Parmys

Parmys (Old Persian Uparmiya): one of the wives of the Persian king Darius I the Great.

Achaemenid woman (or a beardless prince)
Achaemenid woman (or a beardless prince)

According to the Greek researcher Herodotus (c.480-c.429), Parmys was a daughter of Smerdis,note the second son of king Cyrus the Great. Her marriage to Darius was important because it connected two lines of the Achaemenid dynasty, which was necessary because the older branch had died out and Darius belonged to a younger branch. (Similar marriages were concluded with Smerdis' sisters Atossa and Artystone.) She and Darius had a son named Ariomardus.note

From the tablets found at Persepolis, we know that her Persian name was Uparmiya.

This page was created in 1999; last modified on 27 April 2019.