stasteful to the neighboring
Samaritans, who strained every nerve to prevent its being brought to a
successful issue, and as each new king mounted the Persian throne,
made a fresh effort to have the work stopped by authority. Their
representations had had no effect upon Cambyses; but when they were
repeated on the accession of the Pseudo-Smerdis, the result was
different. An edict was at once sent down to Palestine, reversing the
decree of Cyrus, and authorizing the inhabitants of Samaria to interfere
forcibly in the matter, and compel the Jews to desist from building.
Armed with this decree, the Samaritan authorities hastened to Jerusalem,
and "made the Jews to cease by force and power."

These revelations of a leaning towards a creed diverse from that of the
Achaemenian princes, combined with the system of seclusion adopted in
the palace--a system not limited to the seraglio, but extending also
to the person of the monarch, who neither quitted the palace precincts
himself, nor allowed any of the Persian nobles to enter them--must have
turned the suspicions previously existing into a general belief and
conviction that the monarch seated on the throne was not Smerdis the son
of Cyrus, but an impostor. Yet still there was for a while no outbreak.
It mattered nothing to the provincials who ruled them, provided that
order was maintained, and that the boons granted them at the opening of
the new reign were not revoked or modified. Their wishes were no doubt
in favor of the prince who had remitted their burthens; and in Media a
peculiar sympathy would exist towards one who had exalted Magism. Such
discontent as was felt would be confined to Persia, or to Persia and a
few provinces of the north-east, where the Zoroastrian faith may have
maintained itself.

At last, among the chief Persians, rumors began to arise. These were
sternly repressed at the outset, and a reign of terror was established,
during which men remained silent through fear. But at length some of
the principal nobles, convinced of the imposture, held secret council
together, and discussed the measures proper to be adopted under the
circumstances. Nothing, however, was done until the arrival at the
capital of a personage felt by all to be the proper leader of the nation
in the existing crisis. This was Darius, the son of Hystaspes, a
prince of the blood royal who probably stood in the direct line of the
succession, failing the issue of Cyrus. At the early age