Flaying False Justice
A Reflection on Gerard David's Judgment of Cambyses
“I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein.”
—Shakespeare, 1 HENRY IV., ii. 4.
The great Greek historian Herodotus preserved for posterity the story of the harsh judgment of the Persian King Cambyses II (reigned 529-522 B.C.), son of Cyrus the Great, against the corrupt judge Sisamnes. It is a story that for both its moral and its horror is not easily forgotten. The story is succinctly presented in the fifth book of Herodotus’s Histories.
Sisamnes, Herodotus tells us, was a royal judge under the reign of King Cambyses II. Sisamnes accepted a bribe from a party in a lawsuit, and therefore rendered an unjust judgment. King Cambyses learned of the bribe, accused Sisamnes, and had him arrested and punished, but by no ordinary punishment. The punishment was as creative as it was cruel:
Cambyses’s creativity did not stop there. To replace Judge Sisamnes whom he had killed and flayed, Cambyses appointed Sisamnes’s son, Otanes, as the new judge. Cambyses admonished Otanes to bear in mind the source of the leather of the bench upon which would sit to hear evidence, deliberate, and deliver his decisions. Without doubt, King Cambyses’s monitum buttressed by the reupholstered bench left a lingering impression on his new judge.
The story of Cambyses’s judgment also left a strong impression on the readers of Herodotus’s Histories. It particularly seized the imagination of artists during the Renaissance as a secular and classically-based moral or exemplum of justice. The tale was depicted in paintings, glasswork, medals, and even—as in, for example, Thomas Preston’s tragedy referenced by Shakespeare in the introductory quote—the stage.2 It served to corroborate the biblically-based subjects that were commonly adopted by artists as morals of justice such as the Last Judgment, the Justice of Solomon, the story of Susanna and the Elders, and the tale of Esther and Ahasuerus.
Gerard David’s Treatment
One of the earliest depictions of the judgment of Cambyses was that by the Dutch painter Gerard David (1460-1523), whose paintings the Judgment of Cambysesand the Flaying of Sisamnes (1498)3 were hung in the Town Hall of Bruges where the town’s courts—known as the aldermen’s chambers—were housed. Gerard David was commissioned by the aldermen of the town to paint two panels depicting the story of Cambyses as told by Herodotus.4 The paintings were commissioned with the intent to hang them in the aldermen’s chambers. In this way, the magistrates of the town would be daily reminded of their duty to render justice free of the corruption of outside financial interests. From the Town Hall the panels found their way in to the Groeninge Museum in Bruges, Belgium, where they hang today.
The Judgment of Cambyses
How Cambyses learned of Sisamnes’s corruption is not told us by Herodotus. Nor in his paintings did David speculate how Cambyses learned of it.
David's Judgment of Cambyses
According to Thomas Preston’s play, it is the cry of the common people who complain to the King:
. . . .
Detail: David's
Judgment of Cambyses
It is apparent in David’s treatment, however it be that he learned of it, that Cambyses is well-informed of Sisamnes’s crime. In the background of the first panel, under the right arch of the judicial loggia, David shows Sisamnes on the arched porch of his house, accepting a bag of money, presumably from a litigant’s servant. The bribery takes place outside of the halls of justice, but as David makes clear the corruption outside is seen within the court. The act of corruption is carried in Sisamnes’s heart under the loggia of justice and into the inner sanctum of the courtroom, though it be hid under Sisamnes’ hypocritical robes of judicial red. But someone betrayed Sisamnes, and Cambyses sees the corruption beneath the judge’s robe of office.
Detail: David's Judgment of Cambyses
As if to parry any argument that Herodotus’s story of the judgment of Cambyses has no contemporary application, David uses the common technique of “actualization.”5 The past is rendered contemporaneous by clothing it or contextualizing it in deliberate anachronism. Cambyses is not in Persia in the 6th century B.C. He is in 15th century Bruges. In the background of the Judgment, under the left arch of the courts’ arcade, the Burgher’s Lodge in Bruges is depicted by David.
Detail: David's
Judgment of Cambyses
Moreover, the subjects are clothed in contemporary Flemish clothing or official Burgundian attire. The escutcheons of Philip the Handsome (1478-1506) and his wife Joanna of Castile (1479-1555) are above the judicial bench. The message in the story told by Herodotus is as contemporary as it is ancient. The message is perennial. We could easily visualize Sisamnes in a black robe seated on a bench between the Texas State Seal and the Great Seal of the United States being arrested by agents of the FBI in dark blue suits and red ties.
The act of bribery that David has shown in the background of the first panel is likely not the first time Sisamnes has abused his office and corrupted the cause of justice. As Cambyses arrests and accuses Sisamnes, he appears to enumerate on his fingers multiple abuses. Held under arrest by the King’s henchmen, Sisamnes listens with great apprehension to Cambyses. Sisamnes is a traitor to the law; he is guilty of treason to his office. Perhaps to make Sisamnes particularly odious to the townsmen that viewed the panels, Sisamnes is said to bear the likeness of Pieter Lanchals, a conspirator who betrayed the City of Bruges to Maximilian I of Austria in the dispute between Maximilian—regent (or mambour) for Philip the Handsome—and the Council of Bruges.6
Detail: David's
Judgment of Cambyses
King Cambyses appears to be in a controlled rage, and Sisamnes listens to the accusations stoically, resignedly, without however any sign of repentance. He is not yet aware of his horrible judgment, only of his arrest and indictment. If repentance comes, it will come during the meting out of his horrible punishment after Cambyses’s final judgment. But we are ever unsure of that because we cannot peer into Sisamnes’s heart to see contrition—it is hidden to all but God—and he may just be ruing his fate at getting caught.
The indictment and judgment of Sisamnes has the attention of the entire town. Indeed, David paints portraits of the then-contemporary Bruges aldermen and the young Philip the Handsome (he is the young man in between the arresting officer and Sisamnes) all focused intently on the public act that is occurring before them.
Detail: David's
Judgment of Cambyses
The roundels or medallions on either side of the judicial bench show Greek myths popular in the humanist milieu of the time. Both appear to be scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They serve to inform the viewer of the scene in the foreground. The medallion on the left contains a scene of Hercules (also known as Alcides) and his wife Deianeira. The reference to the story of Hercules and Deianeira is intended to evoke the mutual betrayal of Hercules and Deianeira. Power and justice marry in the proper administration of justice; like a married couple they ought to operate as one flesh. When power is unfaithful to justice and thirsts for a false autonomy, justice is betrayed just like Hercules betrayed his wife with his chronic infidelity. Deianeira’s efforts to win the affection of her husband by giving him a shirt intinctured with the blood of the Centaur Nessus lead to his unwitting betrayal and death.
Detail: David's
Judgment of Cambyses
The tale of the shirt of Nessus and the agony Hercules suffered when he put on the robe steeped in the blood of the Centaur is a harbinger of what awaits Sisamnes. Like the unfaithful Hercules, who donned the robe of Nessus poisoned with the Centaur’s blood and lost his flesh, Sisamnes draped the blood-red robe of justice with the poisoned blood of his own bribery, and he will lose his flesh.
On the right roundel appears an epicene Apollo and the satyr Marsyas. Marsyas was a symbol of hypocrisy.7 Marsyas—the accomplished flute player—challenged Apollo to a musical competition. For being so presumptuous as to challenge a god with an instrument of the gods, Apollo flayed Marsyas alive while he hung on a pine tree. Sisamnes was equally presumptuous to abuse his office and challenge the administration of the King’s justice. Sisamnes played with the law as if it were a flute, and foolishly, hubristically challenged the gods of the law to a competition of legal music. Like Marsyas, he was not the owner of the law, and he should have realized that the art of justice in which he dabbled was a gift of the gods, a gift to the public, a res publica—even a res divina—and not a res privata. To accept a bribe in the administration of justice is to appropriate something and to sell something that is not one’s to sell. Sisamnes thus played his flute in a flat key, the key of bribery, of corruption. The music did not please the ear of Cambyses, a symbol of those who seek justice, whose ears have perfect pitch. And like the satyr Maryas, Sisamnes suffered the penalty of flaying for his act of hubris.
. . . .
The Flaying of Sisamnes
The subject of the second panel by David is the Flaying of Sisamnes.
David's Flaying of Sisamnes
Following the arrest depicted in the first panel, Cambyses has rendered his judgment, and has found Sisamnes guilty of the crime of bribery. He has meted out an abhorrent punishment as a warning to all judges who have a mind to corrupt the administration of justice.
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
He has ordered that Sisamnes be stripped of the robe of his office and flayed. Like Hercules who stripped off his skin with the shirt of Nessus, Sisamnes’ skin will come off with the stripping of his judicial robe. Like Marsyas, he will be flayed by his superior. The words of the legends in the roundels obtain a horrific “anti-incarnation” in Sisamnes’s unfleshing, as Cambyses orders the executioner:
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
With clinical accuracy, Gerard depicts the execution of Cambyses’ punishment. Sisamnes has been stripped of his dignity and office.
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
He is now to be stripped of his skin. His red robe of office—notably the same hue as his raw flesh—is found crumpled underneath the executioner’s table, to which Sisamnes is tightly and mercilessly bound.
. . . .
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
The only part of Sisamnes’ body that is not bound is his face, and it grimaces in response to the pain—and perhaps a trace of repentance. If so, God will judge mercifully. In contrast to the mercy that Sisamnes may find with God, the mien of Cambyses is impassive, resolved; there is no trace of mercy in the face of the earthly King. The harsh sentence will be carried out.
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
The hands not of one, but four, flayers are busy at their sanguinary execution. They do their task methodically—with surgical precision. They do not want to tear the judge’s skin. Such care is taken in response to an express instruction of the King. The skin will later be cured into the leather upon which the flayed judge’s son, Otanes, and all his successors shall sit in judgment. Focusing on Sisamnes’ suffering countenance, one can imagine one can hear him cry out through his clenched teeth the words of Marsyas, upon whose picture he looked daily:
But the cry comes too late. There is no merciful ear—but God’s—that hears him now. Would that he had heeded the internal admonitions of his conscience before accepting the bribe! Can Sisamnes ask his God to hear him, when he neglected for so long the voice of his God in his conscience?
Detail: David's
Flaying of Sisamnes
In the background of The Flaying is Otanes, appointed judge by Cambyses, sitting on the seat of justice draped with the flayed and cured skin of his father. One should think he would have to resist the urge to wriggle in discomfort. In any event, sitting on the chair he appears to be the epitome of a sober, focused, and honest judge. The seat upon which he sits is a morbid reminder to him, and all those in court, that justice will not be corrupted. If the judge’s conscience and sense of public duty does not inform him and restrain him, then perhaps the fear of punishment will. The punishment assigned by Cambyses to such infraction—though cruel and unusual and most severe—would be a great deterrent to any judge. The instruction of Cambyses to Otanes—as found in the Gesta Romanorum—should ring in Otanes’s ears, as it did in the ears of the magistrates of Bruges, as it should in our modern judges:
Stop, look, and listen, Judge! Remember, justice is an article of the gods; it is not a plaything of men. Its betrayal will be costly.
Endnotes
1 Herodotus, The Histories V.25 (translation by Robert Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 312). ⇑
2 Thomas Preston, A Lamentable Tragedy, Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth, Containing The Life of Cambyses, King of Persia. The English playwright Preston lived in England between 1558-70. Quotations from Preston’s Tragedy are taken from John S. Farmer, ed., The Tudor Facsimile Texts, Thomas Preston, “Cambyses King of Persia.” It is available in facsimile form from UMI Books on Demand. ⇑
3 Oil on two panels 71¾ × 62¾" (182 × 159.4 cm). The photographs of David’s paintings in this article are provided through the courtesy of, and with permission of, New Crafts International, Ltd. See http://www.FineArt-China.com. ⇑
4 Different versions of the story of Cambyses were available to artists to draw upon. Two of the most prevalent were the medieval Gesta Romanorum and Valerius Maximus’s Facta et dicta memorabilia, vi.3. See Hans J. van Miegroet, “Gerard David’s Justice of Cambyses: exemplum iustitiae or political allegory?” 18:3 SIMIOLUS: NETHERLANDS QUARTERLY FOR THE HISTORY OF ART 116-133 (1988). ⇑
5 Van Miegroet, 125. ⇑
6 Morris L. Cohen, The Art of Justice, “Judgment of Cambyses” (New York: Hugh Lauter Levin & Associates, Inc., 1992), 22. ⇑
7 Van Miegroet, 128. ⇑
8 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), Book IX.248-53; 262-69, pp. 310-11. ⇑
9 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VI.546-60, p. 205. ⇑
