THE SCENE: When Babylon rebelled against the Persian Emperor Darius, he found himself unable to retake the city due to its legendary walls. Fortunately, one of his subordinates came up with a plan to re-take the city. A plan that involved self-mutilation and betrayal.
THE TEXT: When Darius heard of this, he collected all his forces and led them against Babylon, and he marched up to the town and laid siege to it; but the Babylonians thought nothing of the siege. They came up on to the ramparts of the wall and taunted Darius and his army with gesture and word.
[Zopyrus] came and inquired of Darius if taking Babylon were very important to him; and when he was assured that it was, he then cast about for a plan by which the city’s fall would be accomplished by him alone. He could think of no other way to bring the city down than to mutilate himself and then desert to the Babylonians; so, making light of it, he mutilated himself beyond repair, and after cutting off his nose and ears and cropping his hair as a disfigurement and scourging himself, he came before Darius.
The king reacted very violently to seeing a man so well-respected mutilated, and springing from the throne he uttered a cry and asked Zopyrus who it was who had mutilated him and why. “I myself did this, O King, because I felt it terribly that Assyrians were laughing at Persians.” Darius answered, “Unfeeling man, you give a pretty name to an ugly act if you say that it was on account of those besieged that you did for yourself past cure. Why, you poor fool, will the enemy surrender sooner because you mutilated yourself? “Had I told you,” said Zopyrus, “what I intended to do, you would not have let me; but now I have done it on my own. Now, then I shall desert to the city as I am, and I shall say to them that I suffered this at your hands; and I think that I shall persuade them, and thus gain a command.
Having given these instructions, he went to the gates, turning and looking back as though he were in fact a deserter. When the watch posted on the towers saw him, they ran down, and opening half the gate a little asked him who he was and why he came; he told them that he was Zopyrus and was deserting to them. When they heard this, the gatekeepers brought him before the general assembly of the Babylonians, where he made a pitiful sight, saying that he had suffered at the hands of Darius what he had suffered at his own because he had advised the king to lead his army away, since they could find no way to take the city. “Now,” he said in his speech to them, “I come as a great boon to you, men of Babylon, and as a great bane to Darius and to his army and to the Persians; for he shall not get away with having mutilated me so; and I know all the issues of his plans.” This was what he said.
When the Babylonians saw the most well-respected man in Persia without his nose and ears and all lurid with blood from the scourging, they were quite convinced that he was telling them the truth and came as their ally, and were ready to give him all that he asked; and he asked for a command. When Darius assaulted the whole circuit of the walls then Zopyrus’ treason was revealed. For while the townsmen were on the wall defending it against Darius’ assault, he opened the gates called Cissian and Belian, and let the Persians inside the walls. Thus Babylon was taken a second time, and when Darius was master of the Babylonians, he destroyed their walls and tore away all their gates, neither of which Cyrus had done at the first taking of Babylon; moreover he impaled about three thousand men that were prominent among them; as for the rest, he gave them back their city to live in.
There never was in Darius’ judgment any Persian before or after who did better service than Zopyrus. Many times Darius is said to have declared that he would rather Zopyrus were free of disfigurement than have twenty Babylons on top of the one he had.
– The Histories, Herodotus, 5th Century BC
