fled into another apartment and tried to bar the door, but was followed
too soon by Darius and Gobryas; the latter seized, threw him, and kept
him down by the weight of his own body, crying to Darius, who was afraid
of making a false stroke in the half-light, and so wounding his companion
instead of Gaumata, "Strike boldly, even if you should stab us both."
Darius obeyed, and fortunately only hit the Magian.

Thus died Oropastes, the high-priest, and his brother Gaumata, better
known under the name of the "pseudo" or "pretended Smerdis."

A few weeks after Darius' election to the throne, which the people said
had been marvellously influenced by divine miracles and the clever
cunning of a groom, he celebrated his coronation brilliantly at
Pasargadae, and with still more splendor, his marriage with his beloved
Atossa. The trials of her life had ripened her character, and she proved
a faithful, beloved and respected companion to her husband through the
whole of that active and glorious life, which, as Prexaspes had foretold,
made him worthy of the names by which he was afterwards known--Darius the
Great, and a second Cyrus.

[Atossa is constantly mentioned as the favorite wife of Darius, and
be appointed her son Xerxes to be his successor, though he had three
elder sons by the daughter of Gobryas. Herodotus (VII. 3.) speaks
with emphasis of the respect and consideration in which Atossa was
held, and Aeschylus, in his Persians, mentions her in her old age,
as the much-revered and noble matron.]

As a general he was circumspect and brave, and at the same time
understood so thoroughly how to divide his enormous realm, and to
administer its affairs, that he must be classed with the greatest