This Ergon is a literary analysis of 3.84-3.88 in Herodotus’s Histories.
In this portion of the Histories, Herodotus tells the story of how Darius ascended to the throne. In previous lines, Herodotus tells us that Cambyses, the second king of the Persian Empire, died from a wound. His brother Smerdis inherited the throne, but according to Herodotus, he was replaced by a magus with the same name. This started the reign of the Magi, powerful counselors in the Persian Empire, and caused dissatisfaction among some members of the royal family, including Darius. Darius claimed that Smerdis was an imposter and thus vowed to overthrow him. With the help of Otanes and five others, Darius proved with a scheme that Smerdis was in fact an imposter because of a mark on his body and overthrew him. After the coup succeeded, the victors discussed what mode of government Persia should assume after this political upheaval. Possibilities such as oligarchy and democracy were discussed but ultimately they agreed with Darius that the empire should be ruled by a monarch. This story describes how the remaining six chose Darius as their king, for Otanes chose to drop out of the election and was honored by the Persians.
Herodotus claims that the six people vying for kingship agreed that they would determine the result by having everybody mount their horses in the morning and elect the person whose horse neighs first to be king. Darius wanted to scheme against the others and revealed his intention to his groom, Oibares, who suggested that he knew exactly what to do. In the first version of the story, Oibares tied a mare to the destined place on the previous night and had Darius’s stallion brush past it for a while. On the next day, Darius’s stallion was excited by the memory of the mare and neighed first, making Darius the king. In the other version, Oribares touched the genitals of the mare and let the stallion smell it in the morning, exciting it. The aroused stallion neighed, and the kingship was conferred to Darius. Herodotus also mentions that, when the stallion neighed, lightning also appeared out of the clear sky, making everybody believe that Darius was the chosen one, compelling them to kneel before him on the spot to pay tribute to him.
Although the story seems farfetched to a critical audience, Herodotus treated it seriously and adopted the same tone as his other stories. Herodotus spent a huge effort talking about how Darius succeeded in overthrowing Smerdis. Although we can not verify the details of his narrative on this event, corroborations from Persian sources can verify that at least Darius’s coup against Smerdis was real. Considering that this piece of history was not too far from Herodotus’s time and that Darius was so famous, it was probably true that Herodotu’s audience knew about it. The next part of the narrative, the debate on the government, seems a little spurious because the Persians, who have remained an empire and acquired much success, had little need to change their political structure. Nonetheless, the debate revealed crucial differences between democracy and autocracy, and Herodotus portrayed it with a serious tone. In contrast, the story regarding Darius’s ascension to the throne seems out of place, or at least unexpected, for, after all these serious discourses, Darius, the de facto ruler of the largest empire in the world, received authentication from a mere horseplay devised by a groom. Nonetheless, Herodotus assumed his realistic and empirical approach to explain this event, for he presented two possibilities of how the scheme was carried out, demonstrating his research in the matter as well as proving his credibility by asserting that Darius, immediately after the coronation, erected a stone slab commemorating the groom Oribares and the stallion, through whose collective effort, enabled him to inherit the throne.
The style of the story is prose but it might also incorporate a sense of humor, thus touching on the style of comedy. Herodotus used the contrast between a series of serious events and ended the discussion with an incredible story that does not befit the identity of a famous king. Although we can not explain earlier matters with later examples, the role of the smart servant who resolves the master’s issue in Roman comedy parallels the character Oribares in Herodotus’s narrative. However, Herodotus maintained his scholarly and serious style of narration by combining the story with divine intervention—lightning appearing out of the clear sky after the horse neighed. Although neither the horse story nor the lightning could be proved by any other source, Herodotus might have raised a question worth thinking about—divine approval, as signified by the lightning, ordained Darius to be king, and yet he chose to tamper with his fate by scheming with horses. This story can be viewed as the negative version of Croesus’s story, in which Croesus tries to prevent the death of his son Atys after knowing about the prophecy. Croesus tried to tamper with fate after knowing about it, and despite doing everything right, such as observing xenia, and remaining cautious, fulfilled the prophecy and lost his son to Adrastos the unescapable. In comparison, Darius tried to fulfill his fate without knowing that he had already been chosen, and engaged in this petty scheme, which does not seem very noble and befitting for a king in Herodotus’s narrative. Herodotus, while remaining serious and impartial, criticized Darius for his ignoble action and yet again asserted the irrevocability of fate.
