Temper and self-control in the Persian King’s ideal Portrait.

This article analyses the royal profile as presented in the Old Persian inscription DNb (and related versions in Elamite and Akkadian). The royal image, in fact, is there shaped according to a series of patterns, whose target was the determination of a self-portrait of the perfect king: not only “right” in front of the law (and God), but tempered and given with a remarkable self-control. The direct comparison with a similar replica (although with some differences) attributed to Xerxes is one of the main subjects of this study. The presence of two versions belonging to two different kings shows that it is unclear whether the earlier text was really ordered by Darius I himself before his own death, or if it was composed only under his son Xerxes. A number of qualities of the king connected with the ideal image of the royal "temperantia" and self-control are strongly emphasized in this document and they find some resonances in the Greek sources discribing the education of the Persian princes. Furthermore, these portraits of the king follow at the same time different patterns, some of Indo-Iranian origin, some belonging to the scribal Mesopotamian tradition. In any case, it is difficult to presume that these documents were composed by the king himself, as sometimes has been assumed in past times, because a strong professional competence, based on a special compositional training, was necessary for their redaction.