Herodotus's Argumentative Essay

In truth, what was at stake was not really the monarchic principle; what was at stake, and what the debate must have dealt with, was a dynastic problem. In the absence of a direct heir, who should be chosen? This was the only real question. Otanes took himself out of the competition, and the other six nobles decided to let fate make the decision: “They proposed to mount their horses on the outskirts of the city, and he whose horse neighed first after the sun was up should have the throne.” Then Herodotus gives the details of the ruse concocted by Oebares, Darius’s groom, that led his master to be recognized as king. His companions thereafter had no choice but to recognize the supremacy of Darius, which could only be based on intrinsically superior

The first thing Darius had to do, once he became king, was to amend his kingly site and to take out opposition among the other Persian royalty and nobility. According to Muhammad Abdoulkadyrovitch Dandamaev, the majority of scholars, at least until recently, were of the opinion that the information contained in the Behistun inscription of the Achaemenid king Darius I attest to the fact that the ancestors of Cyrus II, the founder of the empire, did not rule in Persis. About Darius, the text reports: “[...]my father is Vishtaspa; the father of Vishtaspa is Arshama; the father of Arshama was Ariaramna; the father of Ariaramna was Chishpish; the father of Chishpish was Achaemenes[….]Therefore we are called Achaemenids. From of old we are noble; from of old our lineage has been one of kings [….] Eight men from our lineage were kings before. I am the ninth. We, the nine men, have been kings Duvitaparanam.” Herodotus does

A trilingual (of Elamite, Old Persian and Babylonian calligraphy) inscription was cut into the rock of Behistun. It started as a brief autobiography that included the king’s lineage and ancestry. Darius wrote a sequence of events of what happened after the death of Cyrus the Great. But the text had to be written in cuneiform, the most common writing of the ancient Near East. Darius was not pleased with this because it went against his “patriotic feelings”, and he therefore ordered the invention of a new language, Aramatic. The design of the Behistun monument was still being carried out when new accomplishments made it necessary to expand the text. In 519 B.C.E, the Behistun inscription was “completely finished” as stated by Robert