=The Inscription of Behistun.=—­The eldest son of Cyrus, Cambyses, put to death his brother Smerdis and conquered Egypt.  What occurred afterward is known to us from an inscription.  Today one may see on the frontier of Persia, in the midst of a plain, an enormous rock, cut perpendicularly, about 1,500 feet high, the rock of Behistun.  A bas-relief carved on the rock represents a crowned king, with left hand on a bow; he tramples on one captive while nine other prisoners are presented before him in chains.  An inscription in three languages relates the life of the king:  “Darius the king declares, This is what I did before I became king.  Cambyses, son of Cyrus, of our race, reigned here before me.  This Cambyses had a brother Smerdis, of the same father and the same mother.  One day Cambyses killed Smerdis.  When Cambyses had killed Smerdis the people were ignorant that Smerdis was dead.  After this Cambyses made an expedition to Egypt and while he was there the people became rebellious; falsehood was then rife in the country, in Persia, in Media and the other provinces.  There was at that time a magus named Gaumata; he deceived the people by saying that he was Smerdis, the son of Cyrus.  Then the whole people rose in revolt, forsook Cambyses and went over to the pretender.  After this Cambyses died from a wound inflicted by himself.

“After Gaumata had drawn away Persia, Media, and the other countries from Cambyses, he followed out his purpose:  he became king.  The people feared him on account of his cruelty:  he would have killed the people so that no one might learn that he was not Smerdis, the son of Cyrus.  Darius the king declares there was not a man in all Persia or in Media who dared to snatch the crown from this Gaumata, the magus.  Then I presented myself, I prayed Ormuzd.  Ormuzd accorded me his protection....  Accompanied by faithful men I killed this Gaumata and his principal accomplices.  By the will of Ormuzd I became king.  The empire which had been stolen from our race I restored to it.  The altars that Gaumata, the magus, had thrown down I rebuilt to the deliverance of the people; I received the chants and the sacred ceremonials.”  Having overturned the usurper, Darius had to make war on many of the revolting princes, “I have,” said he, “won nineteen battles and overcome nine kings.”

=The Persian Empire.=—­Darius then subjected the peoples in revolt and reestablished the empire of the Persians.  He enlarged it also by conquering Thrace and a province of India.  This empire reunited all the peoples of the Orient:  Medes and Persians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Lydians, Egyptians, Indians; it covered all the lands from the Danube on the west to the Indus on the east, from the Caspian Sea on the north to the cataracts of the Nile on the south.  It was the greatest empire up to this time.  One tribe of mountaineers, the last to come, thus received the heritage of all the empires of Asia.