ORCETES, SATRAP OF LYDIA. 227 ascendent condition, though not without the necessity of sup- pressing by forco a rebellion of the Medes. 1 1 Herodot. i, 130. 'Aorua/T/f fj.sv vvv ffaatfavaaf TT' irsa nsvre Kal rpiq- Kovra, oDru rf/f upx?i K.aTEKav$7]. Mr/6oi 6s VKEKVipav Ht-pcrr/at fiiu r?)v ro?>- TOV mKpoTTjTa ...... 'TaTp<f> [J.EVTOI xpbvu fj.eT[j.ehriG re cQi ravra K KO.L inreaTTjaav UTTO Aapeiov uTtoaruvTef 6e, biriau Ka.TEGTpu<t>$r]aav, viKT)-&evTef rare 6s, m 'Aort'ayeof, ol Hfpaai re Kal 6 Kvpoc ixavacTuvTet rolai M^Joitrt, i/pxov TC) anb TOVTOV TTJ<; 'Aairjf. This passage asserting that the Medcs, some time after the deposition of Astyages and the acquisition of Persian supremacy by Cyrus, repented of having suffered their discontent against Astyages to place this suprem- acy in the hands of the Persians, revolted from Darius, and were recon- quered after a contest appears to me to have been misunderstood by chronologists. Dodwell, Larcher, and Mr. Fynes Clinton (indeed, most, if not all, of the chronologists) explain it as alluding to a revolt of the Medes against the Persian king Darius Nothus, mentioned in the Ilellenica of Xenophon i, 2, 12), and belonging to the year 408 B.C. See Larcher ad Herodot. i, 130, and his Vie d'Herodote, prefixed to his translation (p. Ixxxix) ; also Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 408 and 455, and his Appendix, c, 18, p. 316. The revolt of the Medes alluded to by Herodotus is, in my judgment, completely distinct from the revolt mentioned by Xenophon : to identify the two, as these eminent chronologists do, is an hypothesis not only having nothing to recommend it, but open to grave objection. The revolt men- tioned by Herodotus was against Darius son of Hystaspes, not against Darius Nothus : and I have set forth with peculiar care the circumstances connected with the conspiracy and accession of the former, for the purpose of showing that they all decidedly imply that conflict between Median anu Persian supremacy, which Herodotus directly announces in the passage novs before us. 1. When Herodotus speaks of Darius, without any adjective designation why should we imagine that he means any other than Darius the son of Hystaspes, on whom he dwells so copiously in his narrative ? Once only in the course of his history (ix, 108) another Darius (the young prince, son of Xerxes the First) is mentioned ; but with this exception, Darius son o' Hystaspes is uniformly, throughout the work, spoken of under his simple name : Darius Nothus is never alluded to at all. 2. The deposition of Astyage's took place in 559 B.C. ; the beginning of the reign of Darius occurred in 520 B.C. ; now repentance on the part of the Medes, for what they had done at the former of those two epochs, might naturally prompt them to try to repair it in the latter. But between the deposition of Astyage's in 559 B.C., and the revolt mentioned by Xenophon against Darius Nothus in 408 B.C., the interval is more than one hundred and fifty years. To ascribe a revolt which took place in 408 B.C., to repent
