Bardiya in the context of "Cadusii"

Darius I (Old Persian: 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 Dārayavaʰuš; c. 550 – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West Asia, parts of the Balkans (Thrace–Macedonia and Paeonia) and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.

Darius ascended the throne after overthrowing the Achaemenid monarch Bardiya (or Smerdis), who he claimed was in fact an imposter named Gaumata. The new king met with rebellions throughout the empire but quelled each of them; a major event of Darius's career described in Greek historiography was his punitive expedition against Athens and Eretria for their participation in the Ionian Revolt.

Cambyses II was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning 530 to 522 BCE. He was the son of and successor to Cyrus the Great (r. 550 – 530 BC); his mother was Cassandane. His relatively brief reign was marked by his conquests in North Africa, notably Egypt, which he took by defeating pharaoh Psamtik III (r. 526–525 BC) at the battle of Pelusium in 525 BC. After his victory in Egypt, he expanded the empire's holdings in Africa by taking Cyrenaica, the coastal region of eastern Libya. In the spring of 522 BC, Cambyses had to leave Egypt hastily to put down a revolt in Persia.

En route in Syria (Eber-Nari), Cambyses somehow received a thigh wound; it soon became gangreneous. Cambyses died three weeks later in Agbatana, likely the modern city of Hama. He died childless, and was thus succeeded by his younger brother Bardiya. Bardiya ruled for a short time, and was then overthrown by Darius the Great (r. 522–486 BC), who went on to increase the power of the Achaemenids even further.

Hydarnes (Old Persian: 𐎻𐎡𐎭𐎼𐎴, romanized: Vidṛna), also known as Idernes, was a Persian nobleman, who was active during the reign of Darius II (r. 423 – 404 BC). He was a descendant (perhaps grandson) of Hydarnes the Younger, who was himself the son of Hydarnes, one of the seven Persian conspirators who overthrew the Pseudo-Smerdis. He was the father of several children through his principal consort. His offspring included Tissaphernes, Terituchmes, Stateira, Rhoxane, and two further daughters.

Hydarnes (Old Persian: 𐎻𐎡𐎭𐎼𐎴, romanized: Vidṛna), also known as Hydarnes the Elder, was a Persian nobleman, who was one of the seven conspirators who overthrew the Pseudo-Smerdis. His name is the Greek transliteration of the Old Persian name Vidṛna, which may have meant "he who knows the guilt/wrong".

He was seemingly good friends with Aspathines, who invited him to join the conspiracy, which included the noblemen Intaphernes, Otanes, Gobryas, Megabyzus, and the Achaemenid prince Darius, who was its leader. For his services, Hydarnes was seemingly given the Achaemenid satrapy of Armenia as a semi-hereditary fief, since his descendants governed it until the Hellenistic period. Orontes I (died 344 BC), the ancestor of the Orontid dynasty, was descended from Hydarnes. According to some Persepolis tablets, Hydarnes served as the satrap of Media under Darius.

"Two Concepts of Liberty" was the inaugural lecture delivered by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958. It was subsequently published as a 57-page pamphlet by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. It also appears in the collection of Berlin's papers entitled Four Essays on Liberty (1969) and was reissued in a collection entitled Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty (2002).

The essay, with its analytical approach to the definition of political concepts, re-introduced the study of political philosophy to the methods of analytic philosophy. It is also one of Berlin's first expressions of his ethical ontology of value-pluralism. Berlin defined negative liberty (as the term "liberty" was used by Thomas Hobbes) as the absence of coercion or interference with agents' possible private actions, by an exterior social body. He also defined it as a comparatively recent political ideal, which re-emerged in the late 17th century, after its slow and inarticulate birth in the ancient doctrines of Antiphon the Sophist, the Cyrenaic discipleship, and of Otanes after the death of pseudo-Smerdis. In an introduction to the essay, Berlin writes:

Cassandane or Cassandana (Ancient Greek: Κασσανδάνη, romanized: Kassandánē; died 538 BC) was an Achaemenian queen and the wife of king Cyrus the Great, the mother of Cambyses II and Atossa and the grandmother of Xerxes I.

She was a daughter of Pharnaspes. She had four children with Cyrus: Cambyses II, who succeeded his father and conquered Egypt; Smerdis (Bardiya), who also reigned as the king of Persia for a short time; a daughter named Atossa, who later wed Darius the Great; and another daughter named Roxana.