Bahman, on ascending the throne, announces his purpose of taking vengeance on the family of Rustam for the death of Asfandiyár. He marches against Zábulistán, takes Zál and Farámarz prisoners, pardons the former but executes the latter. He then returns home, marries his own daughter Humái, arranges the succession to the throne, and dies.

Originally Bahman appears to have had no connexion with the historical Artaxerxes Longimanus (B.C. 464-424), with whom he has been identified by various writers. Artaxerxes, however, was a familiar name in its Persian form in Sásánian times owing to the fact that another Artaxerxes had overthrown the Parthian, and founded a native Íránian, dynasty. The compilers of the Bástán-náma, who seem to have become acquainted through some Syriac writer, who drew his material from a Greek chronographer, with the first Artaxerxes, readily identified him with Bahman*

— the only traditional Íránian ruler available. Luhrásp and Gush-tásp on one side, and Dáráb and Dárá on the other, were alike out of the question, while Humái was a woman. Accordingly Bahman received the name and distinguishing title of the Ach??-menid, and became known as Ardshír—a form of Artaxerxes—and as Dirázdast—a translation of the Greek . The expres­sion “of the long hand” or “the long handed” is well illustrated by a passage in Tennyson's “Princess.”

“But my good father thought a king a king;
He cared not for the affection of the house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands
Reach'd out, and picked offenders from the mass
For judgment.”

In time, as so often happens, the metaphor was taken literally, and we find Firdausí saying of Bahman:—

“And with his fingers dressed beside his legs
His fists extended lower than his knees.”*

How Artaxerxes obtained his title expressive of far-reaching power does not seem to be known. He may have assumed it himself, or received it from his subjects or from the Greeks. The earliest mention of it is by the Greek writer Dinon, or Deinon,*

in the days of Alexander the Great. The view which identifies Bahman with Artaxerxes Longimanus has been supplemented by the further identification of Artabanus with Rustam and Xerxes with Asfandiyár.*

If this is accepted we may trace in the con­tention of Rustam with Asfandiyár, the former's patronage of Bahman, Bahman's accession to the throne and his subsequent vengeance on the race of Zál, a poetical version of the palace conspiracy whereby Artabanus, the captain of the guard, leagued with Artaxerxes, slew the latter's father Xerxes, and placed Artaxerxes on the throne only to be destroyed himself shortly afterward with all his house by the Sháh whom he had set up. If, however, the view expressed at the beginning of this note is correct, and it is substantially Professor Nöldeke's, that the title of the Long-handed was derived through the Syriac from Greek sources and bestowed on a wholly mythical personality, we may conclude that other events of the reign of the Long-handed were borrowed from the same foreign source and reflected back in the like manner, in which case of course the above identifications are historically valueless. In the translation we always speak of Bahman, not Ardshír.

§ 5. We have here one of the fictitious genealogies by which it was striven to connect the Sásánían with the Kaiánian dynasty. Another will be found in the next volume in the portion dealing with the Ashkánian dynasty.*