Chapter I: The Iranian Conquest (6)

* The passage in the Behistun inscription, in which Darius
sets forth his own genealogy, has received various
interpretations. That of Oppert seems still the most
probable, that the text indicates two parallel branches of
Achæmenides, which nourished side by side until Cambyses
died and Darius ascended the throne. Such a genealogy,
however, appears to be fictitious, invented solely for the
purpose of connecting Darius with the ancient royal line,
with which in reality he could claim no kinship, or only a
very distant connection.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from M. Dieulafoy.

The exact particulars of this scene were never known, but popular imagination soon supplied the defect, furnishing a full and complete account of all that took place. In the first place, Phædimê, daughter of Otanes, one of the seven, furnished an authentic proof of the fraud which had been perpetrated. Her father had opportunely recalled the marvellous resemblance between Smerdis and the Magian, and remembered at the same time that the latter had been deprived of his ears in punishment for some misdeed: he therefore sent certain instructions to Phffidimê, who, when she made the discovery, at the peril of her life, that her husband had no ears, communicated the information to the disaffected nobles. The conspirators thereupon resolved to act without delay; but when they arrived at the palace, they were greeted with an extraordinary piece of intelligence. The Magi, disquieted by some vague rumours which were being circulated against them, had besought Prexaspes to proclaim to the people that the reigning monarch was indeed Smerdis himself. But Prexaspes, instead of making the desired declaration, informed the multitude that the son of Cyrus was indeed dead, for he himself had murdered him at the bidding of Cambyses, and, having made this confession, he put himself to death, in order to escape the vengeance of the Magi. This act of Prexaspes was an additional inducement to the conspirators to execute their purpose. The guard stationed at the gates of the palace dared not refuse admission to so noble a company, and when the throne-room was reached and the eunuchs forbade further advance, the seven boldly drew their swords and forced their way to the apartment occupied by the two Magi. The usurpers defended themselves with bravery, but succumbed at length to the superior number of their opponents, after having wounded two of the conspirators. Gobryas pinioned Gaumâta with his arms, and in such a way that Darius hesitated to make the fatal thrust for fear of wounding his comrade; but the latter bade him strike at all hazards, and by good fortune the sword did not even graze him. The crime accomplished, the seven conspirators agreed to choose as king that member of their company whose horse should first neigh after sunrise: a stratagem of his groom caused the election to fall on Darius. As soon as he was duly enthroned, he instituted a festival called the magophonia, or massacre of the Magi, in commemoration of the murder which had given him the crown.

His first care was to recompense the nobles to whom he owed his position by restoring to them the privileges of which they had been deprived by the pseudo-Smerdis, namely, the right of free access to the king, as well as the right of each individual to a funeral pyre; but the usurper had won the affection of the people, and even the inhabitants of those countries which had been longest subject to the Persian sway did not receive the new sovereign favourably. Darius found himself, therefore, under the necessity of conquering his dominions one after the other.*

* The history of the early part of the reign of Darius is
recorded in the great inscription which the king caused to
be cut in three languages on the rocks of Behistun. The
order of the events recorded in it is not always easy to
determine. I have finally adopted, with some modifications,
the arrangement of Marquart, which seems to me to give the
clearest conspectus of these confused wars.

The Persian empire, like those of the Chaldæans and Medes, had consisted hitherto of nothing but a fortuitous collection of provinces under military rule, of vassal kingdoms, and of semi-independent cities and tribes; there was no fixed division of authority, and no regular system of government for the outlying provinces. The governors assigned by Cyrus and Cambyses to rule the various provinces acquired by conquest, were actual viceroys, possessing full control of an army, and in some cases of a fleet as well, having at their disposal considerable revenues both in money and in kind, and habituated, owing to their distance from the capital, to settle pressing questions on their own responsibility, subject only to the necessity of making a report to the sovereign when the affair was concluded, or when the local resources were insufficient to bring it to a successful issue. For such free administrators the temptation must have been irresistible to break the last slender ties which bound them to the empire, and to set themselves up as independent monarchs. The two successive revolutions which had taken place in less than a year, convinced such governors, and the nations over which they bore rule, that the stately edifice erected by Cyrus and Cambyses was crumbling to pieces, and that the moment was propitious for each of them to carve out of its ruins a kingdom for himself; the news of the murder, rapidly propagated, sowed the seeds of revolt in its course--in Susiana, at Babylon, in Media, in Parthia, in Margiana, among the Sattagydes, in Asia Minor, and even in Egypt itself*--which showed itself in some places in an open and undisguised form, while in others it was contemptuously veiled under the appearance of neutrality, or the pretence of waiting to see the issue of events.

* In the _Behistun Inscription_, it is stated that
insurrections broke out in all these countries while Darius
was at Babylon; that is to say, while he was occupied in
besieging that city, as is evident from the order of the
events narrated.

The first to break out into open rebellion were the neighbouring countries of Elam and Chaldæa: the death of Smerdis took place towards the end of September, and a fortnight later saw two rebel chiefs enthroned--a certain Athrîna at Susa, and a Nadinta-bel at Babylon.* Athrîna, the son of Umbadaranma, was a scion of the dynasty dispossessed by the successors of Sargon in the preceding century, but nevertheless he met with but lukewarm assistance from his own countrymen;** he was taken prisoner before a month had passed, and sent to Darius, who slew him with his own hand.

* The latest known document of the pseudo-Smerdis is dated
the 1st of Tisri at Babylon, and the first of Nebuchadrezzar
III. are dated the 17th and 20th of the same month. The
revolt of Babylon, then, must be placed between the 1st and
17th of Tisri; that is, either at the end of September or
the beginning of October, 521 B.C.

** The revolt cannot have lasted much more than six weeks,
for on the 26th of Athriyâdiya following, that is to say, at
the beginning of December, Darius had already joined issue
with the Babylonians on the banks of the Tigris.

Babylon was not so easily mastered. Her chosen sovereign claimed to be the son of Nabonidus, and had, on ascending the throne, assumed the illustrious name of Nebuchadrezzar; he was not supported, moreover, by only a few busybodies, but carried the whole population with him. The Babylonians, who had at first welcomed Cyrus so warmly, and had fondly imagined that they had made him one of themselves, as they had made so many of their conquerors for centuries past, soon realised their mistake. The differences of language, manners, spirit, and religion between themselves and the Persians were too fundamental to allow of the naturalisation of the new sovereign, and of the acceptance by the Achæmenides of that fiction of a double personality to which Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser, and even Assur-bani-pal had submitted. Popular fancy grew weary of Cyrus, as it had already grown weary in turn of all the foreigners it had at first acclaimed--whether Elamite, Kaldâ, or Assyrian--and by a national reaction the self-styled son of Nabonidus enjoyed the benefit of a devotion proportionately as great as the hatred which had been felt twenty years before for his pretended sire. The situation might become serious if he were given time to consolidate his power, for the loyalty of the ancient provinces of the Chaldæan empire was wavering, and there was no security that they would not feel inclined to follow the example of the capital as soon as they should receive news of the sedition. Darius, therefore, led the bulk of his forces to Babylon without a days more delay than was absolutely necessary, and the event proved that he had good reason for such haste. Nebuchadrezzar III. had taken advantage of the few weeks which had elapsed since his accession, to garrison the same positions on the right bank of the Tigris, as Nabonidus had endeavoured to defend against Cyrus at the northern end of the fortifications erected by his ancestor. A well-equipped flotilla patrolled the river, and his lines presented so formidable a front that Darius could not venture on a direct attack. He arranged his troops in two divisions, which he mounted partly on horses, partly on camels, and eluding the vigilance of his adversary by attacking him simultaneously on many sides, succeeded in gaining the opposite bank of the river. The Chaldæans, striving in vain to drive him back into the stream, were at length defeated on the 27th of Athriyâdiya, and they retired in good order on Babylon. Six days later, on the 2nd of Anâmaka, they fought a second battle at Zazanu, on the bank of the Euphrates, and were again totally defeated. Nebuchadrezzar escaped with a handful of cavalry, and hastened to shut himself up in his city. Darius soon followed him, but if he cherished a hope that the Babylonians would open their gates to him without further resistance, as they had done to Cyrus, he met with a disappointment, for he was compelled to commence a regular siege and suspend all other operations, and that, too, at a moment when the provinces were breaking out into open insurrection on every hand.*

* The account given by Darius seems to imply that no
interval of time elapsed between the second defeat of
Nebuchadrezzar III. and the taking of Babylon, so that
several modern historians have rejected the idea of an
obstinate resistance. Herodotus, however, speaks of the long
siege the city sustained, and the discovery of tablets dated
in the first and even the second year of Nebuchadrezzar III.
shows that the siege was prolonged into the second year of
this usurper, at least until the month of Nisân (March-
April), 520 B.C. No evidence can be drawn from the tablets
dated in the reign of Darius, for the oldest yet discovered,
which is dated in the month Sebat (Jan.-Feb.), in the year
of his accession, and consequently prior to the second year
of Nebuchadrezzar, comes from Abu-habba. On the other hand,
the statement that all the revolts broke out while Darius
was at Babylon does not allow of the supposition that all
the events recorded before his departure for Media could
have been compressed into the space of three or four months.
It seems, therefore, more probable that the siege lasted
till 519 B.C., as it can well have done if credit be given
to the mention of twenty-one months at least by Herodotus;
perhaps the siege was brought to an end in the May of that
year, as calculated by Marquart.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the impression of an intaglio
at St. Petersburg.

The attempt of the Persian adventurer Martîya to stir up the Susians to revolt in his rear failed, thanks to the favourable disposition of the natives, who refused to recognise in him Ummanîsh, the heir of their national princes. Media, however, yielded unfortunately to the solicitations of a certain Fravartîsh, who had assumed the personality of Khshatrita of the race of Cyaxares, and its revolt marked almost the beginning of a total break-up of the empire. The memory of Astyages and Cyaxares had not yet faded so completely as to cause the Median nobles to relinquish the hope of reasserting the supremacy of Media; the opportunity for accomplishing this aim now seemed all the more favourable, from the fact that Darius had been obliged to leave this province almost immediately after the assassination of the Usurper, and to take from it all the troops that he could muster for the siege of Babylon. Several of the nomadic tribes still remained faithful to him, but all the settled inhabitants of Media ranged themselves under the banner of the pretender, and the spirit of insurrection spread thereupon into Armenia and Assyria. For one moment there was a fear lest it should extend to Asia Minor also, where Orcetes, accustomed, in the absence of Cambyses, to act as an autonomous sovereign, displayed little zeal in accommodating himself to the new order of things. There was so much uncertainty as to the leanings of the Persian guard of Orcetes, that Darius did not venture to degrade the satrap officially, but despatched Bagseus to Sardes with precise instructions, which enabled him to accomplish his mission by degrees, so as not to risk a Lydian revolt. His first act was to show the guard a rescript by which they were relieved from attendance on Orcetes, and thereupon they immediately laid down their spears. Emboldened by their ready obedience, Bagseus presented to the secretary a second letter, which contained his instructions: The great king commands those Persians who are in Sardes to kill Orestes. Whereupon, it is recorded, they drew their swords and slew him. *

* The context of Herodotus indicates that the events
narrated took place shortly after the accession of Darius.
Further on Herodotus mentions, as contemporaneous with the
siege of Babylon, events which took place after the death of
Orcetes; it is probable, therefore, that the scene described
by Herodotus occurred in 520 B.C. at the latest.

A revolt in Asia Minor was thus averted, at a time when civil war continued to rage in the centre of Iran. The situation, however, continued critical. Darius could not think of abandoning the siege of Babylon, and of thus both losing the fruits of his victories and seeing Nebuchadrezzar reappear in Assyria or Susiana. On the other hand, his army was a small one, and he would incur great risks in detaching any of his military chiefs for a campaign against the Mede with an insufficient force. He decided, however, to adopt the latter course, and while he himself presided over the blockade, he simultaneously despatched two columns--one to Media, under the command of the Persian Vidarna, one of the seven; the other to Armenia, under the Armenian Dâdarshîsh. Vidarna, encountered Khshatrita near Marush, in the mountainous region of the old Namri, on the 27th of Anâmaka, and gave him battle; but though he claimed the victory, the result was so indecisive that he halted in Kambadênê, at the entrance to the gorges of the Zagros mountains, and was there obliged to await reinforcements before advancing further. Dâdarshîsh, on his side, gained three victories over the Armenians--one near Zuzza on the 8th of Thuravâhara, another at Tigra ten days later, and the third on the 2nd of Thâigarshîsh, at a place not far from Uhyâma--but he also was compelled to suspend operations and remain inactive pending the arrival of fresh troops. Half the year was spent in inaction on either side, for the rebels had not suffered less than their opponents, and, while endeavouring to reorganise their forces, they opened negotiations with the provinces of the north-east with the view of prevailing on them to join their cause. Darius, still detained before Babylon, was unable to recommence hostilities until the end of 520 B.C. He sent Vaumisa to replace Dâdarshîsh as the head of the army in Armenia, and the new general distinguished himself at the outset by winning a decisive victory on the 15th of Anâmaka, near Izitush in Assyria; but the effect which he hoped to secure from this success was neutralised almost immediately by grievous defections. Sagartia, in the first place, rose in rebellion at the call of a pretended descendant of Oyaxares, named Chitrantakhma; Hyrcania, the province governed by Hystaspes, the father of Darius, followed suit and took up the cause of Khshatrita, and soon after Margiana broke out into revolt at the instigation of a certain Frâda. Even Persia itself deserted Darius, and chose another king instead of a sovereign whom no one seemed willing to acknowledge. Many of the mountain tribes could not yet resign themselves to the belief that the male line of Cyrus had become extinct with the death of Cambyses. The usurpation of Gaumâta and the accession of Darius had not quenched their faith in the existence of Smerdis: if the Magian were an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that Smerdis had been assassinated, and when a certain Vahyazdâta rose up in the town of Târavâ in the district of Yautiyâ, and announced himself as the younger son of Cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. A preliminary success gained by Hystaspes at Vispauzatîsh, in Parthia, on the 22nd of Viyakhna, 519 B.C., prevented the guerilla bands of Hyrcania from joining forces with the Medes, and some days later the fall of Babylon at length set Darius free to utilise his resources to the utmost. The long resistance of Nebuchadrezzar furnished a fruitful theme for legend: a fanciful story was soon substituted for the true account of the memorable siege he had sustained. Half a century later, when his very name was forgotten, the heroism of his people continued to be extolled beyond measure. When Darius arrived before the ramparts he found the country a desert, the banks of the canals cut through, and the gardens and pleasure-houses destroyed. The crops had been gathered and the herds driven within the walls of the city, while the garrison had reduced by a massacre the number of non-combatants, the women having all been strangled, with the exception of those who were needed to bake the bread. At the end of twenty months the siege seemed no nearer to its close than at the outset, and the besiegers were on the point of losing heart, when at length Zopyrus, one of the seven, sacrificed himself for the success of the blockading army. Slitting his nose and ears, and lacerating his back with the lash of a whip, he made his way into the city as a deserter, and persuaded the garrison to assign him a post of danger under pretence of avenging the ill-treatment he had received from his former master. He directed some successful sallies on points previously agreed upon, and having thus lulled to rest any remaining feelings of distrust on the part of the garrison, he treacherously opened to the Persians the two gates of which he was in charge; three thousand Babylonians were impaled, the walls were razed to the ground, and the survivors of the struggle were exiled and replaced by strange colonists.* The only authentic fact about this story is the length of the siege. Nebuchadrezzar was put to death, and Darius, at length free to act, hastened to despatch one of his lieutenants, the Persian Artavardiya, against Vahyazdâta, while he himself marched upon the Medes with the main body of the royal army.**

* Ctesias places the siege of Babylon forty years later,
under Xerxes I.; according to him, it was Megabysus, son of
Zopyrus, who betrayed the city. Polysenus asserts that the
stratagem of Zopyrus was adopted in imitation of a Sakian
who dwelt beyond the Oxus. Latin writers transferred the
story to Italy, and localised it at Gabii: but the Roman
hero, Sextus Tarquinius, did not carry his devotion to the
point of mutilating himself.

** _Beldstun Inscr_.: Then I sent the army of the Persians
and Medes which was with me. One named Artavardiya, a
Persian, my servant, I made their general; the rest of the
Persian army went to Media with me.

The rebels had hitherto been confronted by the local militia, brave but inexperienced troops, with whom they had been able to contend on a fairly equal footing: the entry into the field of the veteran regiments of Cyrus and Cambyses changed the aspect of affairs, and promptly brought the campaign to a successful issue. Darius entered Media by the defiles of Kerend, reinforced Vidarna in Kambadçnê, and crushed the enemy near the town of Kundurush, on the 20th of Adukanîsh, 519 B.C. Khshatrita fled towards the north with some few horsemen, doubtless hoping to reach the recesses of Mount Elburz, and to continue there the struggle; but he was captured at Bagâ and carried to Ecbatana. His horrible punishment was proportionate to the fear he had inspired: his nose, ears, and tongue were cut off, and his eyes gouged out, and in this mutilated condition he was placed in chains at the gate of the palace, to demonstrate to his former subjects how the Achæmenian king could punish an impostor. When the people had laid this lesson sufficiently to heart, Khshatrita was impaled; many of his principal adherents were ranged around him and suffered the same fate, while the rest were decapitated as an example. Babylon and Media being thus successfully vanquished, the possession of the empire was assured to Darius, whatever might happen in other parts of his territory, and henceforth the process of repressing disaffection went on unchecked. Immediately after the decisive battle of Kundurush, Vaumisa accomplished the pacification of Armenia by a victory won near Autiyâra, and Artavardiya defeated Vahyazdâta for the first time at Eakhâ in Persia. Vahyazdâta had committed the mistake of dividing his forces and sending a portion of them to Arachosia. Vivâna, the governor of this province, twice crushed the invaders, and almost at the same time the Persian Dâdardîsh of Bactriana was triumphing over Frâda and winning Margiana back to allegiance. For a moment it seemed as if the decisive issue of the struggle might be prolonged for months, since it was announced that the appearance of a new pseudo-Smerdis on the scene had been followed by the advent of a second pseudo-Nebuchadrezzar in Chaldæa. Darius left only a weak garrison at Babylon when he started to attack Khshatrita: a certain Arakha, an Armenian by birth, presenting himself to the Babylonian people as the son of Nabonidus, caused himself to be proclaimed king in December, 519 B.C.; but the city was still suffering so severely from the miseries of the long siege, that it was easy for the Mede Vindafrâ to reduce it promptly to submission after a month or six weeks of semi-independence. This was the last attempt at revolt. Chitran-takhma expiated his crimes by being impaled, and Hystaspes routed the Hyrcanian battalions at Patigrabana in Parthia: Artavardiya having defeated Vahyazdâta, near Mount Paraga, on the 6th of Garmapada, 618 B.C., besieged him in his fortress of Uvâdeshaya, and was not long in effecting his capture. The civil war came thus to an end.

It had been severe, but it had brought into such prominence the qualities of the sovereign that no one henceforth dared to dispute his possession of the crown. A man of less energetic character and calm judgment would have lost his head at the beginning of the struggle, when almost every successive week brought him news of a fresh rebellion--in Susiana, Babylon, Media, Armenia, Assyria, Margiana, Hyrcania, and even Persia itself, not to speak of the intrigues in Asia Minor and Egypt; he would have scattered his forces to meet the dangers on all sides at once, and would assuredly have either succumbed in the struggle, or succeeded only by chance after his fate had trembled in the balance for years. Darius, however, from the very beginning knew how to single out the important points upon which to deal such vigorous blows as would ensure him the victory with the least possible delay. He saw that Babylon, with its numerous population, its immense wealth and prestige, and its memory of recent supremacy, was the real danger to his empire, and he never relaxed his hold on it until it was subdued, leaving his generals to deal with the other nations, the Medes included, and satisfied if each of them could but hold his adversary in check without gaining any decided advantage over him. The event justified his decision. When once Babylon had fallen, the remaining rebels were no longer a source of fear; to defeat Khshatrita was the work of a few weeks only, and the submission of the other provinces followed as a natural consequence on the ruin of Media.*

* Mention of some new wars is made towards the end of the
inscription, but the text here is so mutilated that the
sense can no longer be easily determined.

This is the scene depicted on the rock of Behistun.

After consummating his victories, Darius caused an inscription in commemoration of them to be carved on the rocks in the pass of Bagistana [Behistun], one of the most frequented routes leading from the basin of the Tigris to the tableland of Iran.

Drawn by Boudier, from Flandin and Coste.

There his figure is still to be seen standing, with his foot resting on the prostrate body of an enemy, and his hand raised in the attitude of one addressing an audience, while nine figures march in file to meet him, their arms tied behind their backs, and cords round their necks, representing all the pretenders whom he had fought and put to death--Athrîna, Nadinta-bel, Khshatrita, Vahyazdâta, Arakha, and Chitrantakhma; an inscription, written in the three official languages of the court, recounts at full length his mighty deeds. The drama did not, however, come to a close with the punishment of Vahyazdâta, for though no tribe or chieftain remained now in open revolt, many of those who had taken no active share in the rebellion had, by their conduct during the crisis, laid themselves open to grave suspicions, and it seemed but prudent to place them under strict surveillance or to remove them from office altogether. Orotes had been summarily despatched, and his execution did not disturb the peace of Asia Minor; but Aryandes, to whose rule Cambyses had entrusted the valley of the Nile, displayed no less marked symptoms of disaffection, and deserved the same fate. Though he had not ventured to usurp openly the title of king, he had arrogated to himself all the functions and rights of royalty, and had manifested as great an independence in his government as if he had been an actual Pharaoh. The inhabitants of Gyrene did not approve of the eagerness displayed by their tyrant Arkesilas III. to place himself under the Persian yoke: after first expelling and then recalling him, they drove him away a second time, and at length murdered him at Barca, whither he had fled for refuge. Pheretimô came to Egypt to seek the help of Aryandes, just as Laarchos had formerly implored the assistance of Amasis, and represented to him that her son had fallen a victim to his devotion to his suzerain. It was a good opportunity to put to ransom one of the wealthiest countries of Africa; so the governor sent to the Cyrenaica all the men and vessels at his disposal. Barca was the only city to offer any resistance, and the Persian troops were detained for nine months motionless before its walls, and the city then only succumbed through treachery. Some detachments forced their way as far as the distant town of Euesperides,* and it is possible that Aryandes dreamt for a moment of realising the designs which Cambyses had formed against Carthage. Insufficiency of supplies stayed the advance of his generals; but the riches of their ally, Cyrene, offered them a strong temptation, and they were deliberating how they might make this wealth their own before returning to Memphis, and were, perhaps, on the point of risking the attempt, when they received orders to withdraw. The march across the desert proved almost fatal to them. The Libyans of Marmarica, attracted by the spoils with which the Persian troops were laden, harassed them incessantly, and inflicted on them serious losses; they succeeded, however, in arriving safely with their prisoners, among whom were the survivors of the inhabitants of Barca. At this time the tide of fortune was setting strongly in favour of Darius: Aryandes, anxious to propitiate that monarch, despatched these wretched captives to Persia as a trophy of his success, and Darius sent them into Bactriana, where they founded a new Barca.**

* This is the town which later on under the Lagidæ received
the name of Berenice, and which is now called Benghazi.

** It is doubtless to these acts of personal authority on
the part of Aryandes that Darius alludes in the Behistun
Inscription, when he says, While I was before Babylon, the
following provinces revolted against me--Persia and Susiana,
the Medes and Assyria, and the Egyptians...

But this tardy homage availed him nothing. Darius himself visited Egypt and disembarrassed himself of his troublesome subject by his summary execution, inflicted, some said, because he had issued coins of a superior fineness to those of the royal mint,* while, according to others, it was because he had plundered Egypt and so ill-treated the Egyptians as to incite them to rebellion.

* It is not certain that Aryandes did actually strike any
coinage in his own name, and perhaps Herodotus has only
repeated a popular story current in Egypt in his days. If
this money actually existed, its coinage was but a pretext
employed by Darius; the true motive of the condemnation of
Aryandes was certainly an armed revolt, or a serious
presumption of revolutionary intentions.

After the suppression of this rival, Darius set himself to win the affection of his Egyptian province, or, at least, to render its servitude bearable. With a country so devout and so impressed with its own superiority over all other nations, the best means of accomplishing his object was to show profound respect for its national gods and its past glory. Darius, therefore, proceeded to shower favours on the priests, who had been subject to persecution ever since the disastrous campaign in Ethiopia. Cambyses had sent into exile in Elam the chief priest of Sais--that Uza-harrîsnîti who had initiated him into the sacred rites; Darius gave permission to this important personage to return to his native land, and commissioned him to repair the damage inflicted by the madness of the son of Cyrus. Uzaharrîsnîti, escorted back with honour to his native city, re-established there the colleges of sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of Nît the lands and revenues which had been confiscated. Greek tradition soon improved upon the national account of this episode, and asserted that Darius took an interest in the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books, and that on his arrival at Memphis in 517 B.C., immediately after the death of an Apis, he took part publicly in the general mourning, and promised a reward of a hundred talents of gold to whosoever should discover the successor of the bull. According to a popular story still current when Herodotus travelled in Egypt, the king visited the temple of Pthah before leaving Memphis, and ordered his statue to be erected there beside that of Sesostris. The priests refused to obey this command, for, said they, Darius has not equalled the deeds of Sesostris: he has not conquered the Scythians, whom Sesostris overcame. Darius replied that he hoped to accomplish as much as Sesostris had done, if he lived as long as Sesostris, and so conciliated the patriotic pride of the priests. The Egyptians, grateful for his moderation, numbered him among the legislators whose memory they revered, by the side of Menés, Asykhis, Bocchoris, and Sabaco.

The whole empire was now obedient to the will of one man, but the ordeal from which it had recently escaped showed how loosely the elements of it were bound together, and with what facility they could be disintegrated. The system of government in force hitherto was that introduced into Assyria by Tiglath-pileser III., which had proved so eminently successful in the time of Sargon and his descendants; Babylon and Ecbatana had inherited it from Nineveh, and Persepolis had in turn adopted it from Ecbatana and Babylon. It had always been open to objections, of which by no means the least was the great amount of power and independence accorded by it to the provincial governors; but this inconvenience had been little felt when the empire was of moderate dimensions, and when no province permanently annexed to the empire lay at any very great distance from the capital for the time being. But this was no longer the case, now that Persian rule extended over nearly the whole of Asia, from the Indus to the Thracian Bosphorus, and over a portion of Africa also. It must have seemed far from prudent to set governors invested with almost regal powers over countries so distant that a decree despatched from the palace might take several weeks to reach its destination. The heterogeneity of the elements in each province was a guarantee of peace in the eyes of the sovereign, and Darius carefully abstained from any attempt at unification: not only did he allow vassal republics, and tributary kingdoms and nations to subsist side by side, but he took care that each should preserve its own local dynasty, language, writing, customs, religion, and peculiar legislation, besides the right to coin money stamped with the name of its chief or its civic symbol. The Greek cities of the coast maintained their own peculiar constitutions which they had enjoyed under the Mernmadas; Darius merely required that the chief authority among them should rest in the hands of the aristocratic party, or in those of an elective or hereditary tyrant whose personal interest secured his fidelity. The Carians,* Lycians,** Pamphylians, and Cilicians*** continued under the rule of their native princes, subject only to the usual obligations. of the _corvée_, taxation, and military service as in past days; the majority of the barbarous tribes which inhabited the Taurus and the mountainous regions in the centre of Asia Minor were even exempted from all definite taxes, and were merely required to respect the couriers, caravans, and armies which passed through their territory.

* Herodotus cites among the commanders of the Persian fleet
three Carian dynasts, Histiseus, Pigres, and Damasithymus,
besides the famous Artemisia of Halicarnassus.

** In Herodotus where a dynast named Kyberniskos, son of
Sika, is mentioned among the commanders of the fleet. The
received text of Herodotus needs correction, and we should
read Kybernis, son of Kossika, some of whose coins are still
in existence.

*** The Cilician contingent in the fleet of Xerxes at
Salamis was commanded by Syennesis himself, and Cilicia
never had a satrap until the time of Cyrus the younger.

Native magistrates and kings still bore sway in Phoenicia* and Cyprus, and the shêkhs of the desert preserved their authority over the marauding and semi-nomadic tribes of Idumasa, Nabatsea, Moab, and Ammon, and the wandering Bedâwin on the Euphrates and the Khabur. Egypt, under Darius, remained what she had been under the Saitic and Ethiopian dynasties, a feudal state governed by a Pharaoh, who, though a foreigner, was yet reputed to be of the solar race; the land continued to be divided unequally into diverse principalities, Thebes still preserving its character as a theocracy under the guidance of the pallacide of Amon and her priestly counsellors, while the other districts subsisted under military chieftains. Our information concerning the organisation of the central and eastern provinces is incomplete, but it is certain that here also the same system prevailed. In the years of peace which succeeded the troubled opening of his reign, that is, from 519 to 515 B.C.,** Darius divided the whole empire into satrapies, whose number varied at different periods of his reign from twenty to twenty-three, and even twenty-eight.***

* Three kings, viz. the kings of Sidon, Tyre, and Arvad,
bore commands in the Phoenician fleet of Xerxes.

** Herodotus states that this dividing of the empire into
provinces took place immediately after the accession of
Darius, and this mistake is explained by the fact that he
ignores almost entirely the civil wars which filled the
earliest years of the reign. His enumeration of twenty
satrapies comprises India and omits Thrace, which enables us
to refer the drawing up of his list to a period before the
Scythian campaign, viz. before 514 B.C. Herodotus very
probably copied it from the work of Hecatseus of Miletus,
and consequently it reproduces a document contemporary with
Darius himself.

*** The number twenty is, as has been remarked, that given
by Herodotus, and probably by Hecatæus of Miletus. The great
Behistun Inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and
the Inscription of Nakhsh-î-Rustem gives twenty-eight.

Persia proper was not included among these, for she had been the cradle of the reigning house, and the instrument of conquest.*

* In the great Behistun Inscription Darius mentions Persia
first of all the countries in his possession. In the
Inscription E of Persepolis he omits it entirely, and in
that of Nakhsh-î-Rustem he does not include it in the
general catalogue.

The Iranian table-land, and the parts of India or regions beyond the Oxus which bordered on it, formed twelve important vice-royalties--Media, Hyrcania, Parthia, Zaranka, Aria, Khorasmia, Bactriana, Sogdiana, Gandaria, and the country of the Sakae--reaching from the plains of Tartary almost to the borders of China, the country of the Thatagus in the upper basin of the Elmend, Arachosia, and the land of Maka on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Ten satrapies were reckoned in the west--Uvayâ, Elam, in which lay Susa, one of the favourite residences of Darius; Babirus (Babylon) and Chaldæa; Athurâ, the ancient kingdom of Assyria; Arabayâ, stretching from the Khabur to the Litany, the Jordan, and the Orontes; Egypt, the peoples of the sea, among whom were reckoned the Phoenicians, Cilicians, and Cypriots, and the islanders of the Ægean; Yaunâ, which comprised Lycia, Caria, and the Greek colonies along the coast; Sparda, with Phrygia and Mysia; Armenia; and lastly, Katpatuka or Cappadocia, which lay on both sides of the Halys from the Taurus to the Black Sea. If each of these provinces had been governed, as formerly, by a single individual, who thus became king in all but name and descent, the empire would have run great risk of a speedy dissolution. Darius therefore avoided concentrating the civil and military powers in the same hands. In each province he installed three officials independent of each other, but each in direct communication with himself--a satrap, a general, and a secretary of state. The satraps were chosen from any class in the nation, from among the poor as well as from among the wealthy, from foreigners as well as from Persians;* but the most important satrapies were bestowed only on persons allied by birth** or marriage with the Achæmenids,*** and, by preference, on the legitimate descendants of the six noble houses. They were not appointed for any prescribed period, but continued in office during the kings pleasure. They exercised absolute authority in all civil matters, and maintained a court, a body-guard,**** palaces and extensive parks, or _paradises_, where they indulged in the pleasures of the chase; they controlled the incidence of taxation,^ administered justice, and possessed the power of life and death.

* Herodotus mentions a satrap chosen from among the Lydians,
Pactyas, and another satrap of Greek extraction, Xenagoras
of Halicarnassus.

** The most characteristic instance is that of Hystaspes,
who was satrap of Persia under Oambyses, and of Parthia and
Hyrcania under his own son. One of the brothers of Darius,
Artaphernes, was satrap of Sardes, and three of the kings
sons, Achemenes, Ariabignes, and Masistes, were satraps of
Egypt, Ionia, and Bactriana respectively.

*** To understand how well established was the custom of
bestowing satrapies on those only who were allied by
marriage to the royal house, it is sufficient to recall the
fact that, later on, under Xerxes I., when Pausanias, King
of Sparta, had thoughts of obtaining the position of satrap
in Greece, he asked for the hand of an Achæmenian princess.

**** We know, for example, that Orcotes, satrap of Sardes
under Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, had a body-guard of 1000
Persians.

^ Thus, Artaphernes, satrap of Sardes, had a cadastral
survey made of the territory of the Ionians, and by the
results of this survey he regulated the imposition of taxes,
which from that time up to the present day are exacted
according to his ordinance.

Attached to each satrap was a secretary of state, who ostensibly acted as his chancellor, but whose real function was to exercise a secret supervision over his conduct and report upon it to the imperial ministers.* The Persian troops, native militia and auxiliary forces quartered in the province, were placed under the orders, moreover, of a general, who was usually hostile to the satrap and the secretary.** These three officials counterbalanced each other, and held each other mutually in check, so that a revolt was rendered very difficult, if not impossible. All three were kept in constant communication with the court by relays of regular couriers, who carried their despatches on horseback or on camels, from one end of Asia to the other, in the space of a few weeks.***

* The rôle played by the secretary is clearly indicated by
the history of Orotes, satrap of Sardes.

** While Darius appoints his brother Artaphernes satrap of
Lydia, he entrusts the command of the army and the fleet to
Otanes, son of Sisamnes. Similarly several generals are met
with at the side of Artaphernes in the Ionic revolt.

*** Xenophon compares their speed in travelling to the
flight of birds. A good example of the use of the camel for
the postal service is cited by Strabo, on the occasion of
the death of Philotas and the execution of Parmenion under
Alexander.

The most celebrated of the post-roads was that which ran from Sardes to Susa through Lydia and Phrygia, crossing the Halys, traversing Cappadocia and Cilicia, and passing through Armenia and across the Euphrates, until at length, after passing through Matiênê and the country of the Cossæans, it reached Elam. This main route was divided into one hundred and eleven stages, which were performed by couriers on horseback and partly in ferry-boats, in eighty-four days. Other routes, of which we have no particular information, led to Egypt, Media, Bactria, and India,* and by their means the imperial officials in the capital were kept fully informed of all that took place in the most distant parts of the empire. As an extra precaution, the king sent out annually certain officers, called his eyes or his ears, ** who appeared on the scene when they were least expected, and investigated the financial or political situation, reformed abuses in the administration, and reprimanded or even suspended the government officials; they were accompanied by a body of troops to support their decisions, whose presence invested their counsels with the strongest sanction.*** An unfavourable report, a slight irregularity, a mere suspicion, even, was sufficient to disqualify a satrap. Sometimes he was deposed, often secretly condemned to death without a trial, and the execution of the judgment was committed even to his own servants.

* Ctesias at the end of his work describes the route leading
from Ephesus to Bactriana and India. It is probable that the
route described by Isidorus of Charax in his _Stathma
Parthica_ already existed in the times of the Achæmenids,
and was traversed by their postal couriers.

** Mention of the _Eye of the king_ occurs in Herodotus, in
Æschylus, and in Plutarch, of the _Ear_ in Xenophon; cf.
the Persian proverb, according to which The king has many
eyes and many ears.

*** Xenophon affirms that these inspections were still held
in his day.

After the Painting by Gerome.

A messenger would arrive unexpectedly, and remit to the guards an order charging them to put their chief to death--an order which was promptly executed at the mere sight of the royal decree.

This reform in the method of government was displeasing to the Persian nobles, whose liberty of action it was designed to curtail, and they took their revenge in sneering at the obedience they could not refuse to render. Cyrus, they said, had been a father, Cambyses a master, but Darius was only a pedler greedy of gain. The chief reason for this division of the empire into provinces was, indeed, fiscal rather than political: to arrange the incidence of taxation in his province, to collect the revenue in due time and forward the total amount to the imperial treasury, formed the fundamental duty of a satrap, to which all others had to yield. Persia proper was exempt from the payment of any fixed sum, its inhabitants being merely required to offer presents to the king whenever he passed through their districts. These semi-compulsory gifts were proportioned to the fortunes of the individual contributors; they might consist merely of an ox or a sheep, a little milk or cheese, some dates, a handful of flour, or some vegetables. The other provinces, after being subjected to a careful survey, were assessed partly in money, partly in kind, according to their natural capacity or wealth. The smallest amount of revenue raised in any province amounted to 170 talents of silver--the sum, for instance, collected from Arachosia with its dependencies Gedrosia and Grandara; while Egypt yielded a revenue of 700 talents, and the amount furnished by Babylon, the wealthiest province of all, amounted to 1000 talents. The total revenue of the empire reached the enormous sum of.£3,311,997, estimated by weight of silver, which is equivalent to over £26,000,000 of modern English money, if the greater value of silver in antiquity is taken into consideration. In order to facilitate the collection of the revenue, Darius issued the gold and silver coins which are named after him. On the obverse side these darics are stamped with a figure of the sovereign, armed with the bow or javelin. They were coined on the scale of 3000 gold darics to one talent, each daric weighing normally.2788 oz. troy, and being worth exactly 20 silver drachmae or Medic shekels; so that the relative value of the two metals was approximately 1 to 13 1/2|.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a specimen in the Bibliothèque
Nationale.

The most ancient type of daric was thick and irregular in shape, and rudely stamped, but of remarkable fineness, the amount of alloy being never more than three per cent. The use of this coinage was nowhere obligatory, and it only became general in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, where it met the requirements of international traffic and political relations, and in the payment of the army and the navy. In the interior, the medium of exchange used in wholesale and retail commercial transactions continued to be metals estimated by weight, and the kings of Persia themselves preferred to store their revenues in the shape of bullion; as the metal was received at the royal treasury it was melted and poured into clay moulds, and was minted into money only gradually, according to the whim or necessity of the moment.*

* Arrian relates that Alexander found 50,000 talents weight
of silver in the treasury at Susa; other hoards quite as
rich were contained in the palaces of Persepolis and
Pasargadæ.

Taxes in kind were levied even more largely than in money, but the exact form they assumed in the different regions of the empire has not yet been ascertained. The whole empire was divided into districts, which were charged with the victualling of the army and the court, and Babylon alone bore a third of the charges under this head. We learn elsewhere that Egypt was bound to furnish corn for the 120,000 men of the army of occupation, and that the fisheries of the Fayum yielded the king a yearly revenue of 240 talents. The Medes furnished similarly 100,000 sheep, 4000 mules, and 3000 horses; the Armenians, 30,000 foals; the Cilicians, 365 white horses, one for each day in the year; the Babylonians, 500 youthful eunuchs; and any city or town which produced or manufactured any valuable commodity was bound to furnish a regular supply to the sovereign. Thus, Chalybon provided wine; Libya and the Oases, salt; India, dogs, with whose support four large villages in Babylonia were charged; the Æolian Assos, cheese; and other places, in like manner, wool, wines, dyes, medicines, and chemicals. These imperial taxes, though they seem to us somewhat heavy, were not excessive, but taken by themselves they give us no idea of the burdens which each province had to resign itself to bear. The state provided no income for the satraps; their maintenance and that of their suite were charged on the province, and they made ample exactions on the natives. The province of Babylon was required to furnish its satrap daily with an _ardeb_ of silver; Egypt, India, Media, and Syria each provided a no less generous allowance for its governor, and the poorest provinces were not less heavily burdened. The satraps required almost as much to satisfy their requirements as did the king; but for the most part they fairly earned their income, and saved more to their subjects than they extorted from them. They repressed brigandage, piracy, competition between the various cities, and local wars; while quarrels, which formerly would have been settled by an appeal to arms, were now composed before their judgment-seats, and in case of need the rival factions were forcibly compelled to submit to their decisions. They kept up the roads, and afforded complete security to travellers by night and day; they protected industries and agriculture, and, in accordance with the precepts of their religious code, they accounted it an honourable task to break up waste land or replant deserted sites. Darius himself did not disdain to send congratulations to a satrap who had planted trees in Asia Minor, and laid out one of those wooded parks in which the king delighted to refresh himself after the fatigues of government, by the exercise of walking or in the pleasures of the chase. In spite of its defects, the system of government inaugurated by Darius secured real prosperity to his subjects, and to himself a power far greater than that enjoyed by any of his predecessors. It rendered revolts on the part of the provincial governors extremely difficult, and enabled the court to draw up a regular budget and provide for its expenses without any undue pressure on its subjects; in one point only was it defective, but that point was a cardinal one, namely, in the military organisation. Darius himself maintained, for his personal protection, a bodyguard recruited from the Persians and the Medes. It was divided into three corps, consisting respectively of 2000 cavalry, 2000 infantry of noble birth, armed with lances whose shafts were ornamented below with apples of gold or silver--whence their name of _mêlophori_--and under them the 10,000 immortals, in ten battalions, the first of which had its lances ornamented with golden pomegranates. This guard formed the nucleus of the standing army, which could be reinforced by the first and second grades of Persian and Median feudal nobility at the first summons. Forces of varying strength garrisoned the most important fortresses of the empire, such as Sardes, Memphis, Elephantine, Daphnæ, Babylon, and many others, to hold the restless natives in check. These were, indeed, the only regular troops on which the king could always rely. Whenever a war broke out which demanded no special effort, the satraps of the provinces directly involved summoned the military contingents of the cities and vassal states under their control, and by concerted action endeavoured to bring the affair to a successful issue without the necessity of an appeal to the central authority. If, on the contrary, troubles arose which threatened the welfare of the whole empire, and the sovereign felt called upon to conduct the campaign in person, he would mobilise his guard, and summon the reserves from several provinces or even from all of them. Veritable hordes of recruits then poured in, but these masses of troops, differing from each other in their equipment and methods of fighting, in disposition and in language, formed a herd of men rather than an army. They had no cohesion or confidence in themselves, and their leaders, unaccustomed to command such enormous numbers, suffered themselves to be led rather than exercise authority as guides. Any good qualities the troops may have possessed were neutralised by lack of unity in their methods of action, and their actual faults exaggerated this defect, so that, in spite of their splendid powers of endurance and their courage under every ordeal, they ran the risk of finding themselves in a state of hopeless inferiority when called upon to meet armies very much smaller, but composed of homogenous elements, all animated with the same spirit and drilled in the same school.