in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, ec. 285 
the author, but to the extreme clumsiness of the alphabetic writing of his scribes, 
which required considerable space for even the shortest sentence; so that much 
could not be told, unless all superfluous redundancy of expression were omitted. 
As to the difference between him and Herodotus in the selection of materials, it 
can be very naturally accounted for. Darius suppresses some particulars which, 
it may be readily conceived, he did not wish to make known to posterity, as, for 
instance, the groom’s artifice to which he was indebted for his election to the 
crown, and likewise his disastrous expedition into Scythia; others he fails to men- 
tion, most probably from their not having occurred till after the insculpture of 
the Behistun inscription, as his conquest of India, and the invasion of Greece ; 
while, on the other hand, numerous battles fought, and victories gained in 
crushing insurrections, are passed over without notice by the Greek historian, 
in consequence, it is likely, of his supposing that no value would be attached to 
any account of them by the generality of readers. And, in fact, however inter- 
esting the recovered portion of the history of Darius may at present be, from the 
manner in which it has been brought to light, after a concealment of considerably 
above two thousand years’ length, the detail of the achievements it records is not 
of the slightest use to us, farther than as it explains why he was distinguished by 
the characteristic denomination of the ‘coercer,’* and serves to display more fully 
the extraordinary talent and energy he possessed. But the power of his mind is 
by nothing proved so strongly as by his voluntary adoption of alphabetic writing,+ 
* The name ‘ Darius,’ like most of the ancient ones, is characteristic, signifying ‘ coercer,’ 
in the ancient language of the Persians, as we are informed by Herodotus (lib. vi. cap. 98); and 
his evidence on this point is strongly supported by the fact that there is still extant in both the 
Sahscrit and Zend, which are closely connected with the above language, a root with the mean- 
ing ‘to coerce,’ and having a near affinity in sound with the word in question. This fact is 
stated by M. Burnouf, as follows: ‘‘ En résumé Dariuch signifie réellement coercitor, comme le 
pensait Hérodote, parce que ce mot dérive d’une maniere naturelle du radical Sanscrit et Zend 
dhri (contenir).”’—Meémoire sur deux Inscriptions Cuneiformes, &c., p. 68. 
+ It has been taken for granted by some authors, rather too precipitately, that the use of cunei- 
form writing of the first kind was introduced by Cyrus, on account of the triple inscription to his 
memory found at Murghab, one part of which is in this writing. But Cyrus can hardly be sup- 
posed to have got his own epitaph written; and the building on which the several copies of it 
were inscribed, is proved, even by its ruins, to have been of so magnificent a description, that 
there could scarcely have been time for its erection after the death of this conqueror till the 
reign of Darius. 
