DARIUS (r,1+11, A aplios, Darayawush, Persian cuneiform inscriptions) appears to be originally an appellative, meaning `king,"ruler ' (Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient., s. v. Dara. ; Herodot. vi. 93, renders it by e0eins, coercer '). It was assumed as throne-name by Ochus (= D. Nothus), son and successor of Artaxerxes Longimanus (Ctesias de Reb. Pers. 48. 57, Muller), in like manner as Arsaces, successor of this Darius (iba 53, 57) and Bessus (Curt. vi. 6) both took the royal name A rtaxer xes.' The biblical persons so named are r. Darius, son of Ahasuerus' (' Hhashwerosh Ifeb. ZepEns, Khshyarsha cuneif., not as some suppose = Ktg4cipis, which is Uwakshatra, cuneif. See M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs u. Babel:, p. 36, 44), 'of the seed of the Medes who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldean,' Dan. ix. I. This Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being 62 years old,' ib. v. 3r ; the first year (only) of his reign is mentioned, ix. 1, xi. 1, and the statement, vi. 28, that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian,' seems to represent him as immediate predecessor of Cyrus. No Darius occupying this place, nor indeed any Darius anterior to the son of Hystaspes, is found either in profane history, or (hitherto) on monu ments. Only, the Scholiast on Aristoph. Eccl. 602, followed by Suidas, s. v. GlapetK6s, and Harpocrat, says that the daric took its name from another Darius, earlier than the father of Xerxes (D. Hys taspis).'* Herodotus and Ctesias, differing widely in other respects, agree in making Astyages last king of the Median dynasty, with no male heir, conquered and deposed by Cyrus, first king of the Medo-Persian dynasty at Babylon. Xenophon, however, in the Cyropcedia (i. 5, 2) introduces, as son and successor of Astyages, and uncle (mother's brother) of Cyrus, a second Cyaxares, acting under whose orders Cyrus takes Babylon, and receives in marriage his daughter, unnamed, with Media as her portion. Josephus Antiq. x. rr. 1, clearly means the Cyaxares II. of Xenophon, when he says that Darius was the son of Astyages, but known to the Greeks by a different name ;' and the statement of Aben Esra, who reports from a book of the kings of Persia' that this Darius was Cyrus's father-in-law, probably rests at last on the supposed authority of Xenophon. But the Cyro. pmdia, a pmdagogic romance, is at best a precari ous source of history, where unsupported or plainly contradicted by Herodotus, Ctesias, and Berosus.
The question, who was Darius the Mede?' is inseparable from that which relates to Belshazzar, who seems to be represented in the narrative (ch. v.) as son of Nebuchadnezzar, and last Chaldman king in Babylon, but does not appear under that name in the accounts of the Greeks and native historians. [BEL5HAzzA2.] The recent discovery of the name Bel-sar-assur, as son and supposed co regent of Nabunita (Rawlinson and Oppert), seems to explain the name Belshazzar, till then known only from the narrative of Daniel. But sup posing all other difficulties solved, still Darius the Mede' as king in Babylon remains to be accounted for, and, except in the romance of Xenophon, we know of no Median king later than Astyages, and his reign ended 20 or 21 years before the taking of Babylon by Cyrus. On the other hand, a taking of Babylon by a Darius is known to history, but he is Darius Hystaspes, a Persian not a Mede (Herodot. i. 209, vii. II), and a division of the kingdom into satrapies is also on record as the act of the same king (Herodot. iii. 89, ff., where the number is 20, not 120 as in Dan. vi. 2). As was mentioned in the art. CHRONOLOGY, 17, there are writers who identify 'Darius the Mede son of Ahasuerus' with Darius son of Hystaspes the Persian, and make this a cardinal point in schemes involving sweeping reforms of the chronology. Others briefly dispose of all difficulties by rejecting the book of Daniel from the category of authentic history, alleging that it is the product of a later age (the times of the Maccabees) : viz., that though intended as a narrative of facts, it is based only on vague traditions, and the confused accounts of Babylonian and Persian history which were current in those times ; or, that put forth with no deceptive purpose, and not claiming to be history, it freely uses historic names and popular traditions only as a vehicle of the higher religious truths by which the author wished to encourage the men of his generation (Duncicer Gesch. des Alterthunzs, 609; Hitzig, kgf ex. Hdbuch, des B. Daniel ; Bunsen, in his Bibel-werk; Riietschi, art. Nebuchad nezzar in Herzog's Rad-Encialopadie. Those who are not prepared either to revolutionize our received chronology, or to deny the historical character of the book of Daniel, will have recourse to other com binations framed for the purpose of meeting the difficulties. Two such schemes may be noticed.