page_title: Bardiya
section_title: Revisionist view
hierarchical_section_title: Bardiya / Revisionist view
caption_attribution_description: English: Smerdis, pretender to the Persian throne. Colored woodcut from a 1480 edition of the Polychronicon by Ranulf Higden, made by William Caxton.
context_page_description: Bardiya, also known as Smerdis among the Greeks, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BC, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumāta, until he was toppled by Darius the Great.
context_section_description: The evaluation of the sources has been cause for much disagreement in modern scholarship. While there is agreement that Darius seized the throne through a coup d'état, some historians consider that the person who ruled for a few months was the real son of Cyrus, and that the story of his impersonation by a magus was an invention of Darius to justify his seizure of the throne.
  The key argument against a fabrication is that there is no evidence for it, and lacking further discoveries that view "must remain hypothetical". However the idea that Gaumata was a fabrication is nonetheless appealing because "it was vital for a man like Darius, who had no particular rights to the throne, to invent a character (Gaumāta) condemned for his acts against gods and men." There are some implausibilities in the official story, e.g. the impostor resembled the real Bardiya so closely that most of his wives did not spot the difference, except for queen Phaidyme.  Darius often accused rebels and opponents of being impostors (such as Nebuchadnezzar III) and it could be straining credulity to say that they all were.
caption: Medieval image of Bardiya.
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