority so openly that later chronographers inserted his name in the list of the Achaemenids, between that of his victim and his protege; but at the end of six months, when he was planning the murder of the young prince, he was betrayed by Megabyzos and slain, together with his accomplices.  His sons, fearing a similar fate, escaped into the country with some of the troops.  They perished in a skirmish, sword in hand; but their prompt defeat, though it helped to establish the new king upon his throne, did not ensure peace, for the most turbulent provinces at the two extremes of the empire, Bactriana on the northeast and Egypt in the south-west, at once rose in arms.  The Bactrians were led by Hystaspes, one of the sons of Xerxes, who, being older than Artaxerxes, claimed the throne; his pretensions were not supported by the neighbouring provinces, and two bloody battles soon sealed his fate (462).* The chastisement of Egypt proved a harder task.  Since the downfall of the Saites, the eastern nomes of the Delta had always constituted a single fief, which the Greeks called the kingdom of Libya.  Lords of Marea and of the fertile districts extending between the Canopic arm of the Nile, the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzerainty over several of the Libyan tribes of Marmarica.  Inaros, son of Psammetichus,** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the Persians openly.  The inhabitants of the Delta, oppressed by the tax-gatherers of Achaemenes,*** welcomed him with open arms, and he took possession of the country between the two branches of the Nile, probably aided by the Cyrenians; the Nile valley itself and Memphis, closely guarded by the Persian garrisons, did not, however, range themselves on his side.

* The date 462 is approximate, and is inferred from the fact that the war in Bactriana is mentioned in Ctesias between the war against the sons of Artabanus which must have occupied a part of 463, and the Egyptian rebellion which broke out about 462, as Diodorus Siculus points out, doubtless following Ephorus.

     ** The name of the father of Inaros is given us by the
     contemporary testimony of Thucydides.