seventy years of the Exile were completed in the first year of the reign of Cyrus (2Ch 36:22.; Ezr 1:1), it follows that Cyrus became king two years after the overthrow of Babylon, and thus after Darius had reigned two years. See at Dan 9:1-2.
From the shortness of the reign of Darius, united with the circumstance that Cyrus destroyed Babylon and put an end to the Chaldean kingdom, it is easy to explain how the brief and not very independent reign of Darius might be quite passed by, not only by Herodotus and Ctesias, and all later Greek historians, but also by Berosus. Although Cyrus only as commander-in-chief of the army of Cyaxares had with a Medo-Persian host taken Babylon, yet the tradition might speak of the conquering Persian as the lord of the Chaldean kingdom, without taking at all into account the Median chief king, whom in a brief time Cyrus the conqueror succeeded on the throne. In the later tradition of the Persians,[1] from which all the historians known to us, with the exception of Berosus, have constructed their narrative, the Median rule over the Chaldean kingdom naturally sinks down into an insignificant place in relation to the independent government of the conqueror Cyrus and his people which was so soon to follow. The absence of all notice by Berosus, Herod., and Ctesias of the short Median reign can furnish no substantial ground for calling in question the statements of Xen. regarding Cyaxares, and of Daniel regarding the Median Darius, although all other witnesses for this were altogether of no force, which is indeed asserted, but has been proved by no one.[2]
- ↑ “In the Babylonian tradition,” Kranichfeld well remarks, “the memorable catastrophe of the overthrow of Babylon would, at all events, be joined to the warlike operations of Cyrus the conquering Persian, who, according to Xenoph., conducted himself in Babylon as a king (cf. Cyrop. vii. 5. 37), and it might be very indifferent to the question for whom he specially undertook the siege. The Persian tradition had in the national interest a reason for ignoring altogether the brief Median feudal sovereignty over Babylon, which, besides, was only brought about by the successful war of a Persian prince.”
- ↑ Of these witnesses the notice by Abydenus (Chron. Armen., Euseb.) already mentioned, p. 164, bears in its aphoristic brevity, “Darius the king removed him out of the land,” altogether the stamp of an historical tradition, and can be understood only of Darius the Mede, since Eusebius has joined it to the report regarding the dethroning of the last Babylonian king by Cyrus. Also, the often-quoted lines of Aeschylus, Pers. 762-765, are in the simplest manner explained historically if by the work which the first Mede began and the second completed, and which yet brought all the glory to the third, viz., Cyrus, is understood the taking of Babylon; according to which Astyages is the first, Cyaxares II the second, and Cyrus the third, and Aeschylus agrees with Xenophon. Other interpretations, e.g., of Phraortes and Cyaxares I, agree with no single report. Finally, the Darics also give evidence for Darius the Mede, since of all explanations of the name of this gold coin (the Daric) its derivation from a king Darius is the most probable; and so also do the statements of the rhetorician Harpocration, the scholiast to Aristophanis Ecclesiaz. 589, and of Suidas, that the Δαρεικοί did not derive their name, as most suppose, from Darius the father of Xerxes, but from another and an older king (Darius), according to the declaration of Herodot. iv. 166, that Darius first struck this coin, which is not outweighed by his scanty knowledge of the more ancient history of the Medes and Persians.
