They sang or played on musical instruments at the state banquets of the court, they accompanied their master to the battle-field or the chase, and probably performed the various inferior domestic duties in the interior of the harem, such as spinning, weaving, making perfumes, and attending to the confectionery and cooking.  Each of the king’s wives had her own separate suite of apartments and special attendants, and occupied a much higher position than a mere concubine; but only one was actually queen and had the right to wear the crown, and this position belonged of right to a princess of Achae-menian race.  Thus Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, was queen successively to Cambyses, Gaumata, and Darius; Amestris to Xerxes; and Damaspia to Artaxerxes.  Besides the influence naturally exerted by the queen over the mind of her husband, she often acquired boundless authority in the empire, in spite of her secluded life.*

     * Thus Atossa induced Darius to designate Xerxes as his
     heir-apparent.

Her power was still further increased when she became a widow, if the new king happened to be one of her own sons.  In such circumstances she retained the external attributes of royalty, sitting at the royal table whenever the king deigned to dine in the women’s apartments, and everywhere taking precedence of the young queen; she was attended by her own body of eunuchs, of whom, as well as of her private revenues, she had absolute control.  Those whom the queen-mother took under her protection escaped punishment, even though they richly deserved it, but the object of her hatred was doomed to perish in the end, either by poison treacherously administered, or by some horrible form of torture, being impaled, suffocated in ashes, tortured in the trough, or flayed alive.  Artaxerxes reigned for forty-two years, spending his time between the pleasures of the chase and the harem; no serious trouble disturbed his repose after his suppression of the revolt under Megabyzos, but on his death in 424 B.C. there was a renewal of the intrigues and ambitious passions which had stained with bloodshed the opening years of his reign.  The legitimate heir, Xerxes II., was assassinated, after a reign of forty-five days, by Secudianus (Sogdianus), one of his illegitimate brothers, and the cortege which was escorting the bodies of his parents conveyed his also to the royal burying-place at Persepolis.  Meanwhile Secudianus became suspicious of another of his brothers, named Ochus, whom Artaxerxes had caused to marry Parysatis, one of the daughters of Xerxes, and whom he had set over the important province of Hyrcania.  Ochus received repeated summonses to appear in his brother’s presence to pay him homage, and at last obeyed the mandate, but arrived at the head of an army.  The Persian nobility rose at his approach, and one by one the chief persons of the state declared themselves in his favour:  first Arbarius, commander of the cavalry; then Arxanes, the satrap of Egypt; and lastly,