King Candaules

Sham S. Misri

The story is based on the work from- The Histories of Herodotus, who is called the father of history.

Candaules, King of Lydia, modern Turkey, was a dishonest and a despot king. He had, a very beautiful and modest wife, whose name was Nyssia. King Candaules was very proud of the beauty of his queen, and boasted of his wife’s charming beauty to his favourite bodyguard, who was a slave, a personal favourite and boon companion of the king.

  Once, when the king was boasting of his wife's charms to the bodyguard, he said that the beauty of the queen, her form and figure, when unrobed, was even more wonderful than that of her features. The king growing more and more excited, and being under influence of wine, declared that the bodyguard should see for himself. The king would conceal the bodyguard, in the queen's bed-chamber, while she would be undressing for the night.

 “It appears you don’t believe me when I tell you how lovely and beautiful my wife is,” said King Candaules. “A man always believes his eyes better than his ears; so, do as I tell you make a scheme to see her naked.”

The body guard refused; he did not want to dishonor the Queen by seeing her nude body. “It would be doing the innocent queen a great wrong”, said the body guard, He assured the king, too, that he believed fully all that he said about queen's beauty. The body guard  begged him not to insist upon a proposal with which it would be criminal to comply. King Candaules insisted upon showing his body guard his wife when unrobed.  However, when the body guard had no choice but to obey. Candaules made a plan by which bodyguard would hide behind a door in the royal bedroom to observe the Queen disrobing before bed. Body guard would then leave the room while the Queen’s back was turned.  That night, the plan was executed. However, the Queen saw the body guard as he left the room, and recognized immediately that she had been betrayed and shamed by her own husband. She silently swore to have her revenge, and began to arrange her own plan.

The next day, the Queen summoned bodyguard to her chamber.The body guard thought that it was a routine request. He went politely to her chamber. When the Queen saw him enter her room, she was furious. She confronted him immediately with her knowledge of his misdeed and her husband’s.

 “One of you must die,” she declared. “Either my husband, the author of this wicked plot; or you, who dared seeing me naked.”  The bodyguard pleaded with the Queen not to force him to make this choice. She was harsh and persistent. He finally chose to betray and deceive the King so that he should live.

The Queen prepared the bodyguard to kill King Candaules, her own husband by the same manner in which she was shamed. The bodyguard hid behind the door of the bedroom chamber with a knife provided by the Queen, and killed him in his sleep. The bodyguard Gyges married the Queen and became King, and father to the Memnad Dynasty.