* 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 Dadarshish. Vidarna, encountered Khshatrita near Marush, in the mountainous region of the old Namri, on the 27th of Anamaka, and gave him battle; but though he claimed the victory, the result was so indecisive that he halted in Kambadene, at the entrance to the gorges of the Zagros mountains, and was there obliged to await reinforcements before advancing further. Dadarshish, on his side, gained three victories over the Armenians—one near Zuzza on the 8th of Thuravahara, another at Tigra ten days later, and the third on the 2nd of Thaigarshish, at a place not far from Uhyama—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 Dadarshish 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 Anamaka, 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 Frada. 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 Gaumata 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 Vahyazdata rose up in the town of Tarava in the district of Yautiya, and announced himself as the younger son of Cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. A preliminary success gained by Hystaspes at Vispauzatish, 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 Vahyazdata, 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 Kambadcne, and crushed the enemy near the town of Kundurush, on the 20th of Adukanish, 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 Baga 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 Achaemenian' 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 Autiyara, and Artavardiya defeated Vahyazdata for the first time at Eakha in Persia. Vahyazdata had committed the mistake of dividing his forces and sending a portion of them to Arachosia. Vivana, the governor of this province, twice crushed the invaders, and almost at the same time the Persian Dadardish of Bactriana was triumphing over Frada 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 Chaldaea. 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 Vindafra 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 Vahyazdata, near Mount Paraga, on the 6th of Garmapada, 618 B.C., besieged him in his fortress of Uvadeshaya, 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—Athrina, Nadinta-bel, Khshatrita, Vahyazdata, 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 Vahyazdata, 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. Pheretimo 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 Lagidae 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-harrisniti 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. Uzaharrisniti, escorted back with honour to his native city, re-established there the colleges of sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of Nit 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 Menes, 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 corvee, 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 shekhs of the desert preserved their authority over the marauding and semi-nomadic tribes of Idumasa, Nabatsea, Moab, and Ammon, and the wandering Bedawin 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 Hecataeus of Miletus. The great Behistun Inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and the Inscription of Nakhsh-i-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-i-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—Uvaya, Elam, in which lay Susa, one of the favourite residences of Darius; Babirus (Babylon) and Chaldaea; Athura, the ancient kingdom of Assyria; Arabaya, 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 AEgean; Yauna, 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 Achaemenids,*** 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 king's 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 king's 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 Achaemenian 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 role 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 Matiene and the country of the Cossaeans, 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 Achaemenids, and was traversed by their postal couriers.

** Mention of the Eye of the king occurs in Herodotus, in AEschylus, 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.L3,311,997, estimated by weight of silver, which is equivalent to over L26,000,000 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 Bibliotheque 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 Pasargadae.

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 AEolian 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 melophori—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, Daphnae, 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.

By continual conquests, the Persians were now reduced to only two outlets for their energies, in two opposite directions—in the east towards India, in the west towards Greece. Everywhere else their advance was arrested by the sea or other obstacles almost as impassable to their heavily armed battalions: to the north the empire was bounded by the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and the Siberian steppes; to the south, by the Indian Ocean, the sandy table-land of Arabia, and the African deserts. At one moment, about 512 B.C., it is possible that they pushed forward towards the east.*

* India is not referred to in the Behistun Inscription, but is mentioned in one of the Inscriptions of Persepolis, and in that of Nakhsh-i-Rustem. The campaign in which it was subjugated must be placed about 512 B.C.



From the Iranian plateau they beheld from afar the immense plain of the Hapta Hindu (or the Punjab). Darius invaded this territory, and made himself master of extensive districts which he formed into a new satrapy, that of India, but subsequently, renouncing all idea of pushing eastward as far as the Granges, he turned his steps towards the southeast. A fleet, constructed at Peukela and placed under the command of a Greek admiral, Scylax of Caryanda, descended the Indus by order of the king;* subjugating the tribes who dwelt along the banks as he advanced, Scylax at length reached the ocean, on which he ventured forth, undismayed by the tides, and proceeded in a westerly direction, exploring, in less than thirty months, the shores of Gedrosia and Arabia.

* Scylax published an account of his voyage which was still extant in the time of Aristotle. Hugo Berger questions the authenticity of the circumnavigation of Arabia, as that of the circumnavigation of Africa under Necho.

Once on the threshold of India, the Persians saw open before them a brilliant and lucrative career: the circumstances which prevented them from following up this preliminary success are unknown—perhaps the first developments of nascent Buddhism deterred them—but certain it is that they arrested their steps when they had touched merely the outskirts of the basin of the Indus, and retreated at once towards the west. The conquest of Lydia, and subsequently of the Greek cities and islands along the coast of the AEgean, had doubtless enriched the empire by the acquisition of active subject populations, whose extraordinary aptitude in the arts of peace as well as of war might offer incalculable resources to a sovereign who should know how to render them tractable and rule them wisely. Not only did they possess the elements of a navy as enterprising and efficacious as that of the Phoenicians, but the perfection of their equipment and their discipline on land rendered them always superior to any Asiatic army, in whatever circumstances, unless they were crushed by overwhelming numbers. Inquisitive, bold, and restless, greedy of gain, and inured to the fatigues and dangers of travel, the Greeks were to be encountered everywhere—in Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Babylon, and even Persia itself; and it was a Greek, we must remember, whom the great king commissioned to navigate the course of the Indus and the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the very ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, their impatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness to civic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, rendered them the most dangerous subjects imaginable to govern, and their loyalty very uncertain. Moreover, their admission as vassals of the Persian empire had not altered their relations with European Greece, and commercial transactions between the opposite shores of the AEgean, inter-marriages, the travels of voyagers, movements of mercenaries, and political combinations, went on as freely and frequently under the satraps of Sardes as under the Mermnadas. It was to Corinth, Sparta, and Athens that the families banished by Cyrus after his conquest fled for refuge, and every time a change of party raised a new tyrant to power in one of the AEolian, Ionian, or Doric communities, the adherents of the deposed ruler rushed in similar manner to seek shelter among their friends across the sea, sure to repay their hospitality should occasion ever require it. Plots and counterplots were formed between the two shores, without any one paying much heed to the imperial authority of Persia, and the constant support which the subject Greeks found among their free brethren was bound before long to rouse the anger of the court at Susa. When Polycrates, foreseeing the fall of Amasis, placed himself under the suzerainty of Cambyses, the Corinthians and Spartans came to besiege him in Samos without manifesting any respect for the great king. They failed in this particular enterprise,* but later on, after Oroetes had been seized and put to death, it was to the Spartans that the successor of Polycrates, Maaandrios, applied for help to assert his claim to the possession of the tyranny against Syloson, brother of Polycrates and a personal friend of Darius.**

* The date of the death of Polycrates must be placed between that of the conquest of Egypt and that of the revolt of Gaumata, either in 524 or 523 B.C.

** The reinstatement of Syloson may be placed in 516 B.C., about the time when Darius was completing the reorganisation of the empire and preparing to attack Greece.

This constant intervention of the foreigner was in evident contradiction to the spirit which had inspired the reorganisation of the empire. Just when efforts were being made to strengthen the imperial power and ensure more effective obedience from the provincials by the institution of satrapies, it was impossible to put up with acts of unwarrantable interference, which would endanger the prestige of the sovereign and the authority of his officers. Conquest presented the one and only natural means of escape from the difficulties of the present situation and of preventing their recurrence; when satraps should rule over the European as well as over the Asiatic coasts of the AEgean, all these turbulent Greeks would be forced to live at peace with one another and in awe of the sovereign, as far as their fickle nature would allow. It was not then, as is still asserted, the mere caprice of a despot which brought upon the Greek world the scourge of the Persian wars, but the imperious necessity of security, which obliges well-organised empires to subjugate in turn all the tribes and cities which cause constant trouble on its frontiers. Darius, who was already ruler of a good third of the Hellenic world, from Trebizond to Barca, saw no other means of keeping what he already possessed, and of putting a stop to the incessant fomentation of rebellion in his own territories, than to conquer the mother-country as he had conquered the colonies, and to reduce to subjection the whole of European Hellas.



CHAPTER II—THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD EASTERN WORLD

THE MEDIAN WAR—THE LAST NATIVE DYNASTIES OF EGYPT—THE EASTERN WORLD ON THE EVE OP THE MACEDONIAN CONQUEST.

The Persians in 512 B.C.—European Greece and the dangers which its independence presented to the safety of the empire—The preliminaries of the Median wars: the Scythian expedition, the conquest of Thrace and Macedonia—The Ionic revolt, the intervention of Athens and the taking of Sardes; the battle of Lade—Mardonius in Thrace and in Macedonia.

The Median wars—The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes: the taking of Eretria, the battle of Marathon (490)—The revolt of Egypt under Khabbisha; the death of Darius and the accession of Xerxes I.—The revolt of Babylon under Shamasherib—The invasion of Greece: Artemision, Thermopylae, the taking of Athens, Salamis—Platsae and the final retreat of the Persians: Mycale—The war carried on by the Athenians and the league of Delos: Inaros, the campaigns in Cyprus and Egypt, the peace of Oallias—The death of Xerxes.

Artaxerxes I. (465-424): the revolt of Megabyzos—The palaces of Pasargadae. Persepolis, and Susa; Persian architecture and sculpture; court life, the king and his harem—Revolutions in the palace—Xerxes I., Sekudianos, Darius II.—Intervention in Greek affairs and the convention of Miletus; the end of the peace of Gallias—Artaxerxes II. (404-359) and Gyrus the Younger: the battle of Kunaxa and the retreat of the ten thousand (401).

Troubles in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt—Amyrtxus and the XXVIIIth Saite dynasty—The XXIXth Sebennytic dynasty—Nephorites I, Hakoris, Psammutis, their alliances with Evagoras and with the states of Continental Greece—The XXXth Mendesian dynasty—Nectanebo I, Tachos and the invasion of Syria, the revolt of Nectanebo II.—The death of Artaxerxes II.—The accession of Ochus (359 B.C.), his unfortunate wars in the Delta, the conquest of Egypt (342) and the reconstitution of the empire.

The Eastern world: Elam, Urartu, the Syrian kingdoms, the ancient Semitic states decayed and decaying—Babylon in its decline—The Jewish state and its miseries—Nehemiah, Ezra—Egypt in the eyes of the Greeks: Sais, the Delta, the inhabitants of the marshes—Memphis, its monuments, its population—Travels in Upper Egypt: the Fayum, Khemmis, Thebes, Elephantine—The apparent vigour and actual feebleness of Egypt.

Persia and its powerlessness to resist attack: the rise of Macedonia, Philippi —Arses (337) and Darius Codomannos (336)—Alexander the Great—The invasion of Asia—The battle of Granicus and the conquest of the Asianic peninsula—Issus, the siege of Tyre and of Gaza, the conquest of Egypt, the foundation of Alexandria—Arbela: the conquest of Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana—The death of Darius and the last days of the old Eastern world.



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CHAPTER II—THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD EASTERN WORLD

The Median wars—The last native dynasties of Egypt—The Eastern world on the eve of the Macedonian conquest.

[Drawn by Boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the Museum of St. Irene. The vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of Nectanebo I., now in the Egyptian Museum at the Vatican.]

Darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies had taught him not only the condition and needs of Asia Minor, but of the teaching the Scythians such a lesson as would prevent them from bearing down upon his right flank during his march, or upon his rear while engaged in a crucial struggle in the Hellenic peninsula. On the other hand, the geographical information possessed by the Persians with regard to the Danubian regions was of so vague a character, that Darius must have believed the Scythians to have been nearer to his line of operations, and their country less desolate than was really the case.* A flotilla, commanded by Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, ventured across the Black Sea in 515,** landed a few thousand men upon the opposite shore, and brought back prisoners who furnished those in command with the information they required.***

* The motives imputed to Darius by the ancients for making this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of the Scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes of posterity.

** The reconnaissance of Ariaramnes is intimately connected with the expedition itself in Ctesias, and could have preceded it by a few months only. If we take for the date of the latter the year 514-513, the date given in the Table of the Capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than 515. Ariaramnes was not satrap of Cappadocia, for Cappadocia belonged then to the satrapy of Daskylion.

*** The supplementary paragraphs of the Inscription of Behistun speak of an expedition of Darius against the Sako, which is supposed to have had as its objective either the sea of Aral or the Tigris. Would it not be possible to suppose that the sea mentioned is the Pontus Euxinus, and to take the mutilated text of Behistun to be a description either of the campaign beyond the Danube, or rather of the preliminary reconnaissance of Ariaramnes a year before the expedition itself?

Darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossed the Bosphorus in 514, with a body of troops which tradition computed at 800,000, conquered the eastern coast of Thrace, and won his way in a series of conflicts as far as the Ister. The Ionian sailors built for him a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he then started forward into the steppes in search of the enemy. The Scythians refused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him on every side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowly retreated into the interior, leaving Darius to face the vast extent of the steppes and the terrors of famine. Later tradition stated that he wandered for two months in these solitudes between the Ister and the Tanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a series of earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of Herodotus, and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely the loss of a few sick men. The barbarians stole a march upon him, and advised the Greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities, and abandon the Persians to their fate. The tyrant of the Ohersonnesus, Miltiades the Athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; but Histiasus, the governor of Miletus, opposed it, and eventually carried his point. Darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, and returned to Asia.*

* Ctesias limits the campaign beyond the Danube to a fifteen days' march; and Strabo places the crossing of the Danube near the mouth of that river, at the island of Peuke, and makes the expedition stop at the Dniester. Neither the line of direction of the Persian advance nor their farthest point reached is known. The eight forts which they were said to have built, the ruins of which were shown on the banks of the Oaros as late as the time of Herodotus, were probably tumuli similar to those now met with on the Russian steppes, the origin of which is ascribed by the people to persons celebrated in their history or traditions.

The Greek towns of Thrace thought themselves rid of him, and rose in revolt; but he left 80,000 men in Europe who, at first under Megabyzos, and then under Otanes, reduced them to subjection one after another, and even obliged Amyntas I., the King of Macedonia, to become a tributary of the empire. The expedition had not only failed to secure the submission of the Scythians, but apparently provoked reprisals on their part, and several of their bands penetrated ere long into the Chersonnesus. It nevertheless was not without solid result, for it showed that Darius, even if he could not succeed in subjugating the savage Danubian tribes, had but little to fear from them; it also secured for him a fresh province, that of Thrace, and, by the possession of Macedonia, brought his frontier into contact with Northern Greece. The overland route, in any case the more satisfactory of the two, was now in the hands of the invader.

Revolutions at Athens prevented him from setting out on his expedition as soon as he had anticipated. Hippias had been overthrown in 510, and having taken refuge at Sigoum, was seeking on all sides for some one to avenge him against his fellow-citizens. The satrap of Sardes, Arta-phernes, declined at first to listen to him, for he hoped that the Athenians themselves would appeal to him, without his being obliged to have recourse to their former tyrant. As a matter of fact, they sent him an embassy, and begged his help against the Spartans. He promised it on condition that they would yield the traditional homage of earth and water, and their delegates complied with his demand, though on their return to Athens they were disowned by the citizens (508). Artaphernes, disappointed in this direction, now entered into communications with Hippias, and such close relations soon existed between the two that the Athenians showed signs of uneasiness. Two years later they again despatched fresh deputies to Sardes to beg the satrap not to espouse the cause of their former ruler. For a reply the satrap summoned them to recall the exiles, and, on their refusing (506),* their city became thenceforward the ostensible objective of the Persian army and fleet. The partisans of Hippias within the town were both numerous and active; it was expected that they would rise and hand over the city as soon as their chief should land on a point of territory with a force sufficient to intimidate the opposing faction. Athens in the hands of Hippias, would mean Athens in the hands of the Persians, and Greece accessible to the Persian hordes at all times by the shortest route. Darius therefore prepared to make the attempt, and in order to guard against any mishap, he caused all the countries that he was about to attack to be explored beforehand. Spies attached to his service were sent to scour the coasts of the Peloponnesus and take note of all its features, the state of its ports, the position of the islands and the fortresses; and they penetrated as far as Italy, if we may believe the story subsequently told to Herodotus.**

* Herodotus fixes the date at the time when the Athenians first ostracised the principal partisans of the Pisistratids, and amongst others Hipparchus, son of Charmes, i.e. in 507-6.

** Herodotus said that Darius sent spies with the physician Democedes of Crotona shortly before the Scythian expedition.

While he thus studied the territory from a distance, he did not neglect precautions nearer to hand, but ordered the Milesians to occupy in his name the principal stations of the AEgean between Ionia and Attica. Histiasus, whose loyalty had stood Darius in such good stead at the bridge over the Danube, did not, however, appear to him equal to so delicate a task: the king summoned him to Susa on some slight pretext, loaded him with honours, and replaced him by his nephew Aristagoras. Aristagoras at once attempted to justify the confidence placed in him by taking possession of Naxos; but the surprise that he had prepared ended in failure, discontent crept in among his men, and after a fruitless siege of four months he was obliged to withdraw (499).* His failure changed the tide of affairs. He was afraid that the Persians would regard it as a crime, and this fear prompted him to risk everything to save his fortune and his life. He retired from his office as tyrant, exhorted the Milesians, who were henceforth free to do so, to make war on the barbarians, and seduced from their allegiance the crews of the vessels just returned from Naxos, and still lying in the mouths of the Meander; the tyrants who commanded them were seized, some exiled, and some put to death. The AEolians soon made common cause with their neighbours the Ionians, and by the last days of autumn the whole of the AEgean littoral was under arms (499).**

* Herodotus attributes an unlikely act of treachery to Megabates the Persian, who was commanding the Iranian contingent attached to the Ionian troops.

** The Dorian cities took no part in the revolt—at least Herodotus never mentions them among the confederates. The three Ionian cities of Ephesus, Kolophon, and Lebedos also seem to have remained aloof, and we know that the Ephesians were not present at the battle of Lade.

From the outset Aristagoras realised that they would be promptly overcome if Asiatic Hellas were not supported by Hellas in Europe. While the Lydian satrap was demanding reinforcements from his sovereign, Aristagoras therefore repaired to the Peloponnesus as a suppliant for help. Sparta, embroiled in one of her periodical quarrels with Argos, gave him an insolent refusal;* even Athens, where the revolution had for the moment relieved her from the fear of the Pisistratidaa and the terrors of a barbarian invasion, granted him merely twenty triremes—enough to draw down reprisals on her immediately after their defeat, without sensibly augmenting the rebels' chances of success; to the Athenian contingent Bretria added five vessels, and this comprised his whole force. The leaders of the movement did not hesitate to assume the offensive with these slender resources. As early as the spring of 498, before Artaphernes had received reinforcements, they marched suddenly on Sardes. They burnt the lower town, but, as on many previous occasions, the citadel held out; after having encamped for several days at the foot of its rock, they returned to Ephesus laden with the spoil.**

* Aristagoras had with him a map of the world engraved on a bronze plate, which was probably a copy of the chart drawn up by Hecatseus of Miletus.

** Herodotus says that the Ionians on their return suffered a serious reverse near Ephesus. The author seems to have adopted some Lydian or Persian tradition hostile to the Ionians, for Charon of Lampsacus, who lived nearer to the time of these events, mentions only the retreat, and hints at no defeat. If the expedition had really ended in this disaster, it is not at all likely that the revolt would have attained the dimensions it did immediately afterwards.

This indeed was a check to their hostilities, and such an abortive attempt was calculated to convince them of their powerlessness against the foreign rule. None the less, however, when it was generally known that they had burnt the capital of Asia Minor, and had with impunity made the representative of the great king feel in his palace the smoke of the conflagration, the impression was such as actual victory could have produced. The cities which had hitherto hesitated to join them, now espoused their cause—the ports of the Troad and the Hellespont, Lycia, the Carians, and Cyprus—and their triumph would possibly have been secured had Greece beyond the AEgean followed the general movement and joined the coalition. Sparta, however, persisted in her indifference, and Athens took the opportunity of withdrawing from the struggle. The Asiatic Greeks made as good a defence as they could, but their resources fell far short of those of the enemy, and they could do no more than delay the catastrophe and save their honour by their bravery. Cyprus was the first to yield during the winter of 498-497. Its vessels, in conjunction with those of the Ionians, dispersed the fleet of the Phoenicians off Salamis, but the troops of their princes, still imbued with the old system of military tactics, could not sustain the charge of the Persian battalions; they gave way under the walls of Salamis, and their chief, Onesilus, was killed in a final charge of his chariotry.*

* The movement in Cyprus must have begun in the winter of 499-498, for Onesilus was already in the field when Darius heard of the burning of Sardes; and as it lasted for a year, it must have been quelled in the winter of 498-497.

His death effected the ruin of the Ionian cause in Cyprus, which on the continent suffered at the same time no less serious reverses. The towns of the Hellespont and of AEolia succumbed one after another; Kyme and Clazomenae next opened their gates; the Carians were twice beaten, once near the White Columns, and again near Labranda, and their victory at Pedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the Persian arms, so that towards the close of 497 the struggle was almost entirely concentrated round Miletus. Aristagoras, seeing that his cause was now desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriate themselves. He fell fighting against the Edonians of Thrace, attempting to force the important town of Enneahodoi, near the mouth of the Strymon (496);* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and Histiseus, who had been sent to Sardes by the great king to negotiate the submission of the rebels, failed in his errand. Even when blockaded on the land side, Miletus could defy an attack so long as communication with the sea was not cut off.

* In Herodotus the town is not named, but a passage in Thucydides shows that it was Enneahodoi, afterwards Amphipolis, and that the death of Aristagoras took place thirty-two years before the Athenian defeat at Drabeskos, i.e. probably in 496.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta group in the New York Museum.

Darius therefore brought up the Phoenician fleet, reinforced it with the Cypriot contingents, and despatched the united squadrons to the Archipelago during the summer of 494. The confederates, even after the disasters of the preceding years, still possessed 353 vessels, most of them of 30 to 50 oars; they were, however, completely defeated near the small island of Lade, in the latter part of the summer, and Miletus, from that moment cut off from the rest of the world, capitulated a few weeks later. A small proportion of its inhabitants continued to dwell in the ruined city, but the greater number were carried away to Ampe, at the mouth of the Tigris, in the marshes of the Nar-Marratum.*

* The year 497, i.e. three years before the capture of the town, appears to be an unlikely date for the battle of Lade: Miletus must have fallen in the autumn or winter months following the defeat.

Caria was reconquered during the winter of 494-493, and by the early part of 493, Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, the cities of the Chersonnesus and of Propontis—in short, all which yet held out—were reduced to obedience. Artaphernes reorganised his vanquished states entirely in the interest of Persia. He did not interfere with the constitutions of the several republics, but he reinstated the tyrants. He regulated and augmented the various tributes, prohibited private wars, and gave to the satrap the right of disposing of all quarrels at his own tribunal. The measures which he adopted had long after his day the force of law among the Asiatic Greeks, and it was by them they regulated their relations with the representatives of the great king.

If Darius had ever entertained doubts as to the necessity for occupying European Greece to ensure the preservation of peace in her Asiatic sister-country, the revolt of Ionia must have completely dissipated them. It was a question whether the cities which had so obstinately defied him for six long years, would ever resign themselves to servitude as long as they saw the peoples of their race maintaining their independence on the opposite shores of the AEgean, and while the misdeeds of which the contingents of Eretria and Athens had been guilty during the rebellion remained unpunished. A tradition, which sprang up soon after the event, related that on hearing of the burning of Sardes, Darius had bent his bow and let fly an arrow towards the sky, praying Zeus to avenge him on the Athenians: and at the same time he had commanded one of his slaves to repeat three times a day before him, at every meal, "Sire, remember the Athenians!"*

* The legend is clearly older than the time of Herodotus, for in the Persae of Eschylus the shade of Darius, when coming out of his tomb, cries to the old men, "Remember Athens and Greece!"

As a matter of fact, the intermeddling of these strangers between the sovereign and his subjects was at once a serious insult to the Achaemenids and a cause of anxiety to the empire; to leave it unpunished would have been an avowal of weakness or timidity, which would not fail to be quickly punished in Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and on the Scythian frontiers, and would ere long give rise to similar acts of revolt and interference. Darius, therefore, resumed his projects, but with greater activity than before, and with a resolute purpose to make a final reckoning with the Greeks, whatever it might cost him. The influence of his nephew Mardonius at first inclined him to adopt the overland route, and he sent him into Thrace with a force of men and a fleet of galleys sufficient to overcome all obstacles. Mardonius marched against the Greek colonies and native tribes which had throw off the yoke during the Ionian war, and reduced those who had still managed to preserve their independence. The Bryges opposed him with such determination, that summer was drawing to its close before he was able to continue his march. He succeeded, however, in laying hands on Macedonia, and obliged its king, Alexander, to submit to the conditions accepted by his father Amyntas; but at this juncture half of his fleet was destroyed by a tempest in the vicinity of Mount Athos, and the disaster, which took place just as winter was approaching, caused him to suspend his operations (492). He was recalled on account of his failure, and the command was transferred to Datis the Mede and to the Persian Artaphernes. Darius, however, while tentatively using the land routes through Greece for his expeditions, had left no stone unturned to secure for himself that much-coveted sea-way which would carry him straight into the heart of the enemy's position, and he had opened negotiations with the republics of Greece proper. Several of them had consented to tender him earth and water, among them being AEgina,* and besides this, the state of the various factions in Athens was such, that he had every reason to believe that he could count on the support of a large section of the population when the day came for him to disembark his force on the shores of Attica.

* Herodotus states that all the island-dwelling Greeks submitted to the great king. But Herodotus himself says later on that the people of Naxos, at all events, proved refractory.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des Medailles.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of Byblos in the Cabinet des Medailles.

He therefore decided to direct his next expedition against Athens itself, and he employed the year 491 in concentrating his troops and triremes in Cilicia, at a sufficient distance from the European coast to ensure their safety from any sudden attack. In the spring of 490 the army recruited from among the most warlike nations of the empire—the Persians, Medes, and Sakse—went aboard the Phoenician fleet, while galleys built on a special model were used as transports for the cavalry. The entire convoy sailed safely out of the mouth of the Pyramos to the port of Samos, coasting the shores of Asia Minor, and then passing through the Cyclades, from Samos to Naxos, where they met with no opposition from the inhabitants, headed for Delos, where Datis offered a sacrifice to Apollo, whom he confounded with his god Mithra; finally they reached Eubaea, where Eretria and Carystos vainly endeavoured to hold their own against them. Eretria was reduced to ashes, as Sardes had been, and such of its citizens as had not fled into the mountains at the enemy's approach were sent into exile among the Kissians in the township of Arderikka. Hippias meanwhile had joined the Persians and had been taken into their confidence. While awaiting the result of the intrigues of his partisans in Athens, he had advised Datis to land on the eastern coast of Attica, in the neighbourhood of Marathon, at the very place from whence his father Pisistratus had set out forty years before to return to his country after his first exile. The position was well chosen for the expected engagement.



The bay and the strand which bordered it afforded an excellent station for the fleet, and the plain, in spite of its marshes and brushwood, was one of those rare spots where cavalry might be called into play without serious drawbacks. A few hours on foot would bring the bulk of the infantry up to the Acropolis by a fairly good road, while by the same time the fleet would be able to reach the roadstead of Phalerum. All had been arranged beforehand for concerted action when the expected rising should take place; but it never did take place, and instead of the friends whom the Persians expected, an armed force presented itself, commanded by the polemarch Callimachus and the ten strategi, among whom figured the famous Miltiades. At the first news of the disembarkation of the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger Phidippides to Sparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sent forward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. They comprised about 10,000 hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as many more light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by 1000 Plataeans. They encamped in the valley of Avlona, around a small temple of Heracles, in a position commanding the roads into the interior, and from whence they could watch the enemy without exposing themselves to an unexpected attack.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Amedee Hauvette.

The two armies watched each other for a fortnight, Datis expecting a popular outbreak which would render an engagement unnecessary, Miltiades waiting patiently till the Lacedaemonians had come up, or till some false move on the part of his opponent gave him the opportunity of risking a decisive action. What took place at the end of this time is uncertain. Whether Datis grew tired of inaction, or whether he suddenly resolved to send part of his forces by sea, so as to land on the neighbouring shore of Athens, and Miltiades fell upon his rear when only half his men had got on board the fleet, is not known. At any rate, Miltiades, with the Plataeans on his left, set his battalions in movement without warning, and charged the enemy with a rush. The Persians and the Sakae broke the centre of the line, but the two wings, after having dispersed the assailants on their front, wheeled round upon them and overcame them: 6000 barbarians were left dead upon the field as against some 200 Athenians and Plataeans, but by dint of their valiant efforts the remainder managed to save the fleet with a loss of only seven galleys. Datis anchored that evening off the island of AEgilia, and at the same moment the victorious army perceived a signal hoisted on the heights of Pentelicus apparently to attract his attention; when he set sail the next morning and, instead of turning eastwards, proceeded to double Cape Sunion, Miltiades had no longer any doubt that treachery was at work, and returned to Athens by forced marches. Datis, on entering the roads of Phalerum, found the shore defended, and the army that he had left at Marathon encamped upon the Cynosarge. He cruised about for a few hours in sight of the shore, and finding no movement made to encourage him to land, he turned his vessels about and set sail for Ionia.

The material loss to the Persians was inconsiderable, for even the Cyclades remained under their authority; Miltiades, who endeavoured to retake them, met with a reverse before Paros, and the Athenians, disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt, made no further efforts to regain them. The moral effect of the victory on Greece and the empire was extraordinary. Up till then the Median soldiers had been believed to be the only invincible troops in the world; the sight of them alone excited dread in the bravest hearts, and their name was received everywhere with reverential awe. But now a handful of hoplites from one of the towns of the continent, and that not the most renowned for its prowess, without cavalry or bowmen, had rushed upon and overthrown the most terrible of all Oriental battalions, the Persians and the Sakae. Darius could not put up with such an affront without incurring the risk of losing his prestige with the people of Asia and Europe, who up till then had believed him all-powerful, and of thus exposing himself to the possibility of revolutions in recently subdued countries, such as Egypt, which had always retained the memory of her past greatness. In the interest of his own power, as well as to soothe his wounded pride, a renewed attack was imperative, and this time it must be launched with such dash and vigour that all resistance would be at once swept before it. Events had shown him that the influence of the Pisistratidae had not been strong enough to secure for him the opening of the gates of Athens, and that the sea route did not permit of his concentrating an adequate force of cavalry and infantry on the field of battle; he therefore reverted to the project of an expedition by the overland route, skirting the coasts of Thrace and Macedonia. During three years he collected arms, provisions, horses, men, and vessels, and was ready to commence hostilities in the spring of 487, when affairs in Egypt prevented him. This country had undeniably prospered under his suzerainty. It formed, with Cyrene and the coast of Libya, the sixth of his satrapies, to which were attached the neighbouring Nubian tribes of the southern frontier.* The Persian satrap, installed at the White Wall in the ancient palace of the Pharaohs, was supported by an army of 120,000 men, who occupied the three entrenched camps of the Saites—Daphnae and Marea on the confines of the Delta, and Elephantine in the south.** Outside these military stations, where the authority of the great king was exercised in a direct manner, the ancient feudal organisation existed intact. The temples retained their possessions and their vassals, and the nobles within their principalities were as independent and as inclined to insurrection as in past times. The annual tribute, the heaviest paid by any province with the exception of Cossaea and Assyria, amounted only to 700 talents of silver. To this sum must be added the farming of the fishing in Lake Moeris, which, according to Herodotus,*** brought in one talent a day during the six months of the high Nile, but, according to Diodorus,**** during the whole year, as well as the 120,000 medimni of wheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnish the court of Susa with Libyan nitre and Nile water; the total of these impositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to the wealth of the Nile valley.

* The Nubian tribes, who are called Ethiopians by Herodotus and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but were obliged to send annually two chaenikes of pure gold, two hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants' tusks, and five young slaves, all under the name of a free gift.

** Herodotus states that in his own time the Persians, like the Saite Pharaohs, still had garrisons at Daphnae and at Elephantine.

*** Herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a third of a talent a day during the six other months.

**** Diodorus Siculus says that the revenue produced by the fisheries in the Lake had been handed over by Moris to his wife for the expenses of her toilet.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Description de l'Egypte.

Commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as the tribute took out of it. Incorporated with an empire which extended over three continents, Egypt had access to regions whither the products of her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. The produce of Ethiopia and the Sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract customers in the markets of Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, and Susa, and the isthmus of Suez and Kosseir were the nearest ports through which Arabia and India could reach the Mediterranean. Darius therefore resumed the work of Necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut afresh the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez. Trilingual stelae in Egyptian, Persian, and Medic were placed at intervals along its banks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which the sovereign had brought his work to a successful end. In a similar manner he utilised the Wadys which wind between Koptos and the Red Sea, and by their means placed the cities of the Said in communication with the "Ladders of Incense," Punt and the Sabaeans.*

* Several of the inscriptions engraved on the rocks of the Wady Hammamat show to what an extent the route was frequented at certain times during the reign. They bear the dates of the 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and 36th years of Darius. The country of Saba (Sheba) is mentioned on one of the stelae of the isthmus.

He extended his favour equally to the commerce which they carried on with the interior of Africa; indeed, in order to ensure the safety of the caravans in the desert regions nearest to the Nile, he skilfully fortified the Great Oasis. He erected at Habit, Kushit, and other places, several of those rectangular citadels with massive walls of unburnt brick, which resisted every effort of the nomad tribes to break through them; and as the temple at Habit, raised in former times by the Theban Pharaohs, had become ruinous, he rebuilt it from its foundations.



Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud. Dush is the Kushit of the hieroglyphs, the Kysis of Graeco-Roman times, and is situated on the southern border of the Great Oasis, about the latitude of Assuan.

He was generous in his gifts to the gods, and even towns as obscure as Edfu was then received from him grants of money and lands. The Egyptians at first were full of gratitude for the favours shown them, but the news of the defeat at Marathon, and the taxes with which the Susian court burdened them in order to make provision for the new war with Greece, aroused a deep-seated discontent, at all events amongst those who, living in the Delta, had had their patriotism or their interests most affected by the downfall of the Saite dynasty. It would appear that the priests of Buto, whose oracles exercised an indisputable influence alike over Greeks and natives, had energetically incited the people to revolt. The storm broke in 486, and a certain Khabbisha, who perhaps belonged to the family of Psammetichus, proclaimed himself king both at Sais and Memphis.*

* Herodotus does not give the name of the leader of the rebellion, but says that it took place in the fourth year after Marathon. A demotic contract in the Turin Museum bears the date of the third month of the second season of the thirty-fifth year of Darius I.: Khabbisha's rebellion therefore broke out between June and September, 486. Stern makes this prince to have been of Libyan origin. From the form of his name, Revillout has supposed that he was an Arab, and Birch was inclined to think that he was a Persian satrap who made a similar attempt to that of Aryandes. But nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to his insurrection against Darius.



Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud.

Darius did not believe the revolt to be of sufficient gravity to delay his plans for any length of time. He hastily assembled a second army, and was about to commence hostilities on the banks of the Nile simultaneously with those on the Hellespont, when he died in 485, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign. He was one of the great sovereigns of the ancient world—the greatest without exception of those who had ruled over Persia. Cyrus and Cambyses had been formidable warriors, and the kingdoms of the Bast had fallen before their arms, but they were purely military sovereigns, and if their successor had not possessed other abilities than theirs, their empire would have shared the fate of that of the Medes and the Chaldaeans; it would have sunk to its former level as rapidly as it had risen, and the splendour of its opening years would have soon faded from remembrance. Darius was no less a general by instinct and training than they, as is proved by the campaigns which procured him his crown; but, after having conquered, he knew how to organise and build up a solid fabric out of the materials which his predecessors had left in a state of chaos; if Persia maintained her rule over the East for two entire centuries, it was due to him and to him alone. The question of the succession, with its almost inevitable popular outbreaks, had at once to be dealt with. Darius had had several wives, and among them, the daughter of Gobryas, who had borne him three children: Artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the heir-presumptive, and had probably filled the office of regent during the expedition in Scythia. But Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who had already been queen under Cambyses and Gaumata, was indignant at the thought of her sons bowing down before the child of a woman who was not of Achaemenian race, and at the moment when affairs in Egypt augured ill for the future, and when the old king, according to custom, had to appoint his successor, she intreated him to choose Khshayarsha, the eldest of her children, who had been borne to the purple, and in whose veins flowed the blood of Cyrus. Darius acceded to her request, and on his death, a few months after, Khshayarsha ascended the throne. His brothers offered no opposition, and the Persian nobles did homage to their new king. Khshayarsha, whom the Greeks called Xerxes, was at that time thirty-four years of age. He was tall, vigorous, of an imposing figure and noble countenance, and he had the reputation of being the handsomest man of his time, but neither his intelligence nor disposition corresponded to his outward appearance; he was at once violent and feeble, indolent, narrow-minded, and sensual, and was easily swayed by his courtiers and mistresses. The idea of a war had no attractions for him, and he was inclined to shirk it. His uncle Artabanus exhorted him to follow his inclination for peace, and he lent a favourable ear to his advice until his cousin Mardonius remonstrated with him, and begged him not to leave the disgrace of Marathon unpunished, or he would lower the respect attached to the name of Persia throughout the world. He wished, at all events, to bring Egyptian affairs to an issue before involving himself in a serious European war. Khabbisha had done his best to prepare a stormy reception for him. During a period of two years Khabbisha had worked at the extension of the entrenchments along the coast and at the mouths of the Nile, in order to repulse the attack that he foresaw would take place simultaneously with that on land, but his precautions proved fruitless when the decisive moment arrived, and he was completely crushed by the superior numbers of Xerxes.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a daric in the Cabinet des Medailles.

The nomes of the Delta which had taken a foremost part in the rising were ruthlessly raided, the priests heavily fined, and the oracle of Buto deprived of its possessions as a punishment for the encouragement freely given to the rebels. Khabbisha disappeared, and his fate is unknown. Achaemenes, one of the king's brothers, was made satrap, but, as on previous occasions, the constitution of the country underwent no modification. The temples retained their inherited domains, and the nomes continued in the hands of their hereditary princes, without a suspicion crossing the mind of Xerxes that his tolerance of the priestly institutions and the local dynasties was responsible for the maintenance of a body of chiefs ever in readiness for future insurrection (483).*

* The only detailed information on this revolt furnished by the Egyptian monuments is given in the Stele of Ptolemy, the son of Lagos. An Apis, whose sarcophagus still exists, was buried by Khabbisha in the Serapoum in the second year of his reign, which proves that he was in possession of Memphis: the White Wall had perhaps been deprived of its garrison in order to reinforce the army prepared against Greece, and it was possibly thus that it fell into the hands of Khabbisha.

Order was once more restored, but he was not yet entirely at liberty to pursue his own plan of action. Classical tradition tells us, that on the occasion of his first visit to Babylon he had offended the religious prejudices of the Chaldaeans by a sacrilegious curiosity. He had, in spite of the entreaties of the priests, forced an entrance into the ancient burial-place of Bel-Etana, and had beheld the body of the old hero preserved in oil in a glass sarcophagus, which, however, was not quite full of the liquid. A notice posted up beside it, threatened the king who should violate the secret of the tomb with a cruel fate, unless he filled the sarcophagus to the brim, and Xerxes had attempted to accomplish this mysterious injunction, but all his efforts had failed. The example set by Egypt and the change of sovereign are sufficient to account for the behaviour of the Babylonians; they believed that the accession of a comparatively young monarch, and the difficulties of the campaign on the banks of the Nile, afforded them a favourable occasion for throwing off the yoke. They elected as king a certain Shamasherib, whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of short duration,* for Megabyzos, son of Zopyrus, who governed the province by hereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months.

* This Shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated from his accession, which is preserved in the British Museum.

It would appear that Xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: he pillaged the treasury and temple of Bel, appropriated the golden statue which decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurat, and carried away many of the people into captivity (581). Babylon never recovered this final blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remained uninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged. The counsellors of Xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lesson to the province by their treatment of Babylon, and thus prevent the possibility of a revolution taking place in Asia while its ruler was fully engaged in a struggle with the Greeks. Meanwhile all preparations were completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southern provinces concentrated at Kritalla, in Cappadocia, merely awaited the signal to set out. Xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of 481, crossed the Halys and took up his quarters at Sardes, while his fleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of Phocae and Kyme.*