Four4Him

I (finally) got out the Annals of the World and borrowed The Histories by Herodotus from the library....and have been doing some research about historical events surrounding the story of Esther. And I've found some pretty interesting things:

The Magi, a group of Zoroastrian priests and Persian aristocrats, ruled Persia after the death of Cambysis, son of Cyrus the Great...you know, the king who allowed the Jews to return to thier homeland.
The Magi installed Smerdis (Artaxerxes in the Bible) as king, the supposed brother of Cambysis, but who actually turned out to be an imposter who was set up by the Magi. This was concealed with great care, but it eventually leaked out by a concubine of Artaxerxes whose father was a high-ranking Persian named Ostanes. Ostanes got together 7 other ruler dudes and decided to dethrone Smerdis and his cohorts, which they did. Among those high ranking ruler dudes was.... our favorite Ahasuarus! Or Darius, as Herodotus calls him in The Histories.

His father, Hystaspes, happened to be the governor of Susa at the time. I found it interesting that Ahasuarus became king during his father's lifetime....I don't dare speculate, but I wonder how old his father was? Life expectancy at the time was about 55 once you got out of the dangerous infant and childhood years. And if his father was in his fifties, then Ahasuarus must have been somewhere between 25 and 35 when he became king. And how exactly did he become king? Well, he was a pretty bad dude:

Our ruler dudes decided that they better choose one of themselves to be king, and to do that, they all rode out on thier horses before dawn, and the rider of the horse who neighed first when the sun came up was to become king. Well, guess whose horse neighed first?? Ahasuarus, of course! So he became king....and killed off the rest of his co-rulers fairly soon after. Herodotus says that he invited the rest of his buddies into an upper room, then had his servants cut down the supports. However, the footnotes in the Histories says that story is not historically dependable. But we know that they were killed somehow. So Ahasuarus reigned alone for 3 years, and gave his 6-month banquet....and we all know the rest of the story.

I also found out something interesting about Vashti: Ahasuarus was her 3rd husband. Scary.

~Kirsten