Some Greeks shake their heads at what I am about to tell.

They will not believe that a Persian nobleman, fresh from cutting his way into the palace, stood up and proposed that Persia should have no more kings, and that power should go to the people.

But it was said. I set it down, and I set down everything that followed, so that the doubters can compare for themselves.

I. The fifth day

After the Magi were killed, the city was in turmoil for some days.

On the fifth day the uproar died down. The seven men who had made the rising sat together to deliberate on the whole state of affairs.

The previous story told how they forced their way into the dark chamber and ran out of the palace carrying two heads. Now the heads had fallen and the festival had its name, but the throne was empty.

Cyrus' sons were both dead. Cambyses had left no children. The man who had sat on the throne for seven months had died at their own hands.

What the seven held was more than a victory. It was a question no one had ever asked: who should rule Persia?

II. Otanes: no more masters

Otanes spoke first.

He was the one who had first grown suspicious and sent his daughter Phaedymia to feel for the sleeping man's ears, and the one who had first drawn trusted men into the plot.

It seems to me, he said, that there can no longer be a single sovereign over us; that is neither pleasant nor good.

"You saw how far the insolence of Cambyses went, and you have had your share of the insolence of the Magus."

How can monarchy be a fit thing, he asked, when the ruler can do what he likes and answer to no one? Give that power to the best man on earth and it would carry him beyond his ordinary thoughts. The good things at hand breed insolence, and envy is rooted in men from birth. With both, a man has every vice.

A ruler who has everything ought to envy no one. Yet he envies the best men for thriving and living, delights in the worst, and listens most readily to slander. Admire him modestly and he is angry that you are not attentive enough; be very attentive and he is angry that you flatter.

"I have worse to say than that," said Otanes. "He overturns ancestral ways, he rapes women, he kills without trial."

Then he made the proposal the Greeks refuse to believe.

The rule of the many has, first, the fairest of names: equality. Second, it does none of the things a monarch does. It fills offices by lot, holds power to account, and brings all deliberation into the open.

"So my opinion is that we do away with monarchy and raise up the many. Everything is in the many."

III. Megabyzus: give it to the best few

Megabyzus spoke second.

Everything Otanes said against one-man rule, he said, I accept. But when he tells you to hand power to the many, his judgment strays from the best.

"Nothing is more foolish or more violent than a useless mob."

Men who flee the insolence of a tyrant only to fall under the insolence of an unbridled people: that is not to be borne. Whatever a tyrant does, he at least does knowingly. The people cannot know. They have never learned, and never seen for themselves, what is best; they rush headlong and drive blindly on, like a river in flood.

"Let those who wish Persia ill have democracy. We should choose a group of the best men and give them the power. We ourselves will be among them, and the best men are likely to give the best counsel."

Notice the end of that sentence. The best men he had in mind included himself.

IV. Darius: who gave us our freedom?

Darius was the third.

He was the last of the seven to join. His father Hystaspes was only a subordinate governor in Persia; the other six had already sworn together when Darius arrived at Susa, and they decided to take him in.

Yet it was the latecomer who said the words that decided the matter.

Megabyzus, he said, spoke well about democracy, but not about oligarchy. Set the three side by side, each at its best, the best democracy, the best oligarchy and the best monarchy, and monarchy is by far the most excellent.

Nothing could be better than the rule of the one best man. Using the best judgment, he will govern the many faultlessly, and best keep secret the plans made against enemies.

And oligarchy? Many men eager to serve the state, each wanting to be first and to see his own view prevail, end up in bitter hatred of one another. Hatred brings faction, faction brings killing, and from killing it all comes back to one-man rule.

And democracy? When the people rule, wickedness is bound to arise. The wicked do not fall out among themselves; they form close alliances to harm the state together. So it goes until one man of the people rises to stop them. He becomes the people's idol, and the idol becomes their monarch.

Two roads, and both circle back to the same place.

Then Darius gave his last and sharpest line:

"To sum it up in one word: where did our freedom come from, and who gave it? The people, an oligarchy, or a single ruler?"

He named no one. But the first book of this history has already told it: the Persians threw off the Medes because of Cyrus.

"So I hold that we, who were set free by one man, should keep that kind of rule. Besides, we should not change our good ancestral ways. That would not be better."

Otanes had accused monarchs of overturning ancestral ways. Darius turned ancestral ways into the reason to keep a monarch.

V. Four votes

The seven chose among the three proposals. Four of them chose the last.

Otanes had lost.

He stood and spoke to them all. Comrades, he said, it is plain that one of us must be king, whether by lot, by the choice of the Persians, or some other way. I will not compete with you.

"I want neither to rule nor to be ruled."

He gave up his claim on one condition: that neither he nor any of his descendants should be subject to any one of them.

The six agreed. Otanes stood aside from the contest.

As I write, his house is still the only free house in all Persia. It obeys only as far as it wishes, so long as it breaks no Persian law.

The remaining six then agreed that if the kingship went to anyone else, Otanes and his descendants should receive every year a Median robe and every other gift the Persians value most, because he had first planned the deed and gathered the conspirators. For all seven they made two rules: any of them could enter the palace unannounced, unless the king was sleeping with a woman; and the king could take wives only from the households of the seven.

As for who would be king, the last story has told it: whoever's horse neighed first at sunrise. Darius' groom had seen to it the night before.

A debate about equality was settled by a horse.

VI. The door without an usher

The rules the seven made were soon put to the test.

Not long after the rising, Intaphrenes, one of the seven, wanted to go in and speak with the king. By the rule, he needed no announcement.

The gatekeeper and the messenger stopped him. The king, they said, was with one of his wives.

Intaphrenes decided they were lying. He drew his blade, cut off their noses and ears, strung them on his horse's bridle, hung it around their necks and sent them away.

The two men went before the king and told him why they had been treated so.

Darius' first fear was that the six had planned this together. He sent for each of the others and asked whether they approved of what had been done. Only when he was sure they had no part in it did he act. He seized Intaphrenes with his sons and all his household, strongly suspecting that the man was plotting rebellion with his kinsmen, and held them for execution.

What came next is one of the most unforgettable things I have heard.

Intaphrenes' wife began to come to the palace gates, weeping and lamenting. She kept on until Darius took pity on her. He sent a messenger: "Woman, King Darius grants you the life of one of your imprisoned kin, whichever you choose."

She thought, and answered: "If the king gives me one life, of them all I choose my brother."

Darius was astonished and sent again to ask: why abandon your husband and your children to save your brother, who is less near to you than your children and less dear than your husband?

"O King," she said, "if the god wills, I may have another husband, and other children if I lose these. But my father and mother are no longer living, and I can never have another brother."

Darius thought she had answered well. For her sake he released the brother she had asked for, and her eldest son as well. All the rest he put to death.

So, very soon, one of the seven perished.

Later, on the cliff at Behistun, Darius carved the names of the six men who had helped him kill the Magus. The first name on the list is Intaphrenes. Directly after the list he wrote: "You who may be king hereafter, protect the family of these men."

The man who carved that line was the man who had put Intaphrenes' family to death.

VII. The merchant

There was a king. Next came the state.

Once he had settled affairs in Persia, Darius divided his dominions into twenty provinces, which the Persians call satrapies. He appointed governors and fixed a yearly tribute for each people, grouping neighbors together and assigning more distant peoples, past their neighbors, to different provinces. Silver was reckoned by the Babylonian talent, gold by the Euboic.

Under Cyrus and Cambyses there had been no fixed tribute; the peoples brought gifts.

Because of the tribute and other ordinances like it, the Persians gave their three kings three names: Cyrus was the father, Cambyses the master, Darius the merchant.

Darius, they said, made a small profit out of everything; Cambyses was harsh and arrogant; Cyrus was merciful and always worked for their good.

Otanes had feared a monarch who could do as he liked and answer to no one. Yet the name Darius left in Persian memory was not tyrant but merchant. He turned all of Asia into a ledger.

I have heard one more thing. There is a plain in Asia ringed by mountains, where a great river comes in through the hills and splits into five streams, which once watered the lands of five peoples. Since the Persians took power, the king has blocked the five passes with gates. In summer, when those peoples need water for their millet and sesame, they come with their wives to Persia and cry out before the king's palace door. The king orders the gate opened first for those in greatest need, closes it when their land has drunk its fill, then opens another. I am told that he takes a great deal of money for opening the gates, over and above the tribute.

This I know only by hearsay, and the land may not be as described. But the Persians did not call him the merchant for nothing.

VIII. Otanes' army

What became of the man who wanted neither to rule nor to be ruled?

After Darius became king, Syloson of Samos came to him. Years before, in the market at Memphis in Egypt, he had given his red cloak free to Darius, then only one of Cambyses' guards. Now he asked for no gold or silver, only that Darius give him back his country, Samos, "without killing or enslaving."

Darius sent an army and put Otanes, one of the seven, in command, telling him to do whatever Syloson asked.

Then the Persians, believing a settlement had been reached with the city, were caught off guard when the garrison threw open the acropolis gates and attacked, killing the Persians of highest rank, the men carried in litters. Seeing how heavy the loss was, Otanes deliberately forgot Darius' parting command and ordered his army to kill everyone they took, men and boys alike, inside the temples and out.

The Persians swept Samos clear of people and handed Syloson an empty island. Later Otanes helped to resettle it, prompted by a dream and by a disease he contracted in his genitals.

The man who had accused monarchs of killing without trial, once he had an army of his own, broke the king's order and gave the order to kill.

I set the two side by side. I neither excuse him nor condemn him.

IX. Thirty years on

Remember the Greeks who shook their heads?

Thirty years later something happened that I record for their wonder.

That spring Mardonius son of Gobryas came down to the coast with a great army and fleet. Gobryas was one of the seven, and his daughter had been Darius' first wife before he became king; Mardonius, a young man, had just married Darius' daughter. The marriages between the seven houses and the throne went on into the next generation.

Mardonius sailed along the coast of Asia and came to Ionia. There he deposed all the Ionian tyrants and set up democracies in the cities.

Having done this, he hurried on to the Hellespont, and the army crossed into Europe, bound for Eretria and Athens.

Let those Greeks who do not believe that Otanes argued among the seven for democracy look at this: a Persian general setting up democracies in Greek cities with his own hand.

X. Epilogue

Late in Darius' reign his sons quarrelled over the succession.

Artobazanes, the eldest, was born to the daughter of Gobryas before Darius became king. Everywhere, he argued, the eldest son inherits.

Xerxes was the son of Atossa, Cyrus' daughter. His argument was that he was Cyrus' grandson, and it was Cyrus who had won the Persians their freedom.

"Who gave us our freedom?" The question Darius had put to the seven came back in his son's mouth.

The story goes that Demaratus, the deposed king of Sparta then in exile at Susa, gave Xerxes an argument: you were born when your father was already king, Artobazanes when he was still a subject. Darius judged the plea just and declared Xerxes king.

But in my opinion Xerxes would have been made king even without that advice, for Atossa held complete sway.

That was where the debate ended. Otanes had said that monarchs overturn ancestral ways; Darius had said ancestral ways must not change. In the end the throne went neither by age nor by argument, but by the weight of one woman at court.

Some Greeks still do not believe the three speeches. I do not insist.

I only remember this: seven men sat down and seriously asked who should rule Persia. Four votes to three, the answer was one man. And the man who said no won for himself and his descendants the one door in Persia that never had to bow.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Main narrative: Herodotus, Histories 3.80–89 (the constitutional debate, Otanes' withdrawal and privileges, the compact of the seven, the neighing horse, the tribute system and the names father, master and merchant); 3.117 (the plain with five gated passes, which Herodotus reports as hearsay); 3.118–119 (the death of Intaphrenes and his wife's choice); 3.139–141, 3.146–147 and 3.149 (Syloson's cloak, Otanes' expedition to Samos, the killing and the resettlement); 6.43 (Mardonius sets up democracies in Ionia, which Herodotus explicitly offers to Greeks who disbelieve Otanes' speech); 7.2–3 (the quarrel among Darius' sons, Demaratus' advice, Atossa's influence); Darius' arrival at Susa and the names of the seven from 3.70. Read in full in A. D. Godley's public-domain English translation (1920), from the Perseus Digital Library text (PerseusDL canonical-greekLit TEI file tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-eng2). The Greek was not consulted; the speeches are paraphrased and partly translated from the English, not rendered word for word.

2. Contemporary royal text: Darius' Behistun inscription, Old Persian column iv, lines 77–92, §68 (the list of helpers: Intaphrenes first, then Otanes, Gobryas, Hydarnes, Megabyzus, Ardumaniš) and §69 ("You who may be king hereafter, protect the family of these men"). Read in the English version on Livius, adapted from the early translation of L. W. King and R. C. Thompson: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/behistun-persian-text/behistun-t-41/ and https://www.livius.org/sources/content/behistun-persian-text/behistun-t-42/. The rock images and Old Persian grammar were not checked. Five names agree with Herodotus; the sixth differs (Ardumaniš in the inscription, Aspathines in the Histories).

3. Authenticity of the speeches: in 3.80 Herodotus says some Greeks find the speeches incredible "but there is no doubt that they were spoken," and in 6.43 he answers them with the case of Mardonius. Modern scholars widely see the marks of fifth-century Greek political thought in the speeches; how much came from Persian informants cannot be established. The story keeps Herodotus' position as the narrator's voice, without treating the speeches as minutes of a meeting or declaring them invented. "Democracies" is Herodotus' word for what Mardonius set up; their actual institutions are not examined here.

4. Dates: the debate took place on the fifth day after the killing of the Magi, within the change of kings of 522 BCE (consistent with story 024 of this series; Godley's marginal note at 3.88 gives 521 B.C., an older reckoning not followed here). Mardonius' voyage to Ionia is dated by Godley's note at 6.43 to spring 492 BCE; "thirty years later" is approximate. Herodotus says only that Intaphrenes died soon after the rising; the twenty provinces, the Samos expedition and the succession quarrel are given no year in the story.

5. Places: the rising of the seven centered on Susa (3.70). The Histories does not say where the debate was held; the map places it at ancient Susa (present-day Shush area, Iran), using UNESCO reference point 1455-001, which stands only for the ancient city: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1455/maps/. Ionia is a regional point using English Wikipedia's coordinates for "Ionia" (38.2 N, 27.5 E), standing for the Aegean coast of present-day Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionia. The plain of the five passes, Samos, the Memphis market and the Hellespont are not mapped.

6. History and narration: every speech and line of dialogue has a matching passage in the Histories; no weather, expressions, unsupported thoughts or new dialogue are added. Comments such as "Notice the end of that sentence," "Two roads, and both circle back," and "He turned all of Asia into a ledger" belong to the narrator. The contrast between Otanes' and Darius' words, and the pairing of Behistun §69 with the death of Intaphrenes' family, are an editorial reading of two checked sources; neither the Histories nor the inscription draws that comparison. Herodotus says the story of the five gated passes is hearsay, and the note in the Perseus English edition calls the description imaginative; the story says so.

7. Rights: the ancient work, Godley's 1920 translation and King and Thompson's 1907 translation of the inscription are in the public domain; the Chinese and English stories are original contemporary adaptations by Clio Walker. The Livius pages are used only for limited checking and attribution; no protected text is reproduced.