Darius the Great, 522-486 BCE

So remember that dude Smerdis? The fake one? We call him in the exam Pseudo-Smerdis. Remember that.

According to Herodotus,

He ruled Persia for a good few months. Then this dude named Otanes got kinda suspicious of Smerdis and asked his duaghter, smerdis' wife, Phaidymie to sleep with Smerdis then check if he had ears. It turns out that he did not in fact have ears.

The thing about this is is that Otanes knew that the Magus Smerdis had his ears chopped off a couple years back for a crime. So he got 6 other Persian Nobles to OVERTHROW THE FALSE SMERDIS!! they all had really long names that sound like they were made up:

- Intaphernes

- Gobyras

- Megabyzus

- Aspathines

- Hydarnes

- Darius (what, King Darius I the great? mAyBe)

Remember Prexaspes? (WHAT YOU DON'T? go read my notes of Cambyses the MAD). The Magi wanted him to tell everybody that Pseudo-Smerdis was the real Smerdis but he had a conscience, apparently (I MEAN HE KILLED THE REAL SMERDIS WAS WAS OK WITH IT), and told the WORLD the TRUTH!!! then he threw himself off a wall or smn and died.

The 7 Persian Noble Dudes killed the 2 magi and lopped off their heads. Then they couldn't decide who should be king! so they all rode on their horses and the first horse to neigh AFTER the sun came up would become king. Darius cheated, apparently (the carrot and the horse emoji have never looked to dangerous...) and became king!!!!!!!!!!!

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According to the Behitsun Inscription:

literally the same stuff happened but pseudo-smerdis was named gautama and smerdis was named bardiya.

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DARIUS IS KING! 

sooo...

-lots of rebellions that Darius crushes

-  he presents himself as the heir to cyrus (which is almost definitely a lie) 

- he's VERY zoastrian. in 1 text Ahuramazda is mentioned 63 times and ONCE he says "and the other gods who exist"

SATRAPIES ARE the 20 provinces of the Persian Empire.

A SATRAP is the provincial governor of a satrapy, appointed by Darius. They were spies, eyes and ears to the empire and helpful as they quashed rebellions b4 they even…