Sisamnes

Sisamnes was, according to Herodotus's Histories, book 5, chapter 25, a corrupt royal judge active in the Persian empire during the reign of Cambyses II of Persia. When Cambyses learned that Sisamnes had accepted a bribe to influence a verdict, he had him promptly arrested and sentenced him to be flayed alive. He had the skin of the flayed Sisamnes cut into leather strips. Cambyses then appointed Otanes, the son of the condemned Sisamnes, as his father's judicial successor. In order to remind Otanes what happens to corrupt judges and not forget the importance of judicial integrity, Cambyses ordered that the new judge's chair be draped in the leather strips made from the skin of the flayed Sisamnes. Otanes later became a satrap in Ionia. Cambyses warned Otanes to continually keep in mind the source of the leather of the chair upon which he would be seated to deliberate and deliver his judgment. The story was also referred to by the first century Latin author Valerius Maximus in his Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX. Whereas in Herodotus' version Sisamnes' skin is cut into strips, Maximus has the skin stretched across the chair.