IV. THE PERSIAN DYNASTY: DARIUS I TO DARIUS III…

IV. THE PERSIAN DYNASTY: DARIUS I TO DARIUS III

The rebellion of Gaumata or Gometes has often been considered a sort of national movement which restored their ancient supremacy to the Medes, and robbed the Persians for a moment of the empire of Asia. But Gaumata was not a Mede; he was born in Persia in the little town of Pasargada near Mount Arakadris. At first he was only accepted by the central and eastern provinces; but on the death of Cambyses, he was acknowledged by the rest of the empire. He claimed to be Bardius (Smerdis), and that was sufficient to gain him the respect and fidelity of the Persians. Moreover, he lost no time in suppressing all those whom he suspected of being better informed, and fear shut the mouths of the rest. “So nobody, amid either Persians, or Medes, or even amid the Achæmenian race, dreamed of disputing his right.” He exempted the conquered people from three years’ taxation and military service, so as to win them over to his side; and he reigned for six months without anybody suspecting the imposture, and was quite regarded as the legitimate heir to the throne, and as the son of the great Cyrus, and the brother of Cambyses.

But the public credulity was at last shaken, for certain circumstances occurred which gave credence to the revelations made by Cambyses shortly before his death, and which had at the time been imputed to hatred of his brother. According to the usual custom, Gaumata had received the harem of his predecessor with the crown; it was known that the women were sequestered, and could not communicate, either with each other, or with the outside world, except by secret messengers, and at the peril of their lives. The report, however, spread from the harem that the pretended Bardius had had his ears cropped, and this fact showed he was not the son of Cyrus. Darius, son of Hystaspes, the satrap of Hyrcania, who claimed relationship with the royal family, joined with six of the boldest of the highest Persian families, and surprised and killed Gaumata in his palace of Sikathahnvati in Media, 521.

DARIUS I

[Sidenote: [521-519 B.C.]]

It is said that the seven agreed to elect as sovereign the one amongst them whose horse should neigh first at sunrise, and by an artifice of his groom the crown was gained by Darius. Then, after being proclaimed king, Darius purified the temples which his predecessor had defiled, and instituted the Feast of the Magophonia in memory of the murder which had made him king.

Two revolutions in such quick succession had shaken the power of the Persians. The empire founded by Cyrus differed but little from those of the Egyptians and Assyrians. It was the same collection of provinces administered by semi-independent governors, feudal kingdoms, and half-subjugated towns and tribes. These turbulent subjects hailed with delight any pretext for revolt. Rebellion broke out first in Susiana, under the lead of a certain Athrina, a descendant of the last national dynasty. From Susiana the contagion quickly spread to Babylon, where Nadintabaira, son of Nabonidus, came forward as a claimant to the throne, which he ascended under the glorious name of Nebuchadrezzar [III]. After entrusting his generals with the comparatively easy task of subjugating Athrina, Darius himself took command of the expedition to Chaldea. But Nebuchadrezzar III had made good use of the short time occupied by the Persians in crossing the Assyrian plain. He was already in possession of the strong positions on the right bank of the Tigris, and a fleet of armed boats protected his army. Darius, not venturing to attack him from the front, divided his army into little parties, some on horseback, and some on camels, and escaping the notice of the enemy by the multiplicity of his movements, he succeeded in crossing the river. The Chaldeans tried in vain to cast him back into the water. They formed up in good order, and six days later engaged in a second battle at Zazanu on the banks of the Euphrates (December, 521).

Nebuchadrezzar was completely defeated, and escaped with some officers to Babylon, where he was taken, and executed by the conqueror’s command (519). Legend was not slow to embellish the events of this war, and in less than half a century it was reported that when Darius reached Babylon it was prepared for resistance. The inhabitants had repaired the walls, cut the canals, filled their magazines and barns, and relieved themselves of all useless and superfluous mouths by a general massacre, including all women except those necessary for bread making. At the end of twenty months the Persians were no further than at the beginning, when Zopyrus, one of the seven, conceived a plan to insure them success. After having his nose and ears cut off, and his body lacerated with whip blows, he presented himself in the city as a fugitive, commanded some sorties with success, and after thus gaining the confidence of the besieged, he was able, when on guard, to open the gates to the enemy. Three thousand Babylonians were crucified, the walls razed to the ground, and the city was repeopled with foreign colonists. The treachery of Zopyrus, as reported by Herodotus, was the admiration of olden times; but is only another of the stories which have to be eliminated from history.

In the midst of his triumph, Darius learned that the war was not over. Martiya, a Persian, tried to excite a second rebellion in Susiana, but it was promptly quelled by the Susians themselves. Media, however, rose under a certain Fravartish (Phraortes), who claimed to be a descendant of Cyaxares, and proclaimed himself king under the name of Phraortes II. Sufficient time had not elapsed since the rule of Astyages in Media for the Median nobility to renounce hope of recovering the supremacy, of which they had been robbed by the victory of Cyrus; and they seized the opportunity to rebel when Darius, after the murder of Gaumata, left with the flower of his troops for Babylon. Some of the nomadic tribes remained faithful, but all settled Medians joined the pretender, and the rebellion extended to Armenia and Assyria; and even where the authority of Phraortes was not recognised, the example of revolt was followed. Chitratahma also gave himself out as a descendant of Cyaxares, and incited Sagartia to rebellion; and Frada headed a revolt in Magiana. It would have been fatal for Darius if the rebellion had extended to the western satrapies, but, fortunately, they remained faithful. Orœtes, governor of Lydia, assumed an independent demeanour and threatened to become dangerous; and Bagæus conveyed to Sardis the royal command relieving the governor of his office, upon which all pikes were immediately lowered. So, encouraged by this success Bagæus handed a letter to the secretary, in which it was written, “King Darius orders the Persians at Sardis to kill Orœtes,” so they drew their swords and slew him.

[Sidenote: [520-518 B.C.]]

Several engagements of his generals with the troops of the pretender failed to attain any great success; Phraortes kept his position in Armenia, and his obstinate rebellion encouraged Parthia and Hyrcania to espouse his cause. Persia herself began to despair of success and to think of having another king; and many people would not believe that the line of direct descent from Cyrus had ended with Cambyses.

The usurpation and the fall of Gaumata and the accession of Darius had not shaken their faith in the existence of Bardius. The imposture of Gaumata did not necessarily involve the fact of the death of Bardius. So when a certain Vahyazdata appeared as the youngest son of Cyrus, he was received with enthusiasm.

The imminence of the danger impelled Darius himself to take the field; he left Babylon, penetrated Media by the defile of Kerend, and defeated the enemy near the town of Kundorus (520). Phraortes fled towards the north, doubtless with the intention of continuing the struggle in the mountains. He was captured not far from Raga, and taken to Ecbatana. His punishment was horrible: his nose and ears were cut off, his tongue cut out, and his eyes taken out, he was chained to the gate of the palace, and after the people had had enough of that spectacle, he was impaled; and his chief followers were also either impaled, or beheaded. Success was just as complete and rapid in Persia itself. Vahyazdata made the mistake of dividing his troops, and sending one part to Arachosia; so whilst Artavardija, the conqueror at Racha and then at Paraga (520), made him prisoner in the castle of Uvadeshaya, the satrap of Arachosia victoriously repulsed the invasion (519).

But it seemed as if one war engendered another. The ephemeral success of the second pseudo-Smerdis evoked a second false Nebuchadrezzar, for Darius had hardly left Babylon, when the Armenian Arakha presented himself to the people as the son of Nabonidus, but was easily conquered and was executed. The subjugation of the other provinces was quite easy. Chitratahma expiated his rebellion on the stake; Hystaspes, the father of Darius, soon quelled Hyrcania, (519) Dadarshis, the satrap of Bactriana, easily overcame the resistance of Frada (519); and the wars were concluded.

Organisation of Darius’ Empire

The lesson of these first years was not lost on the conqueror. The empire of Cyrus had comprised, besides the countries governed by Persian officers, vassal kingdoms and cities and tributary people who were under the direct rule of the sovereign, and not under the satraps of the province which was the seat of their domain. It was the system of government practised by Tiglathpileser III and adopted by Persia from Babylon and Ecbatana.

[Sidenote: [515 B.C.]]

Darius did not attempt to subjugate the races that peopled his domains; on the contrary, he encouraged the people to retain their languages, customs, and religions, their laws and their particular constitutions. The Jews received permission to finish the building of the temple; the Greeks of Asia retained their various governments; Phœnicia kept her kings and suffets, and Egypt her hereditary nomarchs. But over all these local powers, there was a single authority, superior to all, and the same everywhere. The territory was divided into governments, the number of which varied with the times. There were originally twenty-three. The number of these governments, or satrapies, was increased to thirty-one by the conquests of Darius.

If each of these satrapies had been governed by a separate governor invested with royal power, and sovereign in all but name and title, the empire would have run the risk of soon being broken up into a chaotic assembly of principalities, in incessant struggle against Persia. But Darius avoided uniting civil and military power in one person. He placed in each government three officers sent directly from the court and quite independent of each other--the satrap, the royal secretary, and the general. The satraps were chosen by the king. They could be taken from any class in the nation, from the poor as well as the rich, from foreigners as well as Persians; but it was customary to confer the most important satrapies on persons united by blood or marriage to the royal family. They were not nominated for any special time, but remained in office as long as the king pleased. They had full civil power, with palaces, parks, a court, bodyguards, and well-filled harems; they imposed taxes as they liked, administered justice, and had power over life and death.

They had a royal secretary at their disposal, and this personage, charged ostensibly with the duties of chancellor, was in reality a spy who watched everybody’s actions and conduct, so as to be able to report them in the right quarter.

The Persian soldiers, the native troops, and the mercenaries cantoned in the province were under the command of a general, who was often inimical to the satrap and secretary. These three rivals, therefore, equalised and kept each other in check, and thus a revolt was, if not impossible, at least difficult. They were in perpetual communication with the court by means of regular couriers, who took their despatches from one end of the country to the other, in a few weeks. As an additional precaution Darius sent to the provinces every year officers whom he called his “eyes and his ears” because they were commissioned to see and hear for him what went on in the most distant parts of the kingdom. They appeared at the most unexpected moments, examined the state of affairs, reformed any details of administration, reprimanded and suspended the satrap, when necessary, and they were attended by a body of troops to support their decisions and give weight to their councils, which might otherwise have been wanting. An unfavourable account, a slight disobedience, or even the mere suspicion of disobedience, was enough to ruin a satrap, for he was then deposed, or more often condemned to death without a trial, the people of his suite being ordered to do the deed. A courier arrived suddenly, the guard received orders to kill their chief, and they at once fulfilled the royal decree.

[Sidenote: [515-512 B.C.]]

This administrative reform did not please the Persians, and they tried to pay off their enforced obedience by scoffing jests at the king’s expense. “Cyrus,” they said, “had been a father and Cambyses a master, but Darius was only an innkeeper greedy of gain.” For the division of the empire was done less for a political object than for financial profits and the chief duty of the satraps was to assess, collect and turn over the taxes. Persia proper was exempt from a regular taxation, and the people were only required to make the king a present every time he crossed the country. The present was in proportion to the fortune of the individual, and sometimes merely consisted of an ox, or a sheep, or even a little milk or cheese, a few dates, a handful of flour or some vegetables; but the other provinces were taxed according to their extent and wealth with a tribute payable partly in kind, and partly in money. The revenue in money went up to 1460 Eubœic talents or nearly £28,000,000. To facilitate the payments Darius circulated gold and silver coins named after himself. These darics were stamped with a figure of the king, bearing a bow, or a javelin. They were thick, irregular, and clumsy, but of pure metal. The coins were not in common circulation, but they were used in the payment of the soldiers and sailors, and were current on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the interior of Asia, metals were valued according to their weight for transactions of commerce and daily life, and kings themselves preferred to have them in their rough state, for they had them melted down and put into earthen vases, and coined according to the needs or the caprice of the moment. The tribute in kind was not less than that in money. Egypt supplied the corn for the 120,000 military men who occupied it; the Medians gave annually 100,000 sheep, 4000 mules, and 3000 horses; the Armenians 30,000 chickens, the people of Babylon 500 young eunuchs; Cilicia 365 white horses, one for each day of the year. The royal taxes were not excessive, but the satraps received no salary from the state, and they and their suites lived and received their heavy remunerations at the expense of the satrapies. The government of Babylon alone had to give a full artaba of silver every day. Egypt, India, Media, and Syria gave not much less; and the poorest provinces were not those least heavily taxed, for the satraps counted on having at least as much as the king.

In spite of its drawbacks, this system was preferable to that hitherto employed in the East, for it gave the king a regular budget, kept the provinces under his power, and made national revolts very difficult. The death of each king was no longer followed by insurrections which took a great part of the following reign to quell. Darius had not only the glory of organising the Persian empire, but he invented a form of government which served henceforth as a pattern to the great oriental states. His fame as an administrator has even obscured his military renown, for it is often forgotten that he increased his empire while regulating its administration.

Later Conquests of Darius

Darius’ victories left the Persians with only India on the east, and Greece on the west, in which to expand, as their territory in other directions extended to the seas, or to obstacles untraversable by the heavy armies of the period. The empire was bounded on the north by the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, and the steppes of Tartary, and on the south by the Erythræan Sea, the sandy tableland of Arabia, and the desert of Africa.

About the year 512 the Persians seem to have penetrated farther east. From the heights of Iran they commanded the immense plains of the Punjab. Darius invaded and conquered this country, and formed thereof the satrapy of India. Then, instead of fulfilling his intention of going beyond the Ganges, he had the southern regions explored. A fleet constructed at Peukala and placed under the command of a Greek admiral, Scylax a Carian, descended the Indus to its mouth and subjugated the tribes who lived on the banks of the river, and when he reached the sea, he turned to the west and in less than thirty months reached the coasts of Gedrosia and Arabia.

The Persians might have had a brilliant and lucrative career in India. It is not known what prevented them from following up their first success and turned their attention to the West, where Darius planned to conquer the Greeks of Europe. But before setting out on that expedition, prudence warned him to conquer, or at least to frighten, the people who might disturb his course, so he attacked the Scythians.

The first expedition, commanded by Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, crossed the Pontus Euxinus, landed some thousands of men on the opposite coast, and made some prisoners, who furnished the Persian generals with the information they needed. With this knowledge, Darius crossed the Bosporus with eight hundred thousand men, subjugated the eastern coast of Thrace, and crossed the Danube on a bridge of boats, made by the Greeks of Ionia. The Scythians would not fight, but having destroyed the fodder, and filled up the wells, they drove off their cattle and took refuge in the interior, leaving the enemy to fight against famine, and the impassability of the country.[e]

We cannot pause to dwell upon the details of this campaign. But there is one incident chronicled by Herodotus that must be transcribed because of the interesting light it throws upon the relations of the antagonists.

“The Scythians,” says Herodotus, “discovering that the Persians were in extreme perplexity, hoped that by detaining them longer in their country, they should finally reduce them to the utmost distress: with this view, they occasionally left exposed some of their cattle with their shepherds, and artfully retired; of these, with much exultation, the Persians took possession.

“This was again and again repeated; Darius nevertheless became gradually in want of almost every necessary: the Scythian princes, knowing this, sent to him a messenger, with a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows, as a present. The Persians inquired of the bearer, what these might mean; but the man declared that his orders were only to deliver them and return: he advised them, however, to exert their sagacity, and interpret the mystery.

“The Persians accordingly held a consultation on the subject. Darius was of opinion, that the Scythians intended by this to express submission to him, and give him the earth and the water which he required. The mouse, as he explained it, was produced in the earth, and lived on the same food as man; the frog was a native of the water; the bird bore great resemblance to a horse; and in giving the arrows, they intimated the surrender of their power: this was the interpretation of Darius. Gobryas, however, one of the seven who had dethroned the Magus, thus interpreted the presents: ‘Men of Persia, unless like birds ye shall mount into the air, like mice take refuge in the earth, or like frogs leap into the marshes, these arrows shall prevent the possibility of your return to the place from whence you came.’ This explanation was generally accepted.”

This quaint recital suggests that the Persians were in dire straits; but the result was less disastrous than the Scythians anticipated. Darius managed to provision his army, and for some weeks he traversed the steppes, even penetrating, it has been supposed, to the heart of Russia, burning and sacking all the villages on the road, and then returning south with no reverses.[a] During his absence, the barbarians begged the Greeks to destroy their bridge of boats and return to their own country. Miltiades of Athens, tyrant of the Thracian Chersonesus, wished to accede to this request, but Histiæus of Miletus opposed the plan, and his advice was followed. So Darius returned safe and sound to Asia, after having left Megabazus with an army of eighty thousand men, with which he subjugated in Thrace one tribe and town after another, and in 506, the king of Macedonia became a vassal to the Persian empire.

The Scythian expedition is generally regarded as the caprice of a despot, but it really was a well-conceived and well-carried out plan. It gave Persia the additional province of Thrace, and also brought about a state of peace which was of great consequence. For the Scythians now held the Persians in such fear that the frontiers were henceforth quite freed from their incursions, and Darius was at liberty to pursue his plans of conquest in the West.

[Sidenote: [513-487 B.C.]]

As Thrace and Macedonia were conquered, the Persians were now in direct contact with Greece proper. The invasion which had been planned was prevented by a revolt of Asiatic Greece. It is needless to give the details of the rebellion in Ionia. For the first time since the accession of Cyrus, the Persian empire met a serious reverse which threatened its safety. Sardis was burned, Caria, the people of the Hellespont, and Cyprus shook off the yoke of the Great King, and if they had been less disunited the Greeks of Asia might probably have remained free. After their defeat Darius thought of avenging himself on the Athenians and Eretrians for having taken part in the struggle. The first expedition under Mardonius came to grief (492), and two years later Datis and Artaphernes landed in Attica where they were beaten at Marathon.[32] But the old king did not lose heart, and after devoting three years to collecting arms, provisions, soldiers, and ships, he set out on the expedition in 487, when he was stopped by an unexpected event. Egypt broke out in revolt. The Persians were expelled and a native ruler, Khabbash, placed on the Egyptian throne, which he managed to hold for three years.

Affairs in Egypt since the Persian Conquest

In order to understand the situation, we must take a brief backward glance. Cambyses had entrusted the government of Egypt to Aryandes, the Persian, and Darius was at first quite satisfied with his predecessor’s choice, for not only did Aryandes remain faithful to his king, but he tried to continue the conquest of Libya at the point at which Cambyses had left it. The Dorians of Cyrene, disapproving of the easy submission of their king, Arcesilaus III, to the foreign yoke, banished him from the country, then recalled him, and then banished him again to Barca, where he was killed. His mother, Pheretima, then came to Egypt, and related to the satrap how Arcesilaus had fallen a victim to his friendship with the Persians. So Aryandes seized the opportunity of enlarging his satrapy at the expense of the Greeks, and sent all his available ships and men against them. Barca held out for nine months, and fell at last through treachery, and some detachments of the advance guard then pushed on to Euesperides. On their return the generals thought of occupying Cyrene, and they would probably have done so had not an official order recalled them to Egypt. The passage across the desert proved nearly fatal, for the nomads of the Mormarica made continual raids upon them for the sake of spoil, but in spite of serious losses they succeeded in taking back to Barca some of the people as prisoners. Aryandes despatched the unhappy creatures as a trophy to Darius, who had them sent to Bactriana, where they founded a new Barca. But a prince, who carried out victorious campaigns on his own account, necessarily incurred the disfavour of such a jealous man as the Great King, so Aryandes was soon put to death, and different reports were spread of the reason of his demise. Some said he was killed for having coined a purer money than that issued by the royal mint; others maintained that having incurred the hatred of the Egyptians by his malpractices, Egypt was on the point of revolting when he was killed.

[Sidenote: [522-487 B.C.]]

After the removal of his rival, Darius did nothing to win the affection of his Egyptian subjects, or even to render his rule supportable. The best means of succeeding with a self-sufficient, religious people like the Egyptians, would have been to manifest a great respect for the gods and national kings, but, unlike Cambyses, he took the side of the persecuted priests. Cambyses had exiled the head of the priesthood of Saïs to Elam, but Darius bade him return and repair the disasters caused by the folly of his predecessor. So the high priest was escorted back to his native town, where he founded a college of hierogrammatics, and restored to the temple of Nit the property and revenues, of which it had been deprived. Greek tradition exceeds the national tradition, for it reports that Darius was initiated into the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books. It maintains, moreover, that, when arriving at Memphis, after the death of a sacred bull, he took part in the universal mourning, and promised one hundred talents to the discoverer of the new Apis. Before leaving the country, he visited the temple of Ptah, and commanded his statue to be put up by the side of that of Sesostris. But the priests refused to do it, saying, “Darius has not equalled the deeds of Sesostris, he has not conquered the Scythians that he conquered,” to which Darius replied “that he hoped to do as much as Sesostris if he lived as long as Sesostris had lived,” so he submitted to the exclusive pride of his subjects, and the Egyptians expressed their gratitude by adding him to the six legislators, whose memory they venerated.

Egypt certainly prospered under the rule of Darius, and with Cyrene and Barca, she formed the sixth satrapy of the empire, and the Nubian tribes nearest to the southern frontier were included in this province. The governor installed at the White Wall, in the old palace of the Pharaohs, was in command of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men occupying the three entrenched camps of the kings of the Saïtes Nomes, which were Daphne and Memphis on the confines of the Delta, and Elephantine on the south.

Beyond these great posts, where the authority of the Great King was in full sway, the ancient organisation of Egypt still continued: the temples had their property, the vassals were free of the ordinary charges, and the nobles were as independent in their principalities and as ready to revolt as they were before. The annual tribute which was the heaviest next to that of Chaldea and Assyria, was not more than seven hundred talents of silver. Add to this sum the value of the fisheries of the Lake Mœris (which, according to Diodorus, were worth a talent a day the whole year round, and according to Herodotus, during the six months of high water) the 120,000 medimni of corn for the subsistence of the army of occupation, and the provision of the palace with nitre, and water from the Nile, and the whole of the assessment was far from being disproportionate to the resources of the country. But they had several advantages to compensate for the expense of the tribute. For, being now consolidated with an empire stretching into three continents, regions which had been hitherto inaccessible to them were now opened up for their industrial exports, and they profited greatly by the commodities of the Sudan having to pass through their territory before arriving at the great depots of Babylon or Susa, as the Isthmus was one of the shortest routes to the districts of the Mediterranean for merchandise from India or Arabia.

[Sidenote: [486-485 B.C.]]

Darius completed the canal of the Nile to the Gulf of Suez, and reopened the road from Coptos to the Red Sea. He fortified the oases, and built in the little town of Hib a grand temple to Ammon, the ruins of which remain to this day. But gratitude could not extinguish the Egyptians’ strong desire for liberty. The defeat of the Persians at Marathon encouraged them to try and shake off the yoke, and, in 486, they sent off the foreign garrisons and proclaimed as king, Khabbash, who was probably descended from Psamthek. But Darius did not wish to stop the invasion of Greece on this account, and he collected a second army and had made preparations for the two wars, when he died in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in 485.[e]

For his epitaph we can hardly do better than quote one of his own inscriptions, that at Behistun, as translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson.

I am Darius, the great King, the King of Kings, the King of Persia, the King of (the dependent) provinces, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achæmenian.

Says Darius the King: My father was Hystaspes; of Hystaspes the father was Arsames; of Arsames the father was Ariaramnes; of Ariaramnes the father was Teispes; of Teispes the father was Achæmenes.

Says Darius the King: On that account we have been called Achæmenians; from antiquity we have been unsubdued (or we have descended); from antiquity those of our race have been Kings.

Says Darius the King: There are eight of my race who have been kings before me, I am the ninth; for a very long time we have been kings.

Says Darius the King: By the grace of Ormuzd I am (I have become) king; Ormuzd has granted me the empire.

Says Darius the King: These are the countries which have fallen into my hands--by the grace of Ormuzd I have become king of them--Persia, Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt; those which are of the seas, Sparta and Ionia; Armenia, Cappadocia, Parthia, Zarangia, Aria, Chorasmia, Bactria, Sogdiana, the Sacæ, the Sattagydes, Arachosia, and the Mecians, the total amount being twenty-one (twenty-three?) countries.

Says Darius the King: These are the countries which have come to me; by the grace of Ormuzd they have become subject to me--they have brought tribute to me. That which has been said unto them by me, both by night and by day, it has been performed by them.

Says Darius the King: Within these countries whoever was of the true faith, him have I cherished and protected; whoever was a heretic, him have I rooted out entirely. By the grace of Ormuzd these countries, therefore, being given to me, have rejoiced. As to them it has been said by me, thus has it been done by them.

Says Darius the King: Ormuzd has granted me the empire. Ormuzd has brought help to me until I have gained this empire. By the grace of Ormuzd I hold this empire.[d]

XERXES I

[Sidenote: [484-480 B.C.]]

Before coming to the throne Darius had had three children by his first wife, the daughter of Gobyras, and Artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the heir presumptive, and had probably undertaken the regency during the Scythian campaign. But at the time of the rebellion of Khabbash, when Darius had to name his successor, Atossa (daughter of Cyrus) showed him the advantages of choosing her eldest child Xerxes, who had been born in the purple and had the blood of Cyrus in his veins. As the old king was quite under her influence, Atossa’s advice was followed, and Xerxes ascended the throne without any opposition. He was then thirty-five years of age, and was considered the handsomest man of his time, but he was indolent and weak of character.

He at first wished to give up the idea of the campaigns, but his father’s counsellors showed him that he could not leave the defeat at Marathon unavenged; and he was wise enough to see that he could do nothing in Europe until he had restored Egypt to order.

Khabbash had done his best to prepare a hot reception for him: he had spent two years in fortifying the coast of the Delta, and had placed strongholds at the mouth of the river to prevent any attack by sea. But all these precautions were in vain when the moment of action came, and he was easily conquered by Xerxes. The nomes of the Delta which had taken part in the rebellion were severely punished, the priests were freed, and the temple of Buto deprived of its treasures, and Khabbash disappeared in the midst of the disaster, without anybody knowing what became of him. Achæmenes, the king’s brother, was then appointed satrap, and took measures to prevent a second rising, but again nobody seemed to think of changing the political constitution of the country, and the nomes remained in the hands of the hereditary princes. Xerxes does not appear even to have suspected that in respecting the local dynasties he retained chiefs always ready to take part in future Egyptian revolts. The defeat and disappearance of Khabbash did not give Xerxes full power. Classic tradition reports that he shocked the polemical sentiment of the Chaldeans by ill-judged curiosity, for he entered the tomb of Belus, but, in spite of his efforts, did not succeed in filling the vessel therein with oil. If this strange story be not true, there is no doubt about the rebellion. Megabyzus, the son of Zopyrus, who was satrap of the province by hereditary right, treated the town with unusual severity, the temple of Belus was pillaged, the statue of the god taken away, and its priests massacred, the royal tombs were violated and sacked, and part of the population was reduced to slavery.

[Sidenote: [480-464 B.C.]]

At last Xerxes started for Europe at the head of the largest army ever seen, and we know the result of the expedition. After having witnessed the destruction of his fleet from the heights of Cape Colias, he fled precipitately, and returned to Asia Minor without waiting to see his troops routed on land. It is said that the victories of Salamis and Platæa saved Europe from barbarism. But this is unjust to both countries, as the Persians were not barbarians in the usual acceptation of the word, for, although, in some respects, they were less cultivated than the Greeks, in others they were superior to them and their culture was of an utterly different type. Moreover it is not saying much for the vitality and genius of Greece if its evolution could have been arrested by defeat and subjugation. The Hellenic race would have had to be utterly annihilated by the invasion of Asia, for Hellenic civilisation to have been exterminated. The Persians did not care about destroying whole nations, they only insisted on tribute and obedience, and then each country could do as it pleased. If Xerxes had been victorious, Hellas would have become a satrapy like Syria and Chaldea, and she would not have lost her characteristics any more than those countries did, but, like Egypt, she would soon have found an opportunity to recover her liberty. The Persian conquest would have changed the political course of Greek history, but it would have been powerless to arrest the general march of civilisation. The defeat of Xerxes resulted in his immediate retreat from the Persian frontier, but some of his garrisons were allowed to remain at Byzantium, till 478, at Eion, till 477; and at Doriscus till 450 and even later. But this concession was granted more as a sop to the pride of the Great King, than from any political or military necessity. Xerxes liked to think that he still had a foothold in Europe, so that he could recommence the war at any time, but Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace soon ceased to recognise his authority and Athenian fleets now sailed menacingly where Phœnician vessels had hitherto had undisputed course. If Greece had been less disunited, and followed up her newly won advantages, all the colonies of Asia Minor would probably have shaken off the Asiatic yoke. But Sparta had no interest in distant enterprises, and Athens had enough to do to rebuild her walls and to organise her fleet, so Persia was spared an invasion.

And during all this time, whilst the fate of his empire hung in the balance, Xerxes was wasting what little courage and intelligence he had, in the intrigues and debauches of his harem. The war went on for twelve years without his attempting to make any effort to invade or even to prevent an invasion. About 466 an Athenian fleet cruising along the coasts of Caria and Lycia encountered the fleet of the Great King anchored at the mouth of the Eurymedon. It was another Mycale--the vessels were destroyed and the Athenian crews landed and routed the Persian army hard by. The conqueror then turned to Cyprus, scattered a second fleet of eighty sailing vessels, and returned to the Piræus laden with booty. Xerxes did not long survive this humiliation; he was assassinated by Aspamithres the eunuch and by Artabanus the captain of the guards in 465.

THE SUCCESSORS OF XERXES

[Sidenote: [464-454 B.C.]]

The same night the murderers went to the younger son, Artaxerxes, and after accusing another son, Darius, of the crime, they killed him under pretext of punishing the parricide. They then made an attempt on the life of Artaxerxes himself, but they were betrayed by one of their accomplices and executed. Then the sons of Artabanus, wishing to avenge their father, collected a force together, but they perished arms in hand. Hystaspes, the rightful heir to the throne, the eldest brother of the new king, who was in Bactriana at the death of Xerxes, now arrived at the head of an army to claim his rights, but he and his followers were defeated in 462 in two bloody battles.

Every incident which threatened the existence or the integrity of the empire, affected Egypt, and before the generation, which had taken up arms for Khabbash, had passed away, a fresh generation, weary of the Persian yoke, rose up against Artaxerxes. Since the fall of the Saïd, Libya was the most important of the fiefs of the Delta. Being masters of the Marea, and the fertile districts between the Canopic branch of the Nile and the mountain and lake of Mareotis, her rulers probably had suzerainty over the Adyrmachidæ, the Giligammas, the Asbystæ, and the majority of the nomadic tribes of the desert. Inarus, son of a Psamthek, who was then in power, declared war against the Persians, and the population of the Delta, being ill-treated by Achæmenes, received him warmly, drove off the tax-collectors and flew to arms. Since their victory on the Eurymedon, the Athenians always kept a squadron by Cyprus, and its two hundred vessels now had orders to set sail for Egypt and to remain there at the disposal of the insurgent chiefs. Artaxerxes then prepared to take personal command of the naval and military forces, but he finally submitted to the advice of his counsellors who advised him to let his place be taken by Achæmenes, his uncle, who had fled to the court in alarm at the first successes of Inarus. Achæmenes had not much difficulty in thrusting back the Libyans, but the arrival of the Greeks put quite another face on the matter; and he was beaten at Papremis, and his army almost entirely exterminated. Inarus killed him with his own hand in the battle, and sent the corpse to Artaxerxes perhaps out of bravado, and perhaps out of respect for the blood of his victim. Some days later the Athenian squadron under the command of Charitimides encountered the Phœnician fleet hastening to the succour of the Persians, and sank thirty ships, and took twenty. The allies then went up the river and appeared at Memphis, where the rest of the Persians had taken refuge, as the natives had remained faithful to the Great King. The town soon surrendered, but the fortress of the White Wall shut its gates and its resistance gave Artaxerxes time to collect fresh forces.

Before risking his generals in the Delta, the Great King sent his envoys to Greece to try and buy the Lacedæmonians’ assistance for the invasion of Attica. But Spartan virtue happened just then to be proof against the Persian darics, so the troops of the Great King were assembled in Phœnicia and Cilicia, and the three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and the fleet of three hundred vessels were placed under the command of Megabyzus. On the approach of the enemy, the allies raised the siege of the White Wall, and beaten in a first engagement, in which Charitimides was killed, and Inarus wounded in the thigh, they entrenched themselves in the island of Prosopitis, where they sustained a long siege of eighteen months, which ended by Megabyzus succeeding in turning off one of the arms of the river, and the Athenian fleet thus stranded, an opportunity was afforded of storming the place. The majority of the Greek allies perished in the battle, but some succeeded in getting back to Cyrene, and returning thence to their country, and others fled with Inarus, and were forced to give themselves up a little later. To add to their misfortunes, a reinforcement of fifty ships, which arrived at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, was more than half destroyed by the Phœnician fleet. When laying down his arms, Inarus had stipulated that his life and that of his companions should be saved. Artaxerxes seemed at first inclined to respect the capitulation, but five years later he gave over the prisoners to his mother Amestris, who had Inarus crucified to avenge the death of Achæmenes.

[Sidenote: [454-449 B.C.]]

The victory of Prosopitis concluded the rebellion, and Thannyras, the son of Inarus, was made king of Libya in his father’s place. But some bands of refugees retired to the marshes on the seacoast, which had often been a sanctuary to the people of the Saïd, and having proclaimed Amyrtæus king, they successfully repelled all the attacks of the Persians. The integrity of the empire was re-established, but the war with the Greeks went on.

Six years after their defeat, the Athenians equipped a fleet of two hundred sail, and put it under the command of Cimon, with orders to conquer Cyprus or at least occupy several of its towns. Cimon, wishing to divide the force of the enemy, sent a squadron of sixty ships to King Amyrtæus, as if he were going to recommence the campaign in Egypt, and then, with the remaining men and ships, he laid siege to Citium. He died soon afterwards from a wound, and for want of provisions his successors were forced to raise the siege; but in sailing past Salamis they defeated the Phœnician and Cilician fleet, and then landed and routed a Persian army stationed near the town. Artaxerxes was overcome by this last reverse, and fearing that the Athenians, if once they had Cyprus, would take possession of Egypt, which was always disaffected, he decided to treat for peace at any price. Peace was therefore concluded on condition of freedom being granted to the Greeks of Asia, no Persian army was to approach the Ionian coast within a distance of three days’ journey, no Persian man-of-war was to sail in Greek waters, which extended from the eastern point of Lycia to the entrance of the Bosporus.

This treaty in 449 terminated the first war between the Persians and Greeks, after it had lasted from the burning of Sardis to the seventeenth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, from 501 to 449.

Eastern empires could not exist without the excitement of constant wars and victories, and directly they gave up their aggressive policy they began to go down--they were conquerors, or nothing--and Persia was no exception to the rule. Darius I had been a very great king, greater perhaps than Cyrus himself. The vigour and skill with which he organised armies, conceived plans of campaigns, and chose his officers, and the promptitude with which he quelled the revolts on his accession to the throne, show us that he was at least equal to the best generals of his time, and as a ruler he was superior to the whole line of the Achæmenidæ.

[Sidenote: [448-405 B.C.]]

Both Darius and Xerxes turned to Europe when their conquests in Asia had extended their empire to where their frontiers were bounded by the almost impassable barrier of the deserts of Africa and Arabia, the mountains of India and the Caucasus, and the steppes of central Asia; but when the Greek victories obliged them to retire, the day of Persia’s decadence dawned. Her fall was not so sudden as had been that of Assyria, Chaldea, and Media, for the administrative organisation of Darius had been too skilfully adjusted to fall at a single blow, but the nonchalance and inaptitude of the sovereigns finally destroyed its action. Several satrapies were now governed by a single satrap, who commanded the armies and acted as king, and there was not only an incessant succession of rebellions in the provinces and in Egypt, where the national sentiment was not attuned to peace, but in Chaldea, Bactriana, and Asia Minor; and tragedies in the palaces, where the dagger and poison made havoc in the royal family, were as common as civil wars between the satraps.

Peace was hardly signed with Greece when Megabyzus, governor of Syria, discontented with the way the king had treated Inarus after his victory, raised an army under his command. He defeated two generals, one after the other, and only disbanded his force after having dictated the terms of peace.

Some years later his son Zopyrus headed a rebellion in Caria and Lydia, and the success of the revolt was so fatal to the other satraps that their fidelity henceforth was only a question of caprice or circumstance. Artaxerxes died in 424, and the intrigues which had cost so much blood at the beginning of his reign now recommenced. His eldest legitimate son, Xerxes II, was assassinated at the end of forty-five days by Sogdianus, one of his illegitimate brothers; he in his turn was dethroned and killed after a reign of six months and a half by Ochus, another bastard of the old king, who, on ascending the throne, took the name of Darius, and whose life was one long tissue of miseries and crimes. His reign from the beginning was disturbed by the rebellion of his brother Arsites and Artyphius, son of Megabyzus, who took up arms in Asia Minor, enrolled Greek mercenaries, and gained two important victories. Persian gold now compassed what was beyond Persian bravery, and the rebels, abandoned by their soldiers, surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared.

DARIUS II

Darius II had married his aunt Parysatis, one of the cruellest and most depraved women that ever entered an Eastern harem, and it was by her advice that he broke his word and Arsites was burnt to death. But this example did not deter Pissuthenes, the satrap of Lydia, who had been in office for twenty months, from rebelling; however, he, like Arsites, fell by treachery; for Tissaphernes having bribed the mercenaries in his pay to desert him, he was obliged to surrender. Darius had him put to death, and made his conqueror his successor.

But this was not the last of the troubles in Asia Minor, for Amorges, the natural son of Pissuthenes excited Caria to revolt, and after abrogating the title of King, he held out till 412.

It was at this time that the whole of Greece was laid waste by the Peloponnesian war. Athens had just lost in Sicily the best part of her fleet and the bravest of her soldiers, and when the news of her defeat reached the East, Darius saw that it was a favourable time to break the treaty of 449. He sent orders to the satraps of Mysia and Lydia to collect the taxes from the Greek towns on the coast and to treat with the Lacedæmonians. Sparta accepted the alliance offered her, and henceforth the different Hellenic states were but playthings in the hands of the Great King and his agents. Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus tried at first to keep the balance equal between the Dorians and Athenians, without allowing either of the rival races to deal the mortal blow; but this equalising policy did not last long. Darius had two sons, and the second one, named Cyrus after the founder of the empire, obtained through the influence of Parysatis the supreme rulership of the provinces of Asia Minor.

Cyrus was ambitious of reigning, and he hoped that his mother would manage by intrigues to obtain for him the succession which rightfully belonged to his eldest brother, Arsaces; and in the event of failure by those means he intended to win the throne by force of arms.

[Sidenote: [405-399 B.C.]]

Athens being a maritime power was not likely to help him in an expedition against the provinces of Upper Asia, so he turned to Sparta and supported her so efficaciously that in two years the war ended in favour of the Peloponnesians, by their decisive victory at Ægospotami in 405.

ARTAXERXES II

The satraps of Asia Minor seem to have suspected young Cyrus of these secret intrigues, for Darius summoned his son to Susa. But Cyrus arrived only in time to be present at the king’s death, and in spite of the efforts of Parysatis, Arsaces, the new king, ascended the throne under the royal name of Artaxerxes (Artakhshathra). Cyrus tried to kill his brother at the foot of the altar during the coronation ceremony, but Tissaphernes and one of the priests having denounced him, he was seized and would have been executed had not his mother saved him from the hands of the executioner.

His pardon being granted after some trouble, Cyrus returned to Asia Minor, determined to seize the first opportunity for revenge. Having managed, in spite of the surveillance of Tissaphernes, to collect under divers pretences 13,000 Greek mercenaries and 100,000 native soldiers, he suddenly left Sardis (401), crossed Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, without being molested; but encountering the imperial army at Cunaxa, some miles north of Babylon, he was killed in the engagement. He was brave, active, ambitious, and endowed with all the qualities which would have made him a good oriental monarch. His intercourse with the Greeks had opened his eyes to the weak sides of his country which he tried to remedy; and if he had been successful he would probably have momentarily arrested the empire on its downward course. When he was gone, the native army which had followed him, immediately dispersed, but the mercenaries did not lose courage and gained the shores of the Pontus Euxinus by crossing Assyria and Armenia. The old state of affairs was quite changed when the retreat of the Ten Thousand showed that a handful of men, treacherously deprived of their leaders, without guides and without allies, could brave the empire with impunity and return to Greece without any considerable loss.

Victorious Sparta had now succeeded Athens in her protection of the Greeks of Ionia, and the death of Cyrus having broken her bonds with Persia, she had complete liberty of action. She continued the war with Asia for four years, her king, Agesilaus, even penetrated into the heart of Phrygia, and would have proceeded in the road taken by the Ten Thousand if Persian gold had not turned the course of affairs. For Athens again took up arms, and having united her fleet to that of Persia, she patrolled the Ægean Sea, the island of Cythera was taken by Conon, and the long walls were rebuilt at the expense of the Great King.

Whilst Hellas, divided against herself, sought favour in the eyes of the satraps of Asia Minor, Egypt, united in hatred of the foreigner, succeeded in expelling him. There had been no serious disturbance since the defeat of Inarus, and the Persian governors had quietly succeeded each other in the palace of Memphis, the aged Amyrtæus had disappeared, and his son Pausiris had been the docile vassal of the Persians. Many little incidents, however, had shown that the old spirit of rebellion was only waiting for an opportunity to break out again. The rebellion of Megabyzus in Syria had shown how easily the Great King could henceforth be defied, and the rebellions of Zopyrus and Pissuthenes, following one upon another, sapped the strength of the empire for several years, and a grandson of Amyrtæus, who bore his name, proclaimed the independence of Egypt. He did not utterly expel the Persians, for Artaxerxes still had Egyptian troops in his army in 401, at the time of the campaign against Cyrus, and he also had to endure rival princes, for the monuments record that a Psamthek, descendant of the old family of the Saïtes was his contemporary and bore the title of “King of the Egyptians.” This feudalism was too strong and turbulent to permit the sceptre to remain long in one family, so the XXVIIIth Dynasty only lasted six years, which was the length of the reign of Amyrtæus [Amen-Rut], and it was followed by the Mendesian dynasty.

Niafaarut I completed the work of deliverance, and under his rule, Egypt recovered her old activity. Her course was controlled by circumstances, for the disproportion of the forces of an isolated province and an empire almost covering the west of Asia was too apparent for the Pharaohs to think of going to war without outside help, so they instinctively followed the policy of Psamthek and his successors. Egypt tried to establish lines of posts along the front which would bear the brunt of the enemy’s first attack. Then she intrigued in Syria and Cyprus, hoping to win over the allies, or even to re-establish the ancient suzerainty of the Theban princes there, and if beaten on this outlying front of their lines, she would have time to muster an army, or even a fleet, before the conqueror arrived on the frontier. All the revolts of the different races, and all the quarrels of the satraps were to the advantage of Egypt, and as they obliged the Great King to divide his troops, she assiduously fomented them and on occasions even provoked them, and managed so well, that for some time only the weakest part of the Persian armies were stationed in her country. Mercenaries were now substituted in Greece for troops raised from the citizens, and war had become a lucrative occupation to those competent to excel in it. The Pharaohs never hesitated to lavish their treasures on the purchase of these formidable companies. Iphicrates, Chabrias, Timotheus, and all the celebrated generals appeared in turn at the head of the Egyptian or Persian masses, engaged on the banks of the Nile, sometimes with the consent, and sometimes against the will of their country. When Niafaarut ascended the throne, Sparta was at the height of her grandeur and had even declared war against Persia, and Agesilaus was commanding his campaign in Phrygia; so Niafaarut concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the Lacedæmonians, and sent them a fleet laden with arms, corn, and ammunition, but it was intercepted by Conon, the Athenian, who commanded the Persian squadron. The recall of Agesilaus and the abandonment of Asia Minor chilled the good will of the king of Egypt, and the forces which he had seemed disposed to send to Sparta’s assistance were now probably stationed on the frontier of Syria to repel the attack which he thought was imminent.

The attack, however, did not come as quickly as was expected. The retreat of the Lacedæmonians had not terminated the affairs of Asia Minor, for since the rising of Cyrus the majority of the indigenous races, such as the Mysians, Pisidians, and the people of the Black Sea regions and of Paphlagonia, had asserted their independence; so Artaxerxes sent against them the army which he had meant to despatch to Egypt, but it was only at Cyprus that much stand was made. The island was now divided between two races, the Phœnician and the Greek, and since the Achæans settled there after uniting with the maritime people, vanquished by Meneptah, the Greek influence had increased. All the adventurers, in quest of fresh countries to occupy, assembled on this frontier of the Eastern world.

[Sidenote: [399-387 B.C.]]

As time went on the Semitic constituent decreased still more as the Phœnicians, driven back slowly but surely, concentrated themselves around Citium, or Cition, and Amathus. But, albeit diminished, the number of the Semitic forces was sufficient to prevent the princes of Soli, or Salamis, uniting the whole island into one state. It had been successively subjugated, by the Assyrians under Sargon II, the Babylonians under Nebuchadrezzar, the Egyptians under Aahmes II, and the Persians under Cyrus and Cambyses, and each of these conquests left profound traces on the customs and the arts of the country.

But if the external side of civilisation often followed Eastern models, internally it became more and more Hellenic. The people of Cyprus had been the earliest among the people of their race to possess the art of writing. They had adopted, doubtless soon after their arrival, a particular system of spelling, and they retained it, even when the Greeks were beginning to use the Cadmean alphabet.

Onasilas, the king of Salamis, in Cyprus, united with Miletus, and, with the exception of the king of Amathus, all the other princes joined the alliance, which resisted the forces of the Great King for a year. But when the rebellion was quelled, Darius made the Greek population pay for its disaffection; its commerce was stopped, its ports were shut to the ships coming from Hellas, and in many towns, like Salamis, the tyrants of the old race were replaced by those of Phœnician descent. In fact, the Great King now looked to the Semitic race for respect for his authority. Citium, almost ruined by its vicinity to Salamis, recovered her old position as the head and chief market of the island; and, in spite of the intermittent appearance of Athenian fleets on her coasts, more than a century elapsed before the Cypriotes found an opportunity of freeing themselves from their crushing bondage.

It was Evagoras who delivered them. He was descended from the old kings of Salamis, and after having driven away Abdemon, the Tyrian, who was in command of the town, he took the whole of the island, with the exception of Citium and Amathus. Artaxerxes soon took umbrage at his ambition and activity, and not without reason, for in 391 he was in open war against Evagoras. If he had not been assisted, the struggle would have been short, but both Greece and Egypt helped him with both money and arms. Haker had succeeded Niafaarut in 393, and after protecting his western frontier by making an alliance with the Libyans at Barca, he made a treaty with Evagoras and the Athenians. He gave corn, ammunition, vessels, and money to Athens in return for several thousands of men under Chabrias, one of her best generals; and not only was the first Persian expedition under Autophradates utterly beaten, but after taking Citium and Amathus, Evagoras crossed the sea, took Tyre by assault, and laid waste Phœnicia and Cilicia.

[Sidenote: [387-378 B.C.]]

The princes of Asia Minor then became alarmed, and Hecatomnus of Caria joined the allies. Sparta, weakened by the war, then made a sudden treaty with the Persians, and Antalcidas went to Susa to arrange this Peace, so celebrated in the history of Greece, and thereupon a decree from Asia notified to all the people of Hellas that hostilities were to be suspended and the liberty of all sides was henceforth to be respected; and as no state was in a position to resist the united kingdoms of Sparta and Persia, the command was obeyed. A little more than half a century before, Athens by a treaty with an Artaxerxes, forced him to acknowledge the independence of the Greeks of Asia; and now Sparta, treating with a second Artaxerxes, gave the Hellenes back into his power.

The Great King, being now free to turn his whole attention to the rebellious countries, Evagoras was the one to be first attacked; Cyprus was in effect a sort of open road to Egypt and the people possessing it had command of the sea and could intercept an army on its way to the Delta from Palestine. So Artaxerxes mustered three hundred ships and three hundred thousand foot-soldiers, and after placing them under the command of Tiribazus he despatched them to the island. The Cypriote corsairs intercepted the convoy and reduced it to such a wretched condition that a mutiny broke out. However, Evagoras was finally beaten at sea near Citium, and his fleet was destroyed. But still hopeful, he left his son to find a way out of the difficulty and repaired to Egypt to implore the help of the Pharaoh (385).

But Haker had enough to do for his own safety without risking the best part of his forces in a distant expedition; so Evagoras and the subsidies he brought back from Egypt were very insufficient. Reduced to an army of three thousand men, he shut himself up in Salamis, where he was besieged for years. The treachery of one of the Persian generals, Gaos, son-in-law of Tiribazus, gave him a moment’s hope, for Gaos, after joining Haker, asked for the help of the Lacedæmonians, but he died without having done anything, so Evagoras was again alone in the presence of the enemy. Whilst the officers of the Great King were engaged in besieging him, Artaxerxes himself nearly lost his life in an unfortunate campaign against the Cadusians. A brave soldier, but an incompetent general, his troops, worn out with hunger and fatigue, would have perished in their march across the mountains by the hand of an implacable enemy had not Tiribazus cleverly persuaded the barbarians to sue for peace at the moment of their triumph.

As the defeat of Evagoras showed Haker that the submission of Cyprus was only a question of time, he went meanwhile to Asia Minor, where he made a not very advantageous alliance with the Pisidians, who were then in full revolt. He found more assistance in Greece, for the Peace of Antalcidas having left a number of mercenaries without employment, he soon mustered twenty thousand men. The Persians, being still busy in Cyprus, offered no opposition to the arrival of the reinforcements, and this was fortunate for Egypt, for as Haker died in 380 and as his heirs Psamut and Niafaarut II succeeded each other on the throne within a short time, the settlement of the succession plunged the country into two years’ warfare.

The turbulence of the great feudal chiefs which had robbed the Saïtes of their power was equally fatal to the Mendesians, and the prince of Sebennytus, Nekht-Hor-heb (Nectanebo I), was borne to the throne by the soldiers. According to Ptolemaic tradition, he was the son of Niafaarut I, and had been kept from the throne by the jealousy of the gods. But whatever was his origin, Egypt had no cause to repent his coronation. Feeling that a continuance of the supplies which had been allowed by Haker to Evagoras would be waste of money, he stopped them, and the inevitable fall of the tyrant of Salamis ensued. Although abandoned by all, and weary of a six years resistance, he would only surrender on the most advantageous terms. Not only was Artaxerxes to pardon his rebellion, but he was to retain his title and prerogatives for the payment of an annual tribute. Nectanebo, now brought in contact with the Great King, redoubled his activity. The events of the last few years having proved the talents of Chabrias, the Athenian, Nectanebo invited him to organise his army. Chabrias accepted the offer, albeit without his government’s authority, and he soon transformed the Delta into a regularly fortified camp. The Persians strove to measure their attack according to the means of the enemy’s defence. Akko, on the southern coast of Syria, was the only port large enough to harbour the Persian fleets against tempests and surprises, so Pharnabazus made it his headquarters and the base of his operations. For three years it was the place of muster for provisions and ammunition, sailors and soldiers, and the Phœnician and Greek fleets. The advance of the enterprise was several times nearly arrested by the rivalries of the Persian chiefs, Tithraustes, Datames, and Abrocomas, and the intrigues of the court, but Pharnabazus always succeeded in getting rid of his rivals; and at the beginning of 373 the expedition was ready to start. It consisted of 200,000 soldiers, 20,000 mercenaries, 300 picked men, 200 twenty-oared galleys and many transport ships.

[Sidenote: [378-373 B.C.]]

But at the last moment Egypt lost her best commander, for Artaxerxes asked Athens by what right she authorised Chabrias to serve against him in the Egyptian ranks; and at the same time he begged his friends, the Athenians, to lend him their general, Iphicrates, for a time. So the Athenians ordered the return of Chabrias, and sent Iphicrates to Syria, where he took command of the Greek auxiliaries; and thus reinforced, the Persians started in 373.

On arriving at Pelusium, Iphicrates saw he had but slight chance of forcing its surrender, for not only had the fortifications of the town been increased, but the inhabitants had cut the canals, and inundated the approaches. Iphicrates advised the Persians to take it by surprise. So three thousand men were secretly despatched to the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, where they attacked the entrenchments which guarded it. The garrison, imprudently sallying forth, was beaten and pursued with such vigour that victors and vanquished entered pell mell into the fort. The breach being made, the Persians could have promptly taken possession of the place, but the opportunity was lost through the dissensions of the generals. Iphicrates having learned from the prisoners that Memphis was short of soldiers, advised Pharnabazus quickly to reascend the Nile and take the capital before Nectanebo’s reinforcements arrived. But Pharnabazus thought the plan too dangerous and decided to wait for the whole army to rejoin him. Iphicrates then suggested attempting the venture with his own company; but the Egyptians, suspicious of his having some secret design upon Egypt, declined the offer. As these delays gave the enemy time to recover from the first reverse, Nectanebo again took the offensive, attacked the Persians, and obtained the victory in several skirmishes.

In the meanwhile summer arrived, the land was inundated, and Iphicrates and Pharnabazus beat a retreat and returned to Syria, from whence Iphicrates, weary of the recriminations of his Asiatic colleagues, secretly fled to Greece, and the remainder of his fleet and army dispersed soon after his departure; thus Egypt was saved for a quarter of a century.

[Sidenote: [373-361 B.C.]]

But this failure in no way deflected from the influence exercised by the Great King over Greece since the Peace of 387; and Sparta, Athens, and Thebes disputed for his alliance more hotly than ever.

In 372 Antalcidas reappeared at Susa to again beg for the king’s interposition in Greece, so in 367 Pelopidas and Ismenias obtained a rescript bidding the Greeks keep the peace; upon which Athens sent ambassadors to obtain subsidies from Persia. The Great King seems to have become a sort of supreme arbiter to whom each city came to plead her cause. But capable as was this arbiter in imposing his will abroad, he was not master in his own domains, for, kind and easy-going, and more inclined to give than to exact, Artaxerxes had not the energy necessary to repress the ambition of the provincial governors.

Ariobarzanes of Pontus was the first to rebel, and Datames and Aspis of Cappadocia soon followed suit, and defied their sovereign for years.

When these leaders were defeated by treachery, all the satraps of the western provinces from the frontiers of Egypt to the Hellespont, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance; and the empire was in danger of foundering; for Egypt, always on the watch, had profited by this revolt to exhibit her hatred of Persia, and to add to her own security. Nectanebo had died in 364 and Tachus, who had succeeded him, did not hesitate to negotiate with the rebels, who despatched Rheomithres to him to discuss the terms of the treaty.

Tachus having inherited from Nectanebo a fine fleet and a full treasury loaned the ambassador five hundred talents of silver, and fifty ships with which he sailed for Leucas on the coast of Asia Minor, where his colleagues were waiting for him delighted with the success of the mission. But not having confidence in the issue of the struggle, Rheomithres sought an early opportunity of reconciliation with the Great King, and he had scarcely arrived when he joined with Orontes in despatching the insurgents to Susa in chains. Tachus had thus benevolently assisted the Persian king to fill his coffers and to master his armies, but in spite of this last disappointment the position of Egypt was so brilliant and that of Persia so wretched that he decided to take the offensive and invade Syria. In this design he was supported by Chabrias, whom the reverses of an adventurous life had again brought back to Egypt; but Tachus had not sufficient funds for a long campaign in a foreign country, so the Greek pointed out the means of procuring them.

The Egyptian priesthood was rich, so Chabrias told the king that as the money disbursed annually for the sacrifices and for the support of the temples, would be better spent in the service of the state, he advised him to demolish the majority of the sacerdotal colleges. The priests, however, retained them at the expense of their personal property, and after the king had graciously accepted this sacrifice, he told them that in the future, and during the expedition against the Persians, he would exact from them nine-tenths of the sacred revenues. This tax would have sufficed for the needs had it been fully paid, but the priests doubtless found means to avoid paying the whole sum.

Chabrias then advised the increase of the capitation tax and the tax on houses, the exaction of an obole on each ardeb of grain sold, the levying of a tenth on navigation, fabrics, and manual trades. These charges soon added to the resources, but another difficulty ensued, which the Greek overcame with equal energy.

Egypt had little coin and the system of exchange was used by the people in the ordinary transactions of life.

The Greek mercenaries, however, declined to be paid in kind or in metals uncoined, and they demanded ringing pieces of money as the price of their blood. So the order was issued that the people should bring to the treasury all the minted or unminted gold and silver in their possession with the understanding that they were to be gradually reimbursed from the taxes of the future.

[Sidenote: [361-352 B.C.]]

If these measures cost Tachus his popularity, they empowered him to raise 24,000 native soldiers and 10,000 Greeks to equip a fleet of two hundred sail and to hire the best generals of the period. But he was too emulative to succeed, he was not contented with Chabrias and the alliance with Athens, but he also wanted Agesilaus and the alliance of Sparta. In spite of his infirmities and his eighty years, Agesilaus was not insensible to gain and flattery; and tempted by the promise of supreme command, he set out with a thousand soldiers. On his arrival he was met by a disappointment, for Tachus only gave him the command of the mercenaries, as he kept the chief leadership for himself and put the fleet in the hands of Chabrias.

The old hero, after showing his vexation by an exhibition of Spartan temper, was appeased by the presents he was given, and he consented to accept the proffered post. However, disputes of a more serious character soon broke out between him and his allies, for he wished Tachus to remain in Egypt, and leave the conduct of the operations to his generals. But the facility with which the captains of the troops passed from one camp to another was not calculated to inspire the Egyptian with confidence, so he refused, and after nominating his brother-in-law, who also bore the name of Tachus, regent, he repaired to the camp. The Persians were not strong enough to appear in the open, so Tachus commanded his cousin Nekht-neb-ef (Nectanebo II), the son of the regent, to besiege them in their fortresses. The war then dragged along and discontent broke out among the troops, and treachery lurked in the army. The financial expedient of Chabrias had exasperated the priests and the common people, and the complaints which had been stifled by fear of the mercenaries, were voiced as soon as the expedition had crossed the frontier. The regent, instead of quelling this discontent, secretly fomented it, and wrote to tell his son to claim the crown.

Nectanebo soon won over to his side the Egyptians under his command, but they were insufficient so long as the Greeks had not declared for him. Chabrias refused to withdraw from his engagements with the king; but Agesilaus was not so scrupulous. His vanity had been deeply wounded whilst in Egypt, for not only had he been refused the command to which he considered he was entitled, but his small figure, his infirmities and his rough Lacedæmonian ways had been made fun of by the courtiers. When Tachus begged Agesilaus to take the field against the rebels, he ironically replied that he had been sent to help the Egyptians, not to fight against them. However, before finally deciding which side to take, he consulted the ephores, and, as they permitted him to do his best to advance the interests of the country, he declared himself for Nectanebo, in spite of the entreaties of Chabrias.

Tachus, thus abandoned by his allies, took refuge at Sidon, and from thence he repaired to Artaxerxes, who received him kindly and placed him at the head of a fresh expedition against Egypt in the year 361.

The news of the king’s application to Persia excited general revolt in the valley of the Nile, and as the support of the foreigner aroused the suspicion of the native races, they joined the prince of Mendes.

Nectanebo having abandoned the conquests of his predecessors brought back his forces to Egypt, and arrived at Pelusium, where he found himself at the head of a large and resolute army with which, albeit undisciplined, Agesilaus advised the king to attack the insurgents before they had time to take the field. But unfortunately the Spartan was not in favour, for the prince of Mendes had tried to corrupt him, and although he had on that occasion shown unhoped-for loyalty, he was not trusted. Nectanebo made Tanis his headquarters, and his enemies hoped to besiege him there. The circle of ditches encompassing the town was almost completed, and provisions were getting scarce, when Agesilaus received orders to attempt a sortie, but he forced the blockade under shadow of the night, and a few days later, gained a decisive victory.

Nectanebo would gladly have kept him with him, for he was in fear of a surprise by the Persians, but the Spartan, being tired of Egypt and her intrigues, left the country, and died of exhaustion on the coast of Cyrenaica [probably 360].

The onset soon followed, as Pharaoh had anticipated, but it was weak and uncertain: Tachus, who was to have led it, died before it began, and the discords of the royal family prevented the other generals from acting in concert. The old Artaxerxes had three sons by his wife Statira--Darius, Ariaspes, and Ochus. Darius the eldest had been solemnly recognised as heir presumptive, but threatened with seeing himself supplanted by Ochus, he conspired the death of his father; however, he was discovered, imprisoned, and executed in his cell. So Ariaspes became the successor-elect, but Ochus told him that his father intended to have him put to an ignominious death, and he persuaded him to commit suicide so as to escape it. Arsames, a bastard son of one of the harem ladies, still remained as an heir to the throne, but he was assassinated by Ochus, and Artaxerxes succumbed to this last misfortune and died of sorrow, after a reign of forty-six years [358].

ARTAXERXES III

Artaxerxes III (Ochus) opened his reign with a massacre of all the princes of the royal family; then, thus freed from the pretenders who might have disputed the crown, he continued the war preparations, which had been interrupted by the death of his father and his own accession. Never had it been more important to re-establish the Persian dominion on the banks of the Nile. Egypt had been a source of continual trouble to the Great King ever since the recovery of her independence sixty years before.

The first attack of Ochus was repelled with loss. Two adventurers who commanded the troops of Nectanebo, Diophantes of Athens and Lamius of Sparta, gained a complete victory over the assailants, and obliged them to retire with loss.

[Sidenote: [352-340 B.C.]]

The provinces on the coast of the Mediterranean, always unquiet since the campaign of Tachus and the revolt of Evagoras, took advantage of the seemingly favourable opportunity, and Artabazus revolted in Asia Minor, and nine of the little kings of Cyprus proclaimed their independence. Phœnicia still hesitated, but the satrap’s insolence, the rapacity of the generals, and the want of discipline of the soldiers returned from Egypt decided her. At a meeting held at Tripolis the representatives of the Phœnician cities conferred on Tennes, the prince of Sidon, the perilous honour of directing the military operations, and his first act was to destroy the royal park, which the Persians had in the Lebanon Mountains, and to burn the provisions stored in the ports for the war in Egypt. At first Ochus thought that his lieutenants would soon avenge these acts, and, indeed, it was not long before Idrieus, tyrant of Caria, supported by eight thousand mercenaries, quelled the Cypriotes. But in Asia Minor, Artabazus, aided by Athens and Thebes, withstood the troops sent against him, and Tennes gained an important victory in Syria. He had naturally implored the help of Nectanebo, and he had sent him four thousand Greeks under his best general, Mentor, the Rhodian; and Belesys, the satrap of Syria, and Mazæus, the satrap of Cilicia, were beaten. Then enraged at these reverses Ochus convened his vanguard and rear-guard of thirty thousand Asiatics and ten thousand Greeks for a final effort; and the Sidonians, on their side, surrounded their city with a triple moat, increased the height of their walls and burnt their ships. Their leader was, unfortunately, wanting in energy, for Tennes, until the day of revolt, had lived a life of pleasure, surrounded with dancers and musicians, whom he had brought from Ionia and Greece at great expense.

The approach of Ochus robbed him of the little courage he possessed, and he tried by treachery to his subjects to atone for the treason of which he was guilty to his sovereign. His confidential minister was a certain Thessalion, and he sent him to the Persian camp and offered to betray Sidon, and act as a guide to Egypt, in return for the retention of his life and rank.

Ochus had accepted the conditions of his rebellious vassal when a moment of pride nearly compromised the affair. For Thessalion asked the king to give him his right hand on the promise of the fulfilment of the engagement; and this presumption so enraged Ochus, that he gave orders for his execution. As they were taking him away, Thessalion cried out that if the Great King forfeited the proffered assistance of Tennes, he would fail in his efforts against Phœnicia and Egypt; whereupon, Ochus granted the request made of him.

When the Persians were only a few days’ march from the city, Thessalion lured the hundred chief citizens to the camp on the pretext of a general meeting, and they were put to death by javelin blows. The Sidonians, although abandoned by their king, still wished to hold out, but Mentor told them that their mercenaries would bring the enemy into the place at a moment’s notice; so after deciding to throw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror, five hundred of them were sent as deputies with olive branches in their hands. But Ochus was the cruellest, most blood-thirsty king Persia had ever had, and he treated the envoys in his usual way. The rest of the population, therefore, seeing that death was inevitable, shut themselves up in their houses and set fire to them. Forty thousand persons perished in the fire, and such was the wealth of the best houses, that the right of extracting from the ruins the ingots of gold and silver was sold at a high price. The punishment of the town was followed by the execution of Tennes, and the other cities, alarmed at his fate, opened their gates without striking a blow.

After the settlement of Syria, Ochus marched to Egypt without further delay. The Great King’s victories recalled the vacillating provinces to submission.

[Sidenote: [340-338 B.C.]]

The army was divided into three parts, each one commanded by a barbarian and by a Greek. In passing through the marsh lands, several battalions were lost in the shifting sands; and on arriving at Pelusium, the enemy was found ready. Nectanebo had fewer men than his adversary, his force consisting of sixty thousand Egyptians, twenty thousand Libyans, and as many Greeks, but the recollection of his own successes and those of his predecessors, in spite of unequal numbers, inspired him with courage in the issue of the struggle. His squadron was likewise unequal to the combined fleets of Cyprus and Phœnicia, but he had sufficient flat-bottomed boats to defend the mouths of the Nile. The weak points of his position were defended by fortresses or entrenched camps; in short, all measures were taken for a defensive war.

The imprudent ardour of his Greek auxiliaries, however, spoiled his plan. Pelusium was occupied by five thousand men, under the command of Philophron. Some of the Thebans, who had served under Lacrates in the Persian army, desirous of again justifying their renown for bravery gained in the campaigns of Epaminondas, crossed a deep canal, which separated them from the town, and provoked the garrison to an encounter in the open field. Philophron accepted the challenge, and disputed the victory till nightfall. The following day Lacrates, having bridged the canal with a dike, led his company to the attack, and began storming the town. In a few days a breach was made, but the Egyptians, being as clever in the use of the pickaxe as the sword, built a new wall crowned with towers, whilst the old one was being demolished. Nectanebo, accompanied by thirty thousand native soldiers, five thousand Greeks, and half of the Libyan contingent, followed the course of the siege from a distance; and his presence prevented the Persians from approaching nearer.

Weeks elapsed, and it seemed that the tactics of temporisation would have their usual result, when an unforeseen incident complicated the situation. Among the chiefs of companies who fought under Ochus, there was a certain Nicostratus from Argos, whose personal strength likened him to Hercules, and who, like the traditional hero, was equipped with a lion’s skin and a club.

In imitation, doubtless, of the plan formerly proposed by Iphicrates to Pharnabazus, Nicostratus forced some peasants, whose wives and children were in his power, to guide him to one of the mouths of the Nile, which had been left unfortified, and there he landed his body of troops, and fortified himself in the rear of Nectanebo. The enterprise, undertaken with too few men, was more than rash, and if the mercenaries had contented themselves with harassing Nicostratus, without coming to an open battle, they would have forced him to re-embark or surrender. But their impatience spoilt everything, for the five thousand men forming the garrison of the neighbouring town marched under Clinias of Cos against the Argive and were beaten. The breach was at last made and the Persians, encouraged by the success of Nicostratus, ran the risk of being separated from the troops on the eastern frontier and utterly destroyed, for he had turned back to the Delta. Whilst he was trying to muster a fresh army at Memphis, Pelusium surrendered to Lacrates; Mentor took possession of Bubastis, and the strongest cities fearing the same fate as Sidon opened their gates almost without resistance.

Nectanebo, in despair at these successive defections, fled to Ethiopia with his treasures, and the successful coup de main of Nicostratus re-established the empire of the Great King.

Egypt had certainly prospered under the administration of her latter indigenous kings. From the reign of Amyrtæus to that of Nectanebo, the sovereigns had conscientiously worked to efface the traces of the foreign invasions and to restore the kingdom to its old prosperity. The two capitals Thebes and Memphis, were not forgotten, and the cities of the Delta, Sebennytus, Bubastis, and Pithom were also embellished. And in spite of the short time given to the work, the majority of these works bear no trace of haste or carelessness; and the artists being quite conversant with the methods of ancient art, knew how to produce chefs d’œuvre comparable to those of the Saïtic period.

But now the victory of Ochus was a more fatal blow to Egypt than the invasion of Cambyses had been. Ochus had personal feelings of hate against his new subjects, and he has been compared to Typhon for cruelty, and he was dubbed an ass, because it is the animal consecrated to the god of evil.

Arrived at Memphis, he gave orders for the Apis bull to be roasted for a banquet, and he enthroned and worshipped an ass in the temple of Ptah.

The goat of Mendes shared the fate of Apis, the temples were sacked, the sacred books carried off to Persia, the walls of the city razed to the ground, and the chief partisans of the indigenous royalty were massacred.

When these acts were over, the Greek mercenaries returned to their country, laden with booty, and the Great King returned to Susa, leaving the reconquered satrapy in charge of Pherendates. The success of the expedition had been mainly due to the eunuch Bagoas and Mentor the Rhodian; and to them Ochus entrusted the government of the empire. Bagoas directed the politics of the interior, and Mentor, placed at the head of the maritime provinces, soon reduced them to order.

Artabazus retired from the struggle and sought refuge with Philip of Macedon. Some tyrants on the coast of the Ægean Sea willingly submitted to the new dominion, and others resisting, like Hermias of Atarneus, the friend of Aristotle, were seized and put to death.

Thus Persia in a few years seemed to regain the widespread power which she had lost since the accession of Artaxerxes II, and Ochus ranked as high in the minds of his contemporaries as her great conquerors, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. But Ochus himself was only an oriental despot of the common type. His empire still had the appearance of strength, but the races, strangers to each other, and with difficulty suppressed by the satraps, inclined more and more to detachment from him, and already some of the governments of the previous century only existed in name. In the north towards the sources of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Halys, there was nothing but a confused mass of kingdoms and tribes, of which some like the Armenians still recognised the suzerainty of the Persians, and others, like the Chalybes and the Tibareni retained their independence. The kings of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus still paid tribute in an intermittent fashion; but the Mysians, Pisidians, Lycaonians, had ceased payment. The countries beyond the Tigris were in the same disorder. The Cadusians, the Amardians, and the Tapuri, protected by the mountains of the Caspian Sea, withstood every effort to dislodge them. India and the Sacæ had passed from the state of subjects to that of friendly allies, and the savage hordes of Gedrosia and Paropamisus rebelled against all authority. During the dismemberment of the empire the order of administration, so cleverly organised by Darius, was broken by the feebleness of his mercenaries. Not only had the custom of annually sending inspectors to the provinces become a mere formality, which was often omitted, but the distinction between the civil and military power had disappeared. The officer who commanded the troops nearly always filled the post of governor and united several satrapies under one rule.

The army and revenue were still, in spite of everything, the greatest in the world, but, if the darics had retained their value, the battalions had lost in strength. The old powers of the Persians, Medes, and Bactrians, and other races of Iran, were doubtless undiminished, but nobody troubled to make them conversant with the progress made during the century in military tactics. Their contingents were only heavy, undisciplined companies, easy to conquer in spite of the incontestable bravery of the individuals composing them; so, as their training would have taken a long time, it was better to add to their ranks mercenaries at a great price.

Since the time of Artaxerxes II the Greeks formed the kernel of the Persian forces; and the armies of the Great King were commanded by Hellenic generals of the school of Agesilaus, Iphicrates, Epaminondas, and the best tacticians of the time.

The fleets were placed under Greek admirals, and the cruel Ochus entirely owed his victories to this preponderance of European command, and the fact was so well known beyond the Ægean Sea that the question was openly discussed there.

If the decadence of the empire was sudden, the fault did not lie with the people. The Persians had remained as they were at the beginning, sober, honest, and intrepid, but the dynasty had degenerated to an irrecoverable degree. The early Achæmenidæ had themselves ruled all the affairs of the state; then, the campaign in Greece having disgusted Xerxes with militant royalty, he shut himself up in his harem and left the perilous honour of fighting to his generals, and the care of administration to the eunuch Aspamithres. This custom, once established, was followed by his successors, and the sovereigns now rarely intervened in the conduct of military operations. Neither Artaxerxes I nor Darius Nothus appeared on the field of battle, and Artaxerxes II only took part in two of the wars which embittered his long reign. Ochus, who had seemed to wish to recover the traditional power of the founders of the empire, returned to Susa after his victories in Syria and Egypt, and the life of the princes was passed in the midst of the intrigues and crimes of the harem. Brought up by women and eunuchs, and surrounded from infancy with pomp and luxury, they soon wearied of thinking and acting, and mechanically fell under the direction of their familiars. The sanguinary Parysatis reigned under the name of her husband, Darius Nothus, and her son, Artaxerxes II; and Bagoas influenced Ochus for nearly six years, and his power was certainly beneficial to the country.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [338-330 B.C.]]

Macedonia, which had long remained unconcerned with the general movement, now began to take part in the Hellenic concert. Bagoas saw the danger of letting her take the ascendant, and form a union of all the forces hitherto scattered in Greece. He therefore supported all the enemies of Philip.

Unfortunately, whilst Bagoas was working to prevent the perils menacing the empire, his rivals at Susa lowered him in the esteem of his master, and their intrigues left him no alternative but to strike or die. He therefore poisoned Ochus, gave the throne to Arses, the youngest son of the king, and assassinated all the other children. Egypt was delighted at the news, and saw in the tragic fate of her conqueror a notable revenge of the gods he had outraged.

Arses was at first only a weak tool in the hands of his master, but when years gave him a taste for independence he became impatient at his subjection; so Bagoas sacrificed him to his own safety as he had Ochus. So many successive murders had so completely exhausted the Achæmenian family that he was at loss for a moment to know where to find a king; but he finally decided in favour of one of his friends, Codomannus, who, according to some, was the great-grandson of Darius II, and according to others, was not of royal descent. Codomannus took, on his accession, the name of Darius. Being brave, generous, clement, and desirous of doing well he was superior to the kings who had preceded him, and he deserved to have reigned before the empire was so enfeebled.

When Bagoas saw that his protégé intended to reign by himself, he wished to get rid of him, but, betrayed by one of his people, he was made to drink the poison he had destined for Darius. However, Darius did not long enjoy in peace the power which had been so much envied. Having ascended the throne the same year as Alexander, some days before the battle of the Chersonesus, he saw the dangers threatening him from the Macedonian’s ambition, and he was powerless to prevent them.

He was beaten at the Granicus, beaten at Issus, beaten at Arbela, and then killed in flight by one of his satraps. Alexander then took possession of his empire, and henceforth the Greek race supplanted the Persians in the part they had played for two centuries as the ruling power of the world.[e]

[Sidenote: [330 B.C.]]

Bessus the Satrap of Bactria, who murdered the fleeing Darius, assumed the royal title and the name of Artaxerxes IV. His adventures and plans were numerous, but on the farther side of the Oxus he fell into Alexander’s hands and was speedily put to death.[a]

THE OLD ORIENT AT THE END OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

We have followed the political history of the Old Orient and have now seen it swallowed up in Alexander’s empire. Before we turn to the new races that are to demand our attention, let us take a final look at the countries which were the scene of the history of the early world, and see what they had become. On the south, on the ancient frontier of the Semitic races, Elam was divided into the mountainous district, and the district of the plains, and the history of these two districts was quite distinct one from another. For the people of the Oxus mountains, the Elamites and the Kossæans, retained their independence and made raids on the neighbouring territories from their unassailable haunts, whilst the people of the plains gladly submitted to the Persian yoke and readily accepted any ruler that appeared.

The favourable situation of Susa or Shushan had early attracted the attention of the Achæmenians; and the old palace of the Elamites, built upon an artificial elevation and cooled in the summer by the mountain breezes, and warmed in winter by the soft air from the Persian Gulf, became their favourite residence. Darius, son of Hystaspes, finding it too small for him, had it rebuilt and it was burnt in the reign of Artaxerxes I, and restored by Artaxerxes II.

The nations of the tableland of Asia Minor, and the mountains of the Tigris and Euphrates, those of Urartu and Van, Mushke [Moschi], Tubal, and the neighbouring peoples of northern Assyria, being decimated by the Scythian invasions, had submitted to the younger, less tried races. The Mushke and Tubal nations were divided into two branches, many of their tribes, with probably the rest of the Cimmerians, remained in the deep defiles of the Taurus; and the others having pushed towards the north, dwelt with other tribes at the time of Herodotus, on the mountains bordering the Black Sea.

When the Median conqueror arrived in those parts which are known as Cappadocia, he only found there Leuco-Syrians, the rest of the Hittites, and a new people called Armenians. The Armenians, who had come from Phrygia towards the end of the seventh century, settled at first in the districts adjoining their own country, then they gradually arrived at the source of the Halys, and in the time of Herodotus they were in possession of the districts on the east of the Euphrates (the Asia Minor of Roman geographers), and the western side of the Arsanias. They formed a satrapy of their own (the thirteenth), whilst the people of Urartu, the Alarodians, were included in the eighteenth. During the troubles which followed the campaign of Greece, the aspect of the country changed once more. The Moschi separated themselves from the Tibareni and joined the Colchians in the basin of the Phasis. The Alarodians, pushed back towards the north, joined the half savage races of the Caucasus. The Armenians, driven further to the east, gradually took possession of the imposing mountainous district between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea, and came down into the plains of the Araxes. At the time of Alexander’s appearance in Asia, they were settled in their new district, having subjugated, or destroyed all the aborigines who had not emigrated, and their princes exercised a truly royal authority under the modest title of satrap.

Cappadocia was divided into two provinces, Cappadocia Proper, and Pontus, of which the hereditary governors, connected with the Achæmenian family, only waited an opportunity for declaring themselves kings. The old dynasties, names and races, and the warlike, barbarous world that the Assyrian conquerors had known between the plain of Mesopotamia and the Black Sea were now extinct, and the three kingdoms evolved from the ruins had even effaced the memory of it. In the domain proper of the Semitic races, between the coasts of the Mediterranean and the last abutment of the plain of Iran, the decadence was less general and apparent. Half of the old races, such as the Ruthennu and the Hittites, had disappeared with the cities of Carchemish, Arpad, and Kadesh, and although Batnæ, Hamath, and Damascus, escaped destruction, they fell into obscurity, and whole districts lapsed into desert land for want of hands to till them.

Phœnicia, impoverished by the destruction of Tyre and Sidon, had trouble to repair her losses; all her colonies were gone, and the little kingdoms of Cyprus with the towns of Citium and Amathus, had enough to do to defend their independence against the Greeks.

Assyria herself was only a vague memory of the past. The district between the Tigris and Euphrates was almost deserted. Some places, as Nisibis, still retained some of their old importance, and existed as well as they could on their own resources, but towards the south the numberless cities discovered in former times by the Ninevite conquerors, as they marched toward Syria, were now only heaps of ruins. On the banks of the Tigris the people were neither plentiful nor prosperous. The Assyrian exiles, liberated by Cyrus after the fall of Babylon, had rebuilt Asshur and enriched themselves by the cultivation of the land, and by commerce, but the district between the Upper and Lower Zabs was quite deserted, while Assyria Proper had not recovered from her ruin.

Calah was inhabited: “Its walls 25 feet wide and 100 long and two parasangs in circumference, were built of brick upon a substratum of stone 20 feet high.” The pyramidal tower of the goat temple, still in existence, “was in stone and one plethrum broad and two high.”

Two hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the death of Saracus [Sin-shar-ishkun] when Xenophon travelled through the country, and the people of the neighbouring small towns were already ignorant of the names of the ruined Calah and Nineveh by which they were living. They called the first Larissa, and the second Mespila, and the historians themselves were not much better informed; for the long line of terrible conquerors, beginning with Tukulti-Ninib and ending with Asshurbanapal, was summed up under the mythical names of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. Semiramis was credited with the victories and conquests, and Sardanapalus with the refined and intellectual qualities of the race. Everything Assyrian was attributed to one or other of these two.

In Babylonia, Ur was now only an insignificant town, but Erech was the seat of a school of theology and science, as celebrated throughout the East as that of Borsippa. Babylon by itself was regarded as the whole of Chaldea by the majority of travellers. Babylon was in fact the second capital of the Persian empire. The court resided there part of the year, as it was the centre of commerce and industry which was wanting in Susa. The city made several attempts during the first century after the conquest to restore her national dynasty, but after she was sacked by Xerxes seems to have submitted to her subjugation. But even in her abjection the city was a source of many surprises to the traveller. Unlike Greek cities, it was built on a regular plan, by which the streets crossed each other at right angles, some parallel, and others at right angles to the Euphrates; and the latter terminated at a gate of brass, which opened on to the works of the quay, and gave access to the river. The street throngs numbered specimens of every Asiatic race brought hither by the demands of commerce, and the natives of the place were distinguished by their elegant dress, consisting of a linen tunic reaching to the feet and surmounted with another tunic made of wool, with a sort of white tippet.

When the Persian rule succeeded the Chaldean, the Aramæan language did not lose its importance. It became the official language of all the western provinces and it is found on the coins of Asia Minor, upon the papyrus and steles of Egypt, in the edicts and correspondence of the satraps, and even on those of the Great King.

From Nisibis to Raphia, and along the banks of the Gulf of Persia to the shores of the Red Sea, it supplanted all languages, Semitic or otherwise, hitherto in use.

The Phœnician language, however, held its own with some success at first, and it was used for a long time on the coast and in the island of Cyprus; but Hebrew, which had begun to fall into disuse during the captivity, gradually disappeared as it came in contact with the dialects spoken by the races near Jerusalem. It existed as the “noble language” of the aristocracy, faithful to the discipline of Judah and then when Aramæan robbed it of this last service, it remained as the literary liturgical language.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[32] [We reserve full details of the Persian wars with Greece for the next volume.]

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V. PERSIAN CIVILISATION

Apart from their sacred books the Persians have left us no great literature, yet they had the signal distinction to invent an alphabet which they used in all their later writings. This alphabet was founded upon or adapted from the syllabary of the Babylonians. That system, as we have seen, is an elaborated and complicated system requiring several hundred characters. The Persians, it would appear, like the Phœnicians, made an analysis of human speech, which shows it to be composed of comparatively few fundamental sounds, and adopted a relatively simple cuneiform character to represent each one of these sounds. In this script the inscriptions of the Persian kings--in particular of Darius and his immediate successors--were written. There was another modification made by the Persians, as witnessed by these inscriptions, which, if not so important, had considerable practical value; namely, the use of a uniform oblique line to separate different words in an inscription. To the modern reader it seems strange that the ancient nations, with the exception of the Persians, should have had the uniform custom of writing their letters or syllabic characters in an unbroken series with no space or sign to indicate the division into words. This was as true of the ancient Greek inscriptions as of those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was left to the Persians to discover the practical value or convenience of indicating the separation between words. That such a custom came into vogue in Persia was perhaps due to the fact that the people there were widely educated, it being customary to teach all children of the better classes to read, as was probably never the case with any other of the oriental nations.

We have already seen how valuable this custom of separating the words in their inscriptions has been to the modern investigator of the cuneiform writing. But for the fact of the Persian alphabet and the added fact of division of sentences into words in writing, the cuneiform script, on which the modern science of Assyriology is founded, might much longer have defied attempts to decipher it.

In the field of art, it has been said, with probable justice, the Persians were not originators, though they showed themselves actively receptive of the inventions of others. The relics of their art that have been preserved are very palpably based on Assyrian models. It is believed to have been chiefly through the Persians that Assyrian art was transmitted to Greece. In the following account we aim to give the reader a comprehensive view of Persian culture in all branches of civilisation.[a]

RELIGION AND SOCIAL ORDERS

Zoroaster made his appearance in the heart of Asia, among a people whose constitution, religion, and manners are completely different from our own. His doctrines, however, like those of every reformer, were occasioned by present circumstances, and adapted to the times in which he flourished; and consequently we form a just estimate of his character only by contemplating him with a reference to his age. We must forget that we are Europeans, and together with our more advanced knowledge, lay aside our prejudices also. It is no objection to his laws that they contain much that is strange, or even absurd; nay, this very circumstance rather confirms their authenticity, being precisely what was to be expected in a legislative system belonging to so remote an age and country.

In several parts of his writings, Zoroaster speaks of himself as a subject of one of those great despotic governments, which have always abounded in Asia, and consequently was more sensible than a European can be, of the advantages and evils which attend such a form of government in a civilised country.

He could not be blind to the beneficial effects of agriculture, and the other peaceful arts, which flourish only under the shelter of civil society, and his sense of these advantages must have been heightened by the contrast of the lawless and wandering hordes by which his country was overrun. The evils, also, which generally attend despotic governments, must have been no less strikingly presented to his observation: the intolerable oppression of satraps and their subalterns; luxury and debauchery, with the maladies and physical afflictions of another kind, which he himself enumerates and bewails, had so generally crept in, as to excite in him the desire to restore by his religious reform more fortunate and better days.

The picture which an Asiatic forms to himself of such happier days, is different from that which a European would conceive. Bowed down from his youth beneath the yoke of absolute authority, he does not presume to emancipate himself, even in idea; but takes another way of compensating his present grievances. He pictures to himself a despotic government in the hands, not of a tyrant, but a father of his people; under which every class of men and every individual might have his appropriate sphere of action, to which he confined himself, and the duties of which he fulfilled; under whom the peaceful arts of agriculture, tending of flocks, and commerce, were supposed to flourish, riches to increase and abound, as if the hands of the monarch, like those of a divinity, showered blessings on his people.

Such a government and such a sovereign are recorded in the Cyropædia itself; and their image has survived through all the periods of Asiatic history, still continuing to form, as it were, the central point of oriental tradition, and vividly impressed on the code of Zoroaster. According to that sage, the era of Jemshid, the ancient sovereign of Iran, was the golden age of his country. “Jemshid, the father of his people, the most glorious of mortals whom the sun ever beheld. In his days animals perished not: there was no want either of water, or of fruit-bearing trees, or of animals fit for the food of mankind. During the light of his reign there was neither frost nor burning heat, nor death, nor unbridled passions, the work of the Devs. Man appeared to retain the age of fifteen; the children grew up in safety, as long as Jemshid reigned, the father of his people.”

The restoration of such a golden age was the end of the legislation of Zoroaster, who, however, built his code on a religious foundation, agreeably to the practice of the East; and the multifarious ceremonies he prescribed had all reference to certain doctrines intimately associated with his political dogmata; and it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind this alliance, if we would not do injustice to one part or other of his system.

The philosophical system of Zoroaster set out with those speculations with which philosophy, in the infancy of nations, is apt to commence her career, being impelled thereto in the most lively and powerful manner, namely, with discussions respecting the origin of evil, which in so many forms oppresses human nature. It is indifferent to us, whether he was himself the first propounder of the doctrines he maintained on this subject, or whether he borrowed them from more ancient traditions of the East. It is sufficient that in this respect he assumed such high ground that all obscurity which involved the subject seemed to disappear, as long as no clouds of metaphysics obscured the horizon. The doctrine of a good and evil principle, the sources of all good and ill, is the foundation-stone of the whole structure, both of his religious and political philosophy.

This leading idea was, however, modified by the character of a legislator which its author assumed. He asserted the existence of a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness: in the former reigns Ormuzd, the author and giver of all good; in the latter, Ahriman, the source of all evil, moral as well as physical. The throne of Ormuzd is surrounded by the seven Amshaspands, the princes of light, of whom the sage himself was the first. Subordinate to these are the Izeds, the genii of good, of whatever kind. The kingdom of darkness subject to Ahriman, contains the same sort of hierarchy; his throne being surrounded by the seven superior Devs, the princes of evil, while an infinite number of inferior Devs are subordinate to the former, as the Izeds to the Amshaspands. The kingdoms of Ormuzd and Ahriman are eternally opposed to each other, but at a future period Ahriman shall be overthrown, and the powers of darkness destroyed; the dominion of Ormuzd shall become universal, and the kingdom of light alone shall subsist and embrace the universe.

It is apparent that this ideal system was copied from the constitutions of the oriental monarchies, and conversely, the forms of the first were applied to the latter: the whole being obviously adapted to the place and circumstances of time in which the legislator appeared. He lived in a country situated on the borders of the nomad tribes, where he had opportunities of comparing the advantages of civil society with the striking contrast presented by the wandering and lawless hordes, which incessantly laid waste his native land. He beheld, as it were, his kingdoms of light and of darkness realised on the earth: Iran, the Medo-Bactrian kingdom, subject to Gustasp, being the image of the kingdom of Ormuzd, and the monarch, of Ormuzd himself; while Turan, the land of the nomad nations to the north, of which Afrasiab was king, was the picture of the kingdom of darkness under the rule of Ahriman. The leading ideas, originally distinct, have been so intimately mixed up together, that if not absolutely confounded, at all events many of the subordinate images have been transferred from one to the other. For instance, as Turan lay to the north of Iran, the kingdom of Ahriman is made to occupy the same relative position; thence descend the Devs, which at all times inflict infinite mischiefs on Iran. As the inhabitants of Turan led a lawless, unsettled life, causing continual mischief by their incursions, so the Devs wander in all directions from their abodes in the north, and seek occasions of inflicting mischief everywhere. Nevertheless, as Ahriman shall eventually be overcome, and his kingdom annihilated, so shall the power of the chiefs of the Turanians be broken; the laws of Zoroaster prevail, and the golden age of Jemshid return.

Such are the principal ideas on which the system of Zoroaster turns. He did not, however, confine himself to generalities, but applied his principles to the different species of created beings. All that exists appertains either to the kingdom of Ormuzd or to that of Ahriman, whether rational or irrational, animate or inanimate. There are pure men, pure animals, pure vegetables (all these the creation of Ormuzd); and again, there are impure men, impure animals, impure vegetables, subject to the dominion of the Devs, and appertaining to the kingdom of Ahriman.

All men are accounted impure (kharfasters), who by thought, word, or deed despise the laws of Zoroaster; all poisonous and pernicious animals or reptiles (which in the countries bordering on Media are much more abundant and formidable than in Europe), with all plants and vegetables possessing the same qualities. On the other hand, in the country where the law of Zoroaster is revered, everything is pure, everything is holy: so that his precepts extend their influence not only over the human race, but even to the brute and inanimate creation. It is the duty of the servant of Ormuzd (mazdryesnan) to foster everything in nature which is pure and holy, as all such things are the creations of Ormuzd, at the same time that the enmity he has vowed against Ahriman and his creation make it incumbent on him to attack and destroy all impure animals. On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle, and gardening, which he perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his disciples with a sense of their importance.

In the internal organisation of his kingdom, Zoroaster continued faithfully to copy the character peculiar to the despotic governments of the East. The whole system reposed on a four-fold division of castes: that of the priests, the warriors, the agriculturists, and the artificers of whatever denomination. This is the order in which they are enumerated, but the legislator omits no opportunity of elevating and dignifying that of the agriculturists. These extract plenty from the earth; their hands wield the blade of Jemshid with which he clove the ground, and drew forth the treasures of abundance. It is to be observed, however, that this division into castes is not described as an institution of Zoroaster, but as having existed from the era of Jemshid; an institution which the legislator did not originate, but merely maintained.

The gradation of ranks is conformable to the hierarchy of the kingdom of Ormuzd. We hear of rulers of petty towns, rulers of streets (or portions of cities), rulers of cities, and rulers of provinces; the head of all these potentates being the king. All, as subjects of Ormuzd, are supposed good and upright, especially the highest of all, the monarch. He is the soul of all, on whom all depend, and around whom the whole system revolves. His commands are absolute and irrevocable, but the religion of Ormuzd forbids him to ordain anything but what is just and good.

These are the principal characteristics of the kingdom sketched by Zoroaster; the picture of a despotic government on the principles of the customs of the East. To this he added precepts calculated to advance the moral improvement of his people; nor did it escape his observation, that on the habits of the nation, and in particular on their domestic virtues, must be founded its public constitution. Hence his laws for the furtherance of marriage, his praises of fruitfulness in women, and his condemnation of the unnatural vices which abounded in the countries where he dwelt. He did not, however, venture to proclaim himself a patron of monogamy, either because he himself had not been convinced of its expediency, or because his countrymen were too firmly attached to their existing practices.

The conservation of his ordinances was entrusted to the priestly caste, the Magians, who, under the Medes, formed one of their original tribes, to whom was committed the preservation of such sciences as were known among them, and the performance of the offices of public devotion. Herodotus expressly names them as a distinct tribe of the Medes, and this arrangement, peculiar to the East, with which the Jewish annals have made us familiar, is further illustrated by the observations already offered respecting the priest-caste of the Egyptians. The reform of Zoroaster also addressed itself to these. According to his own professions, he was only the restorer of the doctrine which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive Magia, the work of Devs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished in order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd. He composed the first and best of his treatises, the Vendidad, at a period when his doctrines had only begun to obtain the ascendency, and when the false Magians, the worshippers of the Devs, withstood him; hence the maledictions which he continually heaps upon them. We know from history that in the end his reformation triumphed, though we are not enabled to trace its progress in detail.

Zoroaster, therefore, must not be considered as the founder, but only the reformer of the caste of Magians, and to him must, therefore, be ascribed the internal constitution of this caste, though it may have subsequently received some further development. The three orders of Herbeds (disciples), Mobeds (masters), and Destur Mobeds (complete masters), into which they were divided, occur in his works. They alone were entitled to perform the offices of religion, they alone possessed the sacred formularies or liturgies by which Ormuzd was to be addressed, and were acquainted with the ceremonies by which the offering of prayers and sacrifice was to be accompanied. This was their peculiar knowledge and their study, and it was only by them that prayers and sacrifice could be presented to the deity. In this manner they came to be considered the only interlocutors between God and man; it was to them alone that Ormuzd revealed his will, they alone contemplated the future, and had the power of revealing it to such as inquired into it through them.

On these foundations was reared, both among the Persians and the Medes, the dignity of the priestly caste. The general belief in predictions, especially as derived from observation of the heavenly bodies, and the custom of undertaking no enterprise of moment without consulting those who were supposed acquainted with such oracles, as well as the blind confidence reposed in such pretenders, all conspired to give this class of men the highest influence, not only in the relations of private life, but also over public undertakings. In the days of Zoroaster, as at present, it was esteemed necessary to the dignity as well as the exigencies of an Asiatic court, that the person of the king should be surrounded by a multitude of soothsayers, wise men, and priests, who formed a part of his council. The origin of this persuasion, which has so universally and invariably prevailed in the East, may be left for others to discuss; but the extraordinary influence which it has exercised over the manners of private life and the constitution of the state at large, deserves the closest attention of every one who interests himself in the history of nations and their manners.

If we take these things into the account, and assume it as proved that Zoroaster flourished under the Median dynasty, we cannot be surprised by the fact, that on the downfall of that monarchy its hereditary religion was adopted by the conquerors. Supposing (what we are not prepared either to assert or deny) that up to that period these doctrines were unknown to the Persians, yet from the nature of things, their reception was an almost necessary consequence of a fact which is indisputable, the adoption by the Persian monarchs of the court-ceremonial of the Medes. The latter had been defined and prescribed by the mixed political and religious code of that nation, and was inseparable from the authority on which it rested. The Magians and wise men formed the most dignified portion of the court; they surrounded the king’s person, and were indispensable to him as soothsayers and diviners. They were distinguished also by their dress; their girdle (costi), which was not passed over the shoulder like the cord of the Brahmans in the manner of a scarf; the sacred cup havan, used for libations; and the barsom, a bundle of twigs held together by a band. Besides, the question was not whether a new religion should be adopted by the mass of the people (the doctrines of Zoroaster being the exclusive inheritance and science of the priest-caste), but only respecting the observance of certain religious forms and modes of worship which were left for the priests to administer.

It is certain from history that the Median priest-caste became established among the Persians as early as the foundation of their monarchy by Cyrus. Not only do Herodotus and Ctesias describe them as an order of priests under the first Persian princes, but the express testimony of Xenophon in the Cyropædia leaves no further question, possessing as it does an historical value from an observation appended by the author. Having described the etiquette of the Persian court as copied from that of the Medes, he adds: “Cyrus also first appointed the Magi to chant sacred hymns at the rising of the sun, and to offer daily sacrifices to the deities, to whom it was enjoined by their law. This state of things continues to be maintained by each successive monarch; and the rest of the Persian nation followed the example of their prince, conceiving that they should in the same way be more likely to prosper, if they worshipped the gods as their monarch did.”

Thus the first consequence of their appointment was the introduction of a certain religious ceremonial in the court of Persia. It by no means, however, follows from this that the Persians at once laid aside the manners and customs of their forefathers, and, as it were, suddenly became converted into Medes; but rather, that a mixture and union of their ancient and newly-adopted opinions and customs took place. The laws of the Persians, in consequence, came to be cited in connection with those of the Medes; their national deities were still reverenced as before; and in his time Herodotus remarks certain diversities observable in the ceremonies of the Persians as compared with those of the Magians. We must not therefore be surprised at not finding a complete correspondence between the precepts of the Zendavesta and the customs of the Persians; on the contrary, this very diversity is one mark of the genuineness of that composition.

Nor are we authorised to conclude from the expressions of Xenophon that the whole Persian nation at once adopted the Magian religion. This appears to be sufficiently contradicted by the totally different way of life of the various Persian tribes; besides, as we have already had occasion to remark, and shall presently see confirmed, by the Persians Xenophon means the nobler tribes, and possibly only that of the Pasargadæ. Far less are we entitled to suppose that the creed of Zoroaster was at once introduced in the conquered countries as the universal religion of the state; for although strongly marked by the character of intolerance, this religion appears never, like that of Mohammed, to have been propagated by fire and sword: its author was himself neither a conqueror nor a warrior, nor did the princes who embraced it esteem it a duty to provide for its dissemination by the power of the sword.

It is much nearer to the truth to suppose that the reception of this religion was at first confined to the court, of which the caste of Magi, as priests, as soothsayers, and as councillors of the king, formed an important part, and next to the wives and eunuchs of the monarch, had nearest access to his person. It was a principal part of the education of the monarch to be instructed in the lore of the Magi, a privilege communicated to very few personages besides, and those highly favoured. This doctrine of the Magi, mixed up with the hereditary opinions of the Persians, was designated as the law of the Medes and Persians, and embraced a knowledge of all these sacred customs, precepts, and usages which concerned, not only the worship of the deity, but the whole private life of every worshipper of Ormuzd, respecting the duties which he was bound to perform, and the penalties which he would incur by transgressing them. In proportion as the ritual prescribed was extensive and multifarious, so was it open to cases of doubtful interpretation, when the counsel of the Magi was needed, and consequently was not neglected. From a comparison of several passages, it appears probable that they composed the council of the king’s judges, of which mention is made as early as the time of Cambyses. The very notion of a religious legislation, such as we have described, implies that the priests should be also judges, and the individual cases which have been recorded as brought before this tribunal appear to fortify such a conjecture. This court of judicature consisted of men distinguished for their wisdom no less than their justice, possessing their places for life, unless proved guilty of some act of injustice. When this happened, they were punished with strictness, and cruelty. Examples, however, are not wanting to prove that although it was esteemed a duty by the monarch to take the opinion of this council, yet he was by no means necessarily bound to abide by their sentence. Cambyses demanded whether it was lawful for him to marry his sister, and the council, knowing that it was his purpose to do so, replied that there was no law which permitted it, but that there did exist a law which made it allowable for the king of the Persians to do what seemed to him good. Notwithstanding, therefore, the apparent limitation set to the royal authority by the separation of the judicial power from the administrative, the answer of this high tribunal makes it plain that the authority of the kings of Persia was as unlimited as that of any other oriental despot at any period.

In like manner, the idea which has been adopted by several eminent modern authors, that the Persian constitution was modelled after the hierarchy of the kingdom of Ormuzd, appears, at all events, to require strong limitations. Appeal is continually made to the seven princes who stood about the throne of the king, in like manner as the Amshaspands surrounded the throne of Ormuzd; as well as to other less striking analogies. But, at the most, this analogy applied only to the economy of the court and did not extend to the kingdom at large: of the former the Magi composed an important part, and it is very possible that this may have influenced the character of the whole. When, however, we come to compare the picture which Zoroaster has sketched of the constitution of the kingdom in which he lived with that of Persia, we remark similarities which exist in all great despotic governments: a prince, whose mandates are irrevocable, a division of the empire into provinces, and a departmental administration by satraps; while we discover at the same time some striking dissimilitudes. The general distinction of castes, on which the legislative system of Zoroaster is founded, was never completely established among the Persians, although the foundation of such a system was laid in the diversity of occupations and modes of life pursued by the different tribes. We find among them the tribes of nobles or warriors, and of agriculturists, but none of artisans, which indeed could hardly exist among a race of conquerors; nor is it certain that in the cases of the former their occupations were necessarily restricted to individuals of that tribe.

ORGANISATION OF THE PERSIAN COURT

Agreeably to the customs of all the great despotic princes of the East, the court consisted not only of the king’s servants, but also of a numerous army, principally cavalry, which surrounded the person of the king, and formed part of his retinue. This body of cavalry was divided into corps of ten-thousands, according to the nations of which it was composed. The most distinguished were the Persians; the rest succeeded in a fixed gradation. To these were attached the numerous bodyguards posted at the gates of the palace, of whom we have already had occasion to speak in the description of Persepolis. If we compare with these the descriptions of the household troops of the kings of modern Persia, or the Mongol princes in Hindustan and China, we shall perceive that the court establishment of the monarchs of the East is precisely what it was in the days of Cyrus.

It was a natural consequence of the increasing luxury of the Persians that the number of courtiers should be augmented, when the rule had once been established, that for all, even the most trivial duties, special officers were necessary.

As all these officers were supported free of expense, there were daily fed at the king’s table, according to Ctesias, fifteen thousand persons, and Xenophon assures us that a considerable body of men was required only to make the king’s bed. These inferior attendants on the court were marshalled in the same manner as the army, and divided into tens and hundreds. Courtiers, however, of a superior rank were also very numerous, distinguished by the general appellations of the friends, the kinsmen, or the servants of the king, titles which under every despotic government are understood to confer a high degree of importance.

Not only from the analogy which prevails in other courts of the East, but from a comparison of different passages in ancient writers, it appears probable that the household of the Persian monarch was originally composed of the ruling tribe or horde, namely, that of the Pasargadæ, and especially of the family of the Achæmenidæ. For this reason the courtiers of superior rank bore the appellation of the king’s kinsmen, and almost every page of Persian history proves that every trust of importance was confided, if not to this family, at all events to this tribe. The great body of the inferior attendants of the court was, as Xenophon expressly informs us, gradually filled up with the warlike followers of the king.

The very name Pasargadæ, as we have had occasion to remark, betokens that the household of the court was made up of this race, and though it cannot be ascertained to what extent in the end the other noble tribes were gradually admitted to the same privileges, it is certain that the majority of the court at all times was taken from this. The student of Persian antiquity will, accordingly, find reason to adopt the conjecture that the Grecian authors in general meant by “the Persians,” not the entire nation, but only, or principally, the tribe of the Pasargadæ; and this hypothesis applies with especial propriety to the Cyropædia of Xenophon. The details which he affords us, in the commencement of his work, respecting the education and institutions of the Persians, cannot be referred to the whole nation, but only to the ruling tribe, or the king’s household, as is proved by the notices of place which he adjoins. If we adopt this principle of interpretation, the whole picture presents itself under a totally different aspect, and it is no longer necessary to consider it as a romance. It is a description of the education and habits of life which, in compliance with custom, the noblesse of the nation, or the portion of it which composed the household of the king, were obliged to observe; and the very strictness of the discipline prescribed is perfectly in harmony with the customs of oriental courts, where everything is regulated by an exact ceremonial. Accordingly, it must not be looked upon as an account of the national system of education, nor of the manners of the people at large, but the court-education, and court-ceremonial; and in proportion as these are strict under all despotic and especially under all oriental governments, it becomes necessary to accustom to them from their very youth such as are destined to observe them.

The economy of the harem of the Persian monarchs appears to have been precisely the same with the present customs, in that respect, of the Asiatic nations. It was peopled from the different provinces of the empire, and the surveillance of the whole committed to eunuchs, of whom we find traces, long before the Persian monarchy, in the courts of the Median kings, a consequence of the practice of polygamy. His eunuchs and his wives encircled the person of the monarch, and thus easily attained an influence which, under a weak monarch who felt himself unable to shake off the yoke, often became a species of protectorship by which they were enabled to sway the helm of state, and, in the end, to exercise dominion over the throne itself.

The interior of these gynæcea is best described in the narrative of the book of Esther, while the account of a court intrigue in the reign of Xerxes, recorded in the last book of Herodotus, throws great additional light on their history. The harem was divided into two sets of apartments, and the new-comers were transferred from the first to the second on having been admitted to the king’s chamber. Unbounded luxury, which in the end degenerates into wearisome etiquette, imposes of itself a restraint on the passions of arbitrary despots. It is far from being the case that, at the present day, the sultan of Constantinople can select the object of his desire according to his own pleasure; and Persian etiquette demanded that a whole year should be spent in purification by means of aromatics and costly perfumes before the novitiate beauty was thought worthy of approaching the presence of the despot. The number of concubines must therefore have been sufficiently great to present a new victim for every day. The passions of hatred and jealousy, which are apt to become intense in proportion as their sphere is limited, attained in the harem of Persia a degree of rancour which our imaginations can hardly picture. When Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, succeeded at last in getting into her power her sister-in-law, whom she suspected as her rival, she caused her to be mutilated in a manner too horrible for recital.

The legitimate wives of the king stood, however, on a totally different footing from his concubines; a distinction which prevailed also in the inferior conditions of life. As everything in the constitution of the country depended on the distinctions of tribe, the consort was chosen from the family of Cyrus, or that of the Achæmenidæ; though the example of Esther appears to prove that occasionally concubines were elevated to the same rank. In that case they were invested with the insignia of royalty, the diadem and the other regalia. The mode of life, however, of the queen-consort was no less rigidly prescribed and limited than that of the concubines; and it is mentioned as a remarkable instance, that Statira so far overstepped that burdensome system of etiquette as to appear in public without a veil.

Uncertainty of succession is an inseparable consequence of a harem administration. It is true that illegitimate children were altogether excluded from inheriting by the customs of Persia; but the intrigues of their mothers and the treachery of eunuchs, with the help of poison, often prepared the way for them to the throne. Of legitimate sons the rule was, that the eldest should inherit, especially if he was born when his father was king. The selection was, however, left to the monarch; and as his decisions were commonly influenced by his queen, the power of the queen-mother became still more considerable among the Persians than among the Turks. As the education of the heir to the crown was mainly entrusted to his mother, she did not fail early to instil a spirit of dependence on her wishes, from which the future king was rarely able to emancipate himself. The narratives of Herodotus and Ctesias, respecting the tyrannical influence exercised by Parysatis, Amestris, and others, bear ample testimony to the fact.

Another necessary consequence of such a system is the insignificance of anything which could be properly called a council of state. Affairs of public importance are discussed in the interior of the seraglio, under the influence of the queen-mother, the favourite wife, and the eunuchs. It was only on occasions of some great expeditions being meditated, or the like, that councils were held for any length of time, to which the satraps, the tributary princes, and the commanders of the forces were invited. The principal question was, however, for the most part already settled, and the debate respected only the means of carrying it into execution. Even in this point, however, the despotic character of the government manifested itself; since he who gave any advice was obliged to answer for its issue; and in case of ill success the penalty fell on his own head.

All the other circumstances of the king’s private life bore traces of the original condition of the race, and presented the picture of a nomad state of existence carried to the highest excess of luxury. Even after these monarchs had occupied permanent residences, the signs of this did not altogether disappear, especially in their annual migrations from one abode to another, at fixed seasons of the year. Like the chiefs of nomad hordes, the kings of Persia removed with their household at certain seasons, from one chief city of their empire to another. The three capitals, of Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana, each enjoyed every year the privilege of being for a certain period the residence of the monarch. The spring was spent at Ecbatana, the three summer months at Susa, the autumn and winter in Babylon. The great diversity of climate in so extensive an empire (a diversity which for several reasons is still more perceptible in Asia than in Europe) was the source of enjoyments, which, in our quarter of the globe, we can scarcely appreciate. These removals took place with such a multitude of followers, that the suite of the court resembled an army, and for this reason the poorer provinces were spared a visitation, which would have exposed them to the horrors of famine. A numerous attendance of armed followers constitutes at the present day a permanent part of the household of the great men of the East; and in the cases of their kings these amounted to the numbers of a regular army. The same system is retained unaltered by the rulers of modern Asia, and the accounts of travellers respecting this particular can hardly be read without astonishment.

The traces of the same nomad mode of life may also be detected in the arrangement of the king’s palaces and pleasure-houses. These were universally surrounded with spacious parks, or, as the Persians denominated them, paradises, forming domains sufficiently extensive to allow armies to be reviewed in them, or to assemble for the pursuit of game, of which great numbers and in every variety were collected. Such establishments existed, not only in the three capitals already named, but in several other countries of Asia, in which the king was accustomed to spend a part of his time, or in which his satraps resided.

The king’s palace was styled among the ancient Persians also, as in modern Constantinople, the Porte. Agreeably to the customs of other despots of the East, the kings of Persia resided in the interior of their palaces, seldom appearing in public, and guarding all means of access to their persons. The crowd of ministers and courtiers were consequently obliged to take their stations, according to their degrees of rank, in the court without, or before the gate or porte of the palace; and respect for the monarch prescribed, especially in his actual presence, a rigid system of etiquette, the discipline of which commenced with the early youth of those who were compelled to observe it. The number of courtiers, masters of ceremonies, guards, and others was endless. It was through them alone that access could be gained to the monarch; and they were consequently invested with titles which betokened their relation to him, being styled the king’s ears, the king’s eyes, etc., because no one without permission, or without their intervention, could approach his presence.

The king’s table also was regulated by a system of etiquette no less absolute, which, while it aimed at securing the highest enjoyment, necessarily became in the end more burdensome to the despot himself than to his guests.

As lord and owner of the whole empire, it was thought unworthy of him to taste any but the best and most costly productions of his dominions; no water was fit to be drunk by him but that of the Choaspes, which accordingly was conveyed in silver vessels on a multitude of wagons wherever he might journey. His very salt was brought from the neighbourhood of the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the centre of the African desert; his wine from Chalybon in Syria; the wheat, of which his bread was made, from Æolia, and so forth. Hence arose the custom, that on his journeys the best of the fruits of each country should be presented to the monarch; and according to the testimony of Xenophon there were bodies of men destined to the sole purpose of searching through his spacious dominions for whatever might add to the luxury of the royal table.

Among the pleasures of the court was accounted the chase, which was not only esteemed the highest of all amusements, but a suitable preparation for the toils of war. In the end whole armies were devoted to the pursuit, and such expeditions resembled those occasionally adopted by the monarchs of continental Europe. The Persians were originally a race of hunters as well as shepherds, and one entire tribe among them, the Sagartians, who adhered to their pastoral habits in the time of Herodotus, practised in war the arts of hunting, casting a lasso round the neck of a flying enemy, as of an animal of the chase. In their more advanced stage of civilisation the Persians are still characterised by their fondness for the same pursuits, and the manner in which of old they prosecuted this amusement precisely resembled that adopted by the Mongol princes. A distinction was made between the chase as carried on in the park, and which constituted the favourite recreation of the monarchs and grandees of Persia, and in the open country, which was a nobler species of amusement, and usually pursued in the districts abounding with game of northern Media and Hyrcania.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES; FINANCIAL SYSTEM; SATRAPS

If we reflect upon the original circumstances of the Persians, we must acknowledge that their ideas on the subjects of administration and finance could not have been very refined; and the primitive condition of the race continued to give a tinge to their institutions, notwithstanding their gradual refinement and the development of their first constitution. The forms of European government and finance could have no place in an empire founded by a nomad people; notwithstanding the difficulty which many authors, of great pretensions to an intimate knowledge of the East, have shown in liberating themselves from their European preconceptions.

“The Persians,” says Herodotus, “look upon all Asia as theirs, and as the property of each successive king of Persia.” These few words contain the leading idea, on which all the following discussion must be grounded.

A rude people of conquerors naturally look upon the conquered countries, with all they contain, as their own; and Asiatic history presents several instances of such nations, in order to their own peaceable occupation, entirely depopulating their conquered possessions. The Persians did not fail to adopt the same plan, when no other appeared likely to answer the purpose of repressing their vassals; but when their conquests became very extensive, this was impracticable, and they were compelled to devise other means of securing their dominion.

We have already explained how and when these institutions were first adopted. The conquered nations were compelled to pay a tribute, at first arbitrarily imposed, but under Darius reduced to an annual and regular tax, of which Herodotus has given us a full statement.

Important as this document is, it has nevertheless given occasion to many misapprehensions. The tribute in money has been treated as the only, or, at all events, the principal revenue which the monarch derived from his empire; and, with the customs of Europe before their eyes, authors have imagined the existence of a public exchequer, out of which the expenses of the state were paid, the armies maintained, and the public officers remunerated, etc. Such a mode of proceeding was, however, utterly unknown in the East. The Persian public officers received no appointments in the European sense of the word; the tribute in question furnished nothing more than the private revenue of the king, and, besides his own expenses, was applied to no public purposes whatever, unless, perhaps, to that of conferring presents.

As the end of a financial system adopted by a nation of conquerors must be different from that of all others, so also must the internal regulations belonging to such a system.

The end in question is no other than that of obliging the conquered nations, whose land is esteemed the property of the conquerors, to pay for everything, and provide for the maintenance of the king, the court, and, in some sense, of all the nation.

Herodotus tells us that, independently of the tribute, the whole Persian empire was divided into portions for the support of the king and his army, or his suite, each district being obliged to provide for a certain period. In consequence of this arrangement the payments from the provinces were principally made in the fruits and natural productions of the earth, exacted with a reference to the fertility of each soil and its natural advantages. The best of every country was considered as the property of the king, and was delivered to him by the rulers of the provinces; and as by these means provisions of all sorts were accumulated at the royal residence from every quarter of the empire, there necessarily reigned there an abundance and luxury which corrupted the morals of the court, and introduced those habits of waste and sensuality for which the Persians were so notorious.

Not only, however, was the king’s court to be maintained, but also those of the satraps of each province, which were modelled on that of their master; their suite was often no less numerous, and they kept up a state which often exceeded their income; and as the wants of the monarch were supplied from all parts of his empire, so were theirs from every part of each department. Particular spots were appointed to provide particular necessaries or luxuries, and Herodotus tells us that Masistius, satrap of Babylon, reserved no less than four considerable villages of Babylonia for the support of his Indian hounds.

To these burdens was added the maintenance of the king’s troops, which were quartered in large corps through all the provinces, and which were paid, not out of the king’s private chest, or from the provincial tribute, but by the provinces they occupied.

With these contributions in kind were reckoned the payments in specie, or rather the tributes in uncoined gold and silver, of which Herodotus has afforded us his well-known statement. Whether these were collected by way of a poll-tax, or an income-tax, or in whatever other way, the historian does not inform us; but he assures us that they amounted annually to fourteen thousand five hundred talents. The gold and silver thus collected--the Indians alone paying their tribute in gold--was stored up in ingots, of which the king made use as he found occasion.

We may, however, readily suppose that the sums set down by Herodotus did not always continue the same. The mighty armaments undertaken by the Persian government, especially under Xerxes, called for extraordinary expenses, and necessitated an augmentation of the imposts, as is expressly mentioned. When mercenary troops came to be a part of the Persian establishment, an augmentation of the tribute was a necessary consequence.

Nor were the sums of which the satraps drained the provinces comprehended in those already enumerated. The satrap of Babylon alone received every day more than an Attic medimnus full of silver, which on a moderate computation made up a revenue of more than £100,000 sterling, and the sum paid to the king from the same province amounted to about twice as much.

The conclusion deducible from all this is, that the sums enumerated by Herodotus by no means comprehended all that the provinces had to furnish, but only what the satraps paid over to the king’s exchequer.

These imposts were extended over the whole empire, Persis alone excepted, immunity from tribute being a natural privilege of the victorious nation.

To these principal sources of public revenue were added others, founded partly in the peculiar character of the country, partly in the nature of its constitution.

To the first class belongs the revenue derived from the rights of irrigation. Persia is a very arid country, and, with the finest climate, its fertility depends in consequence on the supply of water. In ancient, as well as modern times, this has furnished its rulers with a pretext for exacting contributions from their subjects, of which Herodotus records a remarkable example. One of the most fertile portions of the country was divided by the river Aces into five distinct branches or arms, which extended up into the mountains; among these mountains the kings of Persia caused to be erected mighty embankments, in order to keep in their own power the water of the river, and employed this power to extract from their subjects an additional tribute.

Another source of revenue to the royal treasury was the right of fishing in the canal which connects the lake Mœris with the Nile. During the six months that the water flowed into the lake, the revenue amounted to a talent each day; during the remaining six, to twenty minæ.

In addition to these, the confiscations of the property of satraps and other grandees was a considerable source of revenue; in Persia, as in all despotic states, the loss of life being accompanied by the forfeiture of property.

The free-will offerings, however, as they were styled, which were presented to the king, were probably still more considerable. It was the universal custom of the East for none to present himself before a superior, more especially the king, without a present. The grandees of the court, the satraps for instance, sought in this manner to purchase or retain the king’s favour, but on certain solemnities, particularly on the king’s birthday, such offerings flowed in from all parts of the empire. These consisted not so much in money, as in rarities and valuables of every description, such as are delineated on the ruins of Persepolis. What treasures must on such an occasion have been accumulated out of the immense empire of Persia!

Such an arrangement with respect to the public revenue shows at the outset that the expenditure also must have been no less peculiar.

We have already remarked, that we must dismiss the idea of anything like a public treasury, out of which the servants of the state were regularly paid, an arrangement equally unknown in ancient as in modern Persia.

All the expenses which could be characterized as public, such as the maintenance of armies, etc., are not met by the resources of the king’s exchequer, but previously provided for in the provinces. The king’s treasure remains a private chest for his personal use, from which he takes what he wants for the purpose of making presents, not in coin, but in ingots, or in vessels of gold, even the expenses of the court and household not being provided for out of it, but defrayed in the two following ways.

All the inferior attendants in the court, including the bodyguard, which in Europe would receive pay, were not paid in specie at the court of Persia, but in produce; and to this purpose were devoted the provisions of which such abundance was transmitted from the different provinces, and which more than sufficed for the consumption of the court.

On the other hand, all of a more elevated rank, the great officers of the court, the friends or kinsmen of the king, who on account of their birth or offices might aspire to favours or pensions, did not receive anything in money, but were rather in assignments of towns or cities, which the king disposed of at his pleasure, in virtue of his title as sole proprietor of the chattels and lives of his subjects; as the autocrat of all the Russias was in the habit of making a present of some thousands of serfs. The individual to whom such an assignment was made received the revenue of the place in question, and the king possessed accurate accounts of their value, so as to regulate the distribution of his favours. Nevertheless the person thus favoured appears to have been obliged to make over a part of his income to the king in the way of tribute. With individuals of the highest rank, the mother or consort of the monarch, luxury had attained such an excess, that a variety of places were assigned them to provide severally for even the most insignificant of their wants. In this manner a fruitful district, a day’s journey in length, was allotted to furnish the queen’s zone; and thus Themistocles received the city of Magnesia, producing a revenue of fifty talents, to supply him with bread, Lampsacus to furnish wine, and Myus the side dishes of his table.

Besides these allotments of villages and cities, it was usual also to assign, in like manner, houses and lands in the provinces; and donations of this kind were usually coupled with offices at the court, an institution ascribed to Cyrus himself, and which descended to after ages.

Those possessed of such assignments enjoyed them for their lives; on their decease their places and possessions reverted to the king, to dispose of according to his pleasure. Without such an arrangement it would have been impossible for the boundless empire of Persia itself to have sufficed to supply the liberality of the monarch, exercised as it was towards so large a number, and compelled also to provide for many expenses. Nevertheless the possessions attached to places at court became, according to Xenophon, hereditary, and constituted the patrimony of those whose ancestors had been first appointed to the same by Cyrus. Among a people whose constitution, like that of the Persians, was entirely dependent on descent and distinctions of tribe, it was natural that offices should become hereditary, and an immediate consequence that the revenues attached to them should follow the same rule.

These preliminary observations will help us to comprehend the internal administration of the provinces. As the very division into provinces was for the purpose of collecting with greater accuracy the tribute, the political administration of the satrapies connected therewith was not matured at once, but gradually developed. As the age of Xenophon may be considered on the whole the most flourishing period of Persian history, we shall be less likely to err if we confine ourselves to the evidence which he has afforded.

The government by satraps, which was then complete, was common to Persia with other despotic empires; but as it entailed a multitude of abuses, attempts were made as much as possible to mitigate them.

The advantage which, in this particular, the Persian system of administration possessed over all others of the same kind, was the careful separation made between the civil and military powers; the exceptions which occurred in the latter ages of the empire having grown out of abuses. According to Persian ideas the king had a twofold duty to perform, of providing for the security and also for the good government and cultivation, of his empire: to secure the former object, garrisons were established throughout its whole extent; and the civil authorities were appointed to provide for the latter.

The foundation of this beneficial arrangement was laid at the very commencement of the empire, by the appointment of receivers of the royal treasury, together with that of commanders of the forces, and the same continued after the provinces came to be more accurately divided, and satraps to be created. Xenophon gives us the most satisfactory proof of this, when he records the first nomination and appointment of satraps, which, as he tells us, were first made by Cyrus.

“You know,” he is introduced saying to his friends, “that I have left garrisons and their commandants in the conquered countries and cities, to whom I have given in charge to attend to nothing else but their security. Together with these I shall also appoint satraps who may govern the inhabitants, receive the tribute, pay the garrisons, and attend to all other necessary points of business.” This institution continued uninterrupted for a long period, and the satraps are repeatedly mentioned in history together with the commandants of troops. However, in the later ages of the Persian monarchy, it became the custom to appoint the satraps to the command also of the king’s troops, more especially when they happened to be individuals of the royal family. In this manner the younger Cyrus was satrap of Mysia, Phrygia, and Lydia, and at the same time generalissimo of all the forces assembled in the plain of Castolus. The same we find to have been the case with Pharnabazus and others, so much so, that even in the time of Xenophon it had become customary for the satrap of a province to be also commander of the forces there; more especially in the frontier provinces, where such a union of powers was more especially necessary. The pernicious effects of this practice, and its tendency to promote revolt among the satraps, and to prepare the way for the internal dissolution of the empire, are sufficiently proved by the single example of the younger Cyrus. Notwithstanding, however, this abuse, it is not true that a military government was introduced in the provinces, for the other civil officers continued to be independent of the commanders of the forces, and the latter were not allowed to take any part in the civil administration. Xenophon tells us that the satraps were entrusted with the surveillance of the commanders of the troops as well as over the civil magistrates; the king of Persia appointing persons of both descriptions commanders of the forces, and also magistrates to govern the country, the one class being bound to pay deference to the other.

The first duty of the satraps and their deputies (ὕπαρχοι) undoubtedly was the collection of the revenue, whether in kind or in money; their office, however, was not limited to this, but they were at the same time commissioned to promote agriculture and the improvement of the soil; and the remarkable attention which was devoted to these objects constitutes the chief merit of the Persian administration. The code of Zoroaster, as has been already remarked, insisted upon the duty of cultivating the soil, by gardening, rearing of cattle, and tillage, as one of the most sacred duties of his disciples, everything impure being banished from the land where his law was received, and nothing allowed there but pure men, pure animals, and pure vegetables. This idea of the legislator, when applied to a whole empire, presents, doubtless, a magnificent picture, which, though it must needs remain for the most part an ideal picture, was nevertheless, to a great extent, realised under the Persian monarchy. Those parks or paradises, which surrounded not only the palaces of the monarch, but those of his satraps, were so many lively images of the pure kingdom of Ormuzd, realised as far as was possible by the most illustrious of his servants. When the younger Cyrus led the admiring Lysander through his pleasure grounds, and displayed their regularity and beauty, “All these,” he informed him, “I have myself planned, and even planted many of the trees with my own hands;” and when the Spartan general replied by an incredulous glance at his splendid robes, and chains, and armlets of gold, he sware to him by Mithras, as a good servant of Ormuzd, that he never tasted food till he had fatigued himself by labour.

These precepts, therefore, of their religion, made it the sacred duty of the rulers of the provinces to further the cultivation of their several districts; and as the military establishment underwent a review every year, so also did the civil department. Xenophon tells us, that “The king visited every year some part of his empire, and wheresoever he was not able to proceed himself he sent a delegate for the same purpose. Those magistrates in whose territory the ground was found to be well cultivated, and covered with trees or crops, had an augmentation of territory allotted to them by the king, and were rewarded with presents; and those whose provinces were found to be ill cultivated and depopulated, whether through neglect or in consequence of oppression, were rebuked and deprived of their command, and others appointed in their place.”

If these institutions had not been broken down by the abuses which hastened the fall of the Persian monarchy, they would have formed a considerable set-off against all the inevitable evils which accompany despotic governments. However considerable might be the expense occasioned by the maintenance of the king, his satraps, and forces, it cannot have been oppressive in countries blessed with such singular fertility, where the imposts were chiefly paid in kind, so long as wise enactments for the cultivation of the soil tended to lighten these burdens; but the extravagance and luxury of the great, and their frequent revolts and intestine wars, caused these sage laws to fall into disuse, and frustrated the benevolent intentions of the Median legislator.

The disposal of the government of provinces rested with the king, who usually appointed kinsmen of his own, his brothers, or his sons-in-law. The court of the satrap was formed on that of the monarch, and all its ceremonial the same, only less magnificent. The satraps also had their harems, entrusted, like that of the monarch, to eunuchs, and a numerous attendance of household troops, distinct from the king’s soldiers, and consisting in part or altogether of Persians: their residences, like those of the monarch, were surrounded by parks; and occasionally, in the finer months of the year, they (like the monarch) migrated from one place to another, attended by their courts, and spent the summer under tents.

History has afforded us a remarkable instance of the manner in which the imposts were collected by these officers. When the Persians had subdued Ionia the second time, the whole territory was measured out by parasangs, and the tribute apportioned accordingly. In this case it was evidently a land tax, which, however, was paid, it is probable, for the most part in produce. The satrap received these imposts, whether in kind or in money, and after providing for his own expenditure, the support of the king’s troops, and the maintenance of the civil magistrates, the remainder was handed over to the king. The personal interest of the satrap, if he wished to retain the king’s favour, prompted him to make this return as considerable as possible, even if no precise amount was fixed.

To take care of the king’s interests there were also attached to the court of each satrap royal scribes, to whom were issued the king’s commands, and by whom they were communicated to the satrap. The commands thus conveyed required the most prompt obedience, and the smallest resistance was accounted rebellion. Even the suspicion of anything of the kind was sufficient to cause their ruin, and, as in the Turkish empire, their punishment was unaccompanied by any formality whatever. The sovereign despatched an emissary, who delivered the order for the execution of a satrap to his guards, who put it in execution by hewing him down upon the spot with their sabres.

To further the speedy communication with the provinces, a system was adopted which has been compared, but very improperly, with the European institution of posts. Messengers were appointed at different stations, distant from each other a day’s journey, for the purpose of conveying the king’s mandates to the satraps, and the despatches of the latter to the court.

Institutions of this kind are peculiarly essential to despotic governments, in which it is excessively difficult to maintain the dependence of the prefects or governors, and occur in almost every one which possesses anything like an internal organization. The same existed under the Roman monarchy, and was established, at still greater expense, in the empire of the Mongols, by the successors of Jenghiz-Khan.

Another plan was also adopted by the Persian monarchs for securing the allegiance of their satraps. A commissioner at the head of an army was sent every year, with authority, according to circumstances, to uphold or chastise those officers; and Xenophon assures us that this custom, which dated from the commencement of the empire, subsisted in his time. The design at first undoubtedly was, as in other kingdoms similarly governed, to collect the outstanding tribute; but when we consider the power and arrogance of the satraps during the latter half of the Persian monarchy, we may well believe that the custom may have died away.

We have already described in general the causes of the presumption of the satraps and the revolts to which it led. Besides the union in their persons of the civil and military powers, one main cause was the greatness of the command entrusted to some by joining together two or more satrapies. An example of this, and of the arrogance to which it gave rise, occurs as early as the reign of Darius Hystaspes in the person of Orœtes, who was at the same time satrap of Phrygia and Lydia; and in succeeding reigns this practice became still more frequent, especially in the case of the satrapies of Asia Minor. Cyrus the younger was governor of the greater part of that peninsula, and, after his death, Tissaphernes was allowed to hold the governments possessed by him in addition to those which had been all along his own.

From this period Persian history continues to present a constant picture of the perpetually increasing arrogance of these viceroys, who sometimes openly revolted, and sometimes, with the title of satrap, set themselves up as independent sovereigns. Several of them were, in fact, the founders of monarchies, which, like those of Cappadocia, Pontus, and others, gradually became more or less independent. The combinations and dissensions of these governors among themselves contributed to keep alive a spirit of insubordination, which was promoted by the effeminacy and corruption of the court. They began to treat their provinces, not as districts committed to their care, but as territories, the revenues of which they were to enjoy; and as early as the time of Xenophon, we find a satrap of Mysia arbitrarily nominating a vice-satrap, to whom, on payment of a tribute, he committed the management of his province, and after his death continued the same to his widow on security being given of the payment of his revenues. Such arbitrary measures must have gradually destroyed the internal structure of the empire, and the slightness of the adherence of its several parts is effectually proved by the history of its fall.

MILITARY METHODS

The military expeditions undertaken by a nomad nation, such as the Persians once were, are, in their origin, migrations, for the purpose of occupying better and more fruitful spots. Hence the custom of removing at the same time their wives and children and all their movable possessions, which invariably encumbered the march of such armaments. Xenophon expressly tells us that this was the practice of most Asiatic nations, and that it was an old Persian custom would appear from the sequel of their history.

In like manner the habits of nomad nations necessarily causes such armaments to consist altogether or principally of cavalry. The first was the case with the Mongols; the last with the Persians. As the first-mentioned practice retards, so does this greatly accelerate the march of their armies. The limited nature of their wants enables them, when occasion requires, to dispense with any baggage, and the history of the Mongols affords examples of the inconceivable speed with which such armies have accomplished lengthened marches which would have driven a European army to despair.

These are the fundamental points to be observed with regard to the military system of nomad nations in general and the Persians in particular; but as their civil constitution became gradually developed, so did their military institutions undergo at all events considerable modifications, although they never attained the perfection which marks those of Europe. The example of the Turkish empire continues to show with what difficulty an Asiatic, who is always half a nomad, can be inured to discipline. As this is the offspring of a sense of honour and love of country, so, on the other hand, despotism is the parent of license and brutality, which may indeed display their energies in furious onsets, but not in deeds of cool daring like those of Europeans.

A dominion acquired by conquest can only be maintained by standing armies, and we cannot, therefore, be surprised to find the provinces of Persia constantly occupied by great masses of men, destined to keep them in subjection, as well as to defend them against a foreign invader. Immediately upon the completion of their conquests such forces were suffered to remain in the provinces, supported not by the king but by the conquered. Examples especially occur in the frontier states, in Asia Minor, Egypt, and others, which were especially exposed to assaults from without, or where an insurrection was most to be apprehended. Asia Minor, however, from the commencement of the wars with Greece, became the principal depot for the forces of Persia; it was filled with considerable bodies of men which could be readily drawn together when occasion required, and thus Alexander, on invading it, found there troops drawn together to oppose him on the banks of the Granicus.

In the most flourishing epoch of their history the military system of the Persians was as follows. In every province were kept up two descriptions of forces, those which occupied the open country, and those which kept possession of the cities, as garrisons. These were distinct, and commanded by different generals. Of the first description of forces it was clearly defined how many, and of what class, were to be maintained in each province. The principal strength consisted in cavalry, but there were also bowmen, slingers, and heavy-armed infantry. The care of keeping up the full numbers of these forces was committed to their successive commanders, and they were supported, both as respected food and money, by the revenues of the provinces, and as these were paid into the treasury of the satrap, the latter had to provide for the pay of the soldiery. The commanders, however, of the forces were not subject to the governors, unless by special appointment. On the other hand, they appear to have been immediately dependent on the king, having been appointed by him and deposed at his pleasure, and a catalogue of such offices remaining in his hands. The annual reviews of the forces also, which were extended to all the empire, were not usually held by the satraps, but in the neighbourhood of the capitals, by the king himself, and in remote provinces by persons deputed by him to hold them in his name. Great exactness was exercised on these occasions, and according to the good or bad condition of the forces their commanders were applauded and rewarded with presents, or deprived of their rank, or visited with arbitrary punishments.

To these arrangements was added another, the subdivision of the empire into certain military cantons, independent of the civil administration; formed with a reference to the muster-places of the troops. In this manner the forces stationed in a particular province were always collected at one point, from which the canton derived its appellation. Mention occurs of those in Asia Minor, and as the above institutions extended to the whole of the empire, and reviews were held in every province, it is to be supposed that this custom also was universal. Herodotus expressly mentions the cantons on this side the Halys, and consequently we must conclude the same to have prevailed on the other side. Of the cantons in Asia Minor, Xenophon particularises that of which the muster-place was the plain of Castolus, as that of Thymbra was for the army of Syria; Herodotus also mentions the Aleius Campus in Cilicia.

These troops were distributed through the provinces by thousands, and their commanders consequently denominated Chiliarchs; and not only were they generally dispersed over the country, but bodies of them were posted on the boundaries, where, if the nature of the ground permitted it, the passage from one province to another was strongly fortified. It certainly remains a question what was the strength of these forces in the provinces, but the great facility with which armies were got together proves them to have been very considerable. In Asia Minor alone Cyrus assembled above one hundred thousand men; Abrocomas, who was opposed to him on his march, had three hundred thousand; and the Persian army on the Granicus was forty thousand strong.

From these troops the garrisons in the cities were kept entirely distinct, and the importance attached by the Persians to places of strength was in proportion to the difficulty which (like all other nomad nations, who know nothing about the conduct of sieges) they had experienced in subduing them. They were looked upon as the keys of the provinces in which they were situated, and accordingly provided with ample garrisons. The troops in question were completely different from those mentioned above, not being comprehended in the military divisions alluded to, but being under commanders of their own, and not bound to appear at the general muster.

Both descriptions of forces were, however, comprehended under the title of the king’s army, and were distinct from the household troops of the satraps and grandees, which often amounted to several thousands. By the customs of the East every great man is attended by an armed retinue, proportioned to his rank and wealth, and as the viceregal courts were formed upon the model of the king’s, this became necessarily a part of their establishments, and the more readily as corps of troops were a no less customary present from the monarch to his favourites than were cities.

Originally, it is probable that all these troops may have been Persians, but as these gradually withdrew themselves from martial duties, their places were supplied by mercenaries, Greeks or Asiatics. As cavalry, the nomad nations to the south and east of the Caspian were preferred, the Hyrcanians, Parthians, and Sacæ. The first, especially, had a high character with the Persians for courage, and on this account the latter kept up a good understanding with the wandering hordes of Great Bucharia, though no longer their tributaries. The Greeks, however, were preferred to all the rest, and as early as the time of the younger Cyrus, not only did the flower of the army always consist of them, but towards the end of the Persian monarchy they constituted the garrisons of all the cities of Asia Minor. Before the time of the younger Cyrus their pay amounted to a daric per month (about 1_l._ 0_s._ 4_d._ sterling), which was augmented by Cyrus to a daric and a half. We have already remarked the fatal consequences which this custom had on the warlike temper of the Persians.

In a nation of conquerors every individual is expected to be a soldier, and among the Persians all, especially those in possession of lands, were required to be able to serve on horseback. This necessitated an internal constitution of the whole empire, having for its object the military equipment of the population; and the arrangement adopted has usually been the same in all Asiatic nations, and is the simplest that could have been devised. A decimal system runs through the whole empire, and serves at the same time to mark the rank of the commander. The common people are divided into bodies of ten, having a captain of that number, after whom come the commanders of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. Officers of a higher rank are not apportioned to particular bodies of men, but form the general staff. This has been equally the case among the Mongols and the Persians, and this simple arrangement made it possible for both races to assemble large armies with incredible rapidity. All that was required was a mandate from the commander of ten thousand, which was transmitted to the commanders of thousands, and hundreds, and tens, till the forces, already organised, assembled in martial array. In this manner the Mongol princes often got together, in a few days, armies of cavalry to the number of several hundreds of thousands, and we cannot, therefore, be astonished to see the same thing take place among the Persians.

The great multitude of nomad tribes which wandered on the borders of the Persian empire greatly facilitated the assembling of mighty armaments. These tribes readily engaged in such enterprises, either for pay or allured by the hope of plunder. As the Baskirs and Calmucks follow the Russian armies, so did the Mardi, Pericanii, and others, those of Cyrus; and the more widely the dominion of the Persians was extended, the greater became the number of such auxiliaries. The Persians stood the more in need of their aid as their own cavalry was always heavy-armed. With them, as with the Parthians, both man and horse were armed in mail, though, strictly speaking, this appears to have been a distinction confined to a certain number, and the greater part seem to have had no defensive armour, and thus served to swell the carnage which the Greeks wrought among them after the victory of Platæa.

The foregoing sections must have served to explain the way in which these forces subsisted in the provinces. Each province was obliged to furnish to the governor what was necessary to their maintenance, in kind, and the governor caused what was so collected to be distributed among the soldiers. Payment in money was made only to the Grecian auxiliaries, who could not otherwise have been kept together, having been accustomed to the same in their own country; the Persians were bound to serve without pay, and the nomad races of Central Asia, many of whom had never even seen coined money, were as little disposed to require remuneration in that shape as are at the present day many of the auxiliaries of the Russian armies.

In a warlike nation, a military command always confers great distinction, being often regarded as more honourable than the civil magistracies; and this was the case among the Persians. The Myriarchs (commanders of tens of thousands) and Chiliarchs (commanders of thousands) enjoyed a distinguished rank, and the officers above them, the generals, were among the most illustrious of the nation. Of the generality of these we are expressly told that they belonged to the family of the Achæmenidæ, or at all events to the tribe of the Pasargadæ, or were connected by marriage with the royal house, and consequently the officers of rank consisted principally of the king’s kinsmen. Among these generals themselves, however (of whom there were usually several in an army), there existed gradations of rank; and if a king’s son was appointed generalissimo, this was understood as equivalent to his nomination as successor.

Hitherto we have confined our remarks to the troops which were regularly maintained by the Persians to defend the conquered provinces. With the exception of those raised among the Persians themselves, these appear, from what has been stated, to have consisted of mercenary troops, to the exclusion of the natives of the provinces themselves; nevertheless, the latter were by no means free from all military service, but were summoned on occasions of extraordinary expeditions undertaken for the extension of the empire. On such emergencies general mandates were issued throughout all the vast dominion of Persia, the nations of the East and West were gathered together in herds, and one of the most extraordinary spectacles ensued which the history of the world has recorded, and the more deserving of our regard for the accuracy with which Herodotus has described the armament of Darius, and still more that of Xerxes.

When the Persians began their career as conquerors they adopted, and always maintained, the custom that the conquered nations should swell the numbers of their host, and accompany them in their more remote expeditions. When, however, their empire had become consolidated and organised, and stretched from the Indus to the Mediterranean, the drawing together of forces so widely disseminated must have become burdened with endless difficulties, and would consequently, on occasions of minor importance (such as slight internal disturbances, or trifling wars,) have been as futile as impossible. On extraordinary occasions, however, whether of great national undertakings for the aggrandisement of the empire, or of formidable invasions from without, the custom was revived of mustering the whole force of the empire, as is proved by the mighty expeditions of Darius Hystaspes, of Xerxes, and the last Darius.

Even the preliminary steps to such armaments were of vast magnitude. The king’s mandate was addressed to all nations, and specified the number of men, horses, and ships, or the amount of provisions to be furnished by each. The commotion which was excited in all Asia by the preparations made for the expedition of Xerxes, lasted for four years. Time was necessary to enable the remote nations to send in their contingent.

A general rendezvous was then appointed, which, in the case of the armament just mentioned, was Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Hither all the contingents of the different provinces resorted, conducted by leaders of their own race. These, however, were allowed no authority in actual war, the officers being taken exclusively from among the Persians. This was a privilege reserved for the conquering nation, as was the case, also, among the Mongols and Tatars. The subject nations, on the other hand, were treated as bondsmen, and termed slaves, in contradistinction to the Persians, who were denominated freemen. These terms, however, only marked the comparative freedom of the nations to whom they were applied, for with reference to the king, the Persians were as little free as the other subject nations.

The order of the march, as long as the army continued to traverse the dominions of the empire, was remarkable; or rather, it might almost be called an absence of all order. The men were not arranged according to the nations to which they belonged, but formed one vast chaotic mass. In the centre was the king, among his Persians, and the baggage was sent on before. As the troops advanced on their march, the inhabitants of the country were driven on before them, and augmented the numbers of the host, which thus perpetually accumulated; and as most nations took their wives and children with them to war, the baggage must have been immense. Undoubtedly the most inexplicable part of this account, is the way in which the army was supplied with provisions. In the countries through which they had to pass, magazines of corn were necessarily prepared, long before, and further supplies of the same followed the army by sea. The rest of their food the forces were left to find for themselves. For the king and his suite banquets were provided long before, and with such an unbounded expense that this alone sufficed to ruin the cities which furnished them. This also was a consequence of the idea that a monarch was the sole proprietor of all that his provinces contained, and the Persians understood this so literally as to carry away with them the costly utensils of plate which were displayed on these occasions. It is needless to say that the idea of a regular encampment could not be entertained in the case of such enormous hosts; the king and his great men had indeed their tents, but the army at large bivouacked under the open heavens, the necessary consequence being a multitude of diseases.

It was only on their approaching the enemy’s borders that the army was classed according to the nations of which it was composed; and at the same time the host was reviewed at the king’s command. To this custom we are indebted for that precious document, the catalogue of the host of Xerxes, which the Father of History has preserved for us. This review took place just within the confines of Europe, and little as the scene may instruct the soldier, this is one of the most interesting of all the records of history to the philosophical historian. On no occasion have so many and such various races of men been gathered together as were here assembled in one spot, in their appropriate dresses and armour, on the plain of Doriscus. Herodotus has enumerated and described fifty-six, which served some on foot, some on horseback, and others on board the fleet. Here were to be seen the cotton garments of the Indians, and the Ethiopians from above Egypt habited in lions’ hides, the swarthy Baluchis from Gedrosia, and the nomad hordes from the steppes of Mongolia and Great Bucharia; wild races of huntsmen like the Sagartians, who, destitute of weapons of brass or iron, caught their enemies, like animals of the chase, in leathern lassos; and besides these, the rich dresses of the Medes and Bactrians, the Libyans drawn in war chariots of four horses, and the Arabs mounted on camels. Here also were to be seen the fleets of the Phœnicians and the Greeks of Asia Minor, compelled to serve against their kindred. Never did despotic power create a spectacle more glorious at its commencement or more lamentable in its issue. The straits of Thermopylæ first presented to the astonished Asiatics a sight completely novel to them; it was to no purpose that their countless hordes were driven by the scourge against a handful of Spartans; and although treachery at last conducted them over the lifeless bodies of those heroes, the names of Salamis and Platæa remained behind, everlasting monuments of Grecian valour.

THE FINE ARTS

Rude nations which suddenly pass to the condition of conquerors from that of wandering shepherds and herdsmen are not capable of erecting for themselves cities and palaces. For this purpose they are obliged to enlist the services of the conquered, among whom the arts of architecture and sculpture may have already attained some degree of perfection. This was the case with the Mongol tribes in China, the Chaldeans in Babylon, as well as other nations; and it is expressly related of Cambyses, that he transported from Egypt a large number of builders to erect his palaces at Susa and Persepolis. It is certain, however, that we discover at the latter place no traces of Egyptian art, either as regards the general character of the ruins or their details; nor can we reasonably suppose an Egyptian architect to have conceived the plan of structures so completely different from any to be found in his native country, any more than we can suppose that masons accustomed to what we call the Gothic style, if transported into another country, would at once be able to construct buildings in the Grecian taste. The prevailing character of Persian architecture, a fondness for terrace works, a style totally unknown to the ancient Egyptians, was considerably more ancient than the reign of Cambyses, and altogether of Asiatic origin, as is proved by the hanging gardens of Babylon, constructed by Semiramis. Allowing the utmost that in fairness we can to the account of the Egyptian workmen imported by Cambyses, we cannot suppose them to have achieved more than the mechanical parts of the structures erected. The architectural remains of Egypt prove that the Egyptians were very capable of elevating and working large masses of stone, and possibly also of carving relievos after a given design or copy. The question, therefore, may be considered as still unanswered: What was the original country whence this style of architecture was derived? Who were the masters of the Persians in this art, and whence did they borrow their models?

The simple answer is undoubtedly this: from the same quarter that they derived the other rudiments of their civilisation, in short, from Media.

From all that we know of the Medes, and the splendour of the Median court and their principal city Ecbatana (a city which appears originally to have been constructed on terraces elevated successively one above the other), we may conclude that the science of architecture had attained among them a certain degree of perfection--a conjecture which appears carried to certainty by the accounts of recent travellers. The traces of the ancient royal seat Ecbatana, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, presented, according to Morier and Porter, the same characteristic style of architecture with which those travellers had become familiar at Chehl-Menar, the fashion of the columns and even the characters of the inscriptions being the same. We cannot avoid inferring that it was from the Medes that the Persians derived, with the rest of their civilisation, the art of architecture also. It must be added, that the sculptures in these ruins are so obviously derived from the Magian religion, which prevailed among the Medes, that we can hardly doubt that the buildings in question were erected under the influence and according to the ideas of that caste, since the figures in question must not be mistaken for mere idle decorations, but had an intimate relation to the purposes for which the buildings themselves were severally designed. But the Magian religion and the Magian priesthood were not confined to Media, but extended over the countries to the East, especially those upon the Oxus, as far as the mountains bordering on India, the parent country of those fabulous monsters of which, as we have observed, traces are to be seen. Here lay Bactriana, at all times one of the richest countries of the world, in consequence of its position between the Indus and Oxus, and its connection with India, as well as the fertility of its soil, forming an important part of the empire of the Medes, whose monarchs appear to have resided at Bactra long before they occupied Ecbatana. This also was the country where the religion of Zoroaster first took root and flourished, and thus it became the parent land of the civil institutions of the Medes. When, therefore, the Persians are said to have derived their architecture originally from thence, it must be understood that they did so as the disciples of the Medes.

It is true that the ancients ascribe in part the erection of Pasargada and Persepolis to the two earliest monarchs of the old Persian race--Cyrus and Cambyses; but this is easily reconcilable with the supposition that Darius and Xerxes were their principal founders. Niebuhr has already remarked, that the buildings of Persepolis do not appear all to belong to the same period, nor to have been constructed on one uniform plan, and this is especially true of those situated on the third terrace. It is certain that most of the considerable remains of remote antiquity (as was particularly the case with Egyptian edifices) were much more slowly erected than we might be inclined to suppose; and it is extremely probable that successive kings of Persia may have taken part in the erection of Persepolis, especially as the undertaking assumed the character of a religious duty; not to mention that continual additions must, from time to time, have been found necessary.

We may now pronounce with certainty (what before must have been mere conjecture) that the arts of architecture and sculpture must, long before the dynasty of the Persians, have attained a much higher degree of perfection than men have been generally disposed to admit. If this be doubted, we must be prepared to show that such efforts of art as the edifices of Chehl-Menar could have started at once into existence, as if by enchantment. In these structures we see proofs that architecture must have attained, when they were erected, a wonderful degree of excellence in its mechanical department. No spot on the globe (Egypt perhaps excepted) displays such masonry as the walls of Persepolis. It was unquestionably a prodigious advantage to the architect that the neighbouring mountains afforded him materials on the very spot; but no other nation has left examples of an equally skilful combination of such enormous blocks of marble. The character and style of the building is, however, perhaps still more remarkable, being directly opposed to that of the Egyptians, with which it has been injudiciously compared; if we are not mistaken, the original modes of life of the two races may be traced even in the several styles of their architecture. The observer of Egyptian antiquities can hardly fail to remark the grotto-style of building there prevalent, bespeaking a nation long accustomed to a sort of Troglodyte life, in caverns and hollows of the rock. The gigantic temples of Thebes and Philæ are obviously imitations of excavated rocks; the short and massive pillars representing the props, left to uphold the roof of such excavations, and the whole structure conveying the impression of enormous incumbent weight, and proportionate resistance: on the other hand, the remains of Persepolis indicate a nation not in the habit of occupying the bosoms of their hills, but accustomed to wander free and unconstrained over their heights and among their forests, and who, when they forsook this nomad life, sought to retain in their new habitations as much as possible of their original liberty. Those terrace foundations, which appear like a continuation of the mountain, those groves of columns, those basins, once, no doubt, sparkling with refreshing fountains, those flights of steps, which the loaded camel of the Arab ascends with the same ease as his conductor, forming a sort of highway for the nations whose images are sculptured there--all these particulars are as much in unison with the character of that joyous land which the industry of the Persians converted into an earthly paradise as the gigantic temples of Egypt are appropriate memorials of their old grottos in the rocks. The columns of Persepolis shoot upwards with a slender yet firm elevation, conveying a fit image of the stems of the lotus and palm, from which they were probably copied. As in Egypt everything is closely covered, and, as it were, oppressed by a roof, so here is everything free and unconfined, in admirable harmony with the religion of the nation, whose sole objects of worship were the sun, the elements, and the open vault of heaven.

The art of design also preserves in the ruins of Persepolis a character peculiar to itself, a character of sobriety and dignity. Sculpture here appears formed on the habits of a court, and of an oriental court. No female or naked figure is to be traced, the seclusion of the harem being religiously respected. Of the male figures, none are portrayed in any violent or constrained attitude, not even when the monarch is represented destroying a monster; and it is only in the conflicts of animals with one another that the artist has displayed his power of expressing strong excitement. Where everything had reference to a court, no attitude was admissible which was not sanctioned by court etiquette. At the same time, this air of composure and dignity does not degenerate into stiffness; the design of the artist appears to have been, not to excite an impression of the beautiful, but a feeling of veneration--an end which has been fully attained. It is to be observed that no statue, nor any vestige of one, appears to have been discovered, and Persian sculpture seems to have been confined to the carving of reliefs, more or less prominent; and in the case of the monstrous figures which guard the entrance, amounting to half-relievos. How different are these historical relievos of Persia from those of the Egyptians, the favourite themes of which are battles and triumphal processions! There the object of the artist has been to exhibit the characters of action and energy; here, those of repose. In its subjects, also, the Persian sculpture is distinguished from that of the Egyptians, as well as that of the Indians. While it occasionally delineated superhuman beings, such as feroohers and izeds, it abstained from the deities themselves. On the other hand, it is in close and perfect harmony with the architecture it accompanies. As the latter was lofty and grand, but not colossal, so was the former, and both characterised by a high degree of simplicity. It was the most obvious and natural idea with which the ancient artist could set about his work, to make the one the handmaid of the other, and the sculptor may be said to have given animation to the labours of the architect, by representing under emblematical figures the design of his works. Accordingly, as the different parts of the edifice combined to form a whole, so the various groups of sculpture composed one general design, and all, down to the most minute decorations, were in strict unison with one leading idea, associated with the religious opinions of the nation. With the exception of the fabulous animals, everything was copied from nature; and from the parts of these monsters were borrowed nearly all the ornaments, consisting for the most part of the heads of unicorns and claws of griffins; and chimerical as these fabulous creations may at first sight appear, they are all capable of being reduced to four or five elementary forms of real animals--the horse, the lion, the onager or wild ass, the eagle, and the scorpion, to which we may perhaps add the rhinoceros.

In proportion, however, as the mythology at the command of the sculptor were limited, so his circle of observation, as applied to real nature, was extensive. He appears to have been familiar with the nations of more than one quarter of the globe, and to have distinguished with exactness their features and profiles, the thick lips and woolly hair of the negro being no less accurately marked than the limbs of the half-naked Indian. The same mechanical accuracy also and perfect finish, which distinguishes the architectural details, is observable in the labours of the sculptor. We may still count the nails in the wheels of the chariot in the great relievo; and the hair of the negro is so carefully wrought, that it is impossible to confound it with that of the Asiatics. This sort of scrupulous care, which marks also the inscriptions, appears in all countries to have distinguished the infancy of the art.[b]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

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I. LAND AND PEOPLE

[b] EDUARD MEYER, Geschichte des Alterthums.

[c] MAX DUNCKER, Geschichte des Alterthums.

[d] The Holy Bible.

[e] HERODOTUS, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

[f] XENOPHON, The Cyropædia (translated from the Greek by J.S. Watson and Henry Dale).

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II. THE MEDIAN OR SCYTHIAN EMPIRE

[b] HERODOTUS, op. cit.

[c] THEODORE NÖLDEKE, article “Persia,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

[d] A. H. SAYCE, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments.

[e] The Holy Bible.

[f] R. W. ROGERS, History of Babylonia and Assyria.

[g] CTESIAS, Persica.

[h] BEROSUS, Βαβυλωνικά.

[i] STRABO, Γεωγραφικά.

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III. THE EARLY ACHÆMENIANS AND THE ELAMITES, CYRUS AND CAMBYSES

[b] THEODORE NÖLDEKE, op. cit.

[c] HERODOTUS, op. cit.

[d] XENOPHON, op. cit.

[e] CTESIAS, op. cit.

[f] VICTOR FLOIGL, Cyrus und Herodot nach den neugefundenen Keilinschriften.

[g] G.MASPERO, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

[h] A. H. SAYCE, op. cit.

[i] H. C. RAWLINSON, “Outline of the History of Assyria.”

[j] POLYÆNUS, Στρατηγήματα.

[k] XANTHUS, Lydiaca.

[l] EDUARD MEYER, op. cit.

[m] BEROSUS, op. cit.

[n] J. V. PRÁŠEK, Kambyses und die Ueberlieferung des Altertums.

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IV. THE PERSIAN DYNASTY: DARIUS I TO DARIUS III

[b] EDUARD MEYER, op. cit.

[c] HERODOTUS, op. cit.

[d] H. C. RAWLINSON, The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun.

[e] G. MASPERO, op. cit.

[f] DIODORUS, Historical Library.

[g] XENOPHON, op. cit.

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V. PERSIAN CIVILISATION

[b] A. H. L. HEEREN, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations).

[c] H. C. RAWLINSON, op. cit.

[d] XENOPHON, op. cit.

[e] The Holy Bible.

[f] HERODOTUS, op. cit.

[g] JAS. MORIER, Journey through Persia, etc.

[h] R. K. PORTER, Travels in Georgia, Persia, etc.

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PERSIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY.

=Ælianus=, Claudius, Ηοικίλη Ἱστορία, Rome, 1545.--=Æschylus=, Persæ, Tragedies of Æschylos. Literally translated by Th. A. Buckley, London, 1663.--=Alcock=, Th., Travels in Russia, Persia, Turkey, and Greece in 1828-1829, London, 1831.--=Ali Riza= of Shiraz (Ibn Abd al-Karim), Das tarikh i-Zendije (herausg. von Ernst Beer). History of the Zend-Dynasty in Persia, Leyden, 1888.--=Anacleri=, G., La Persia deseritta, relazione di un viaggio, Napoli, 1868.--=Arbuthnot=, Persian Portraits, London, 1887.--=Augur=, T., Tratado de la conquista de las islas de la Persia y Arabia de la muchas tierras, Salamanca, 1512.

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=Babelon=, E., Catalogue des monnaies grecques de la Bibliot. Nationale: Les perses, achémenides, les satrapes et les dynastes tributaires de leur empire, Cypre et Phénicie, Paris, 1894.--=Backer=, L. de, La Perse et la question d’orient, Saint Omer, 1867.--=Bang=, W., Zur Erklärung der altpersischen Keilinschriften (in Mélanges de Charles de Harlez), Leyden, 1896.--=Barbier de Meynard=, C. A., Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse et des contrées adjacentes, Paris, 1861.--=Bassett=, J., Persia and the Land of the Imans, London, 1887.--=Bauer=, A., Die Kyrossage und Verwandtes (in Wiener Acad. d. Wiss. Bd. 100, 1882, Wien, 1882).--=Benjamin=, S. G. W., Persia and the Persians, London-Boston, 1887; The Story of Persia, New York, 1891.--=Berchet=, G., La Repubblica di Venezia e la Persia, Torino, 1865.--=Bezold=, C., Die Achämenideninschriften, Leipsic, 1882.--=Bible, The Holy= (“authorised version”), London, 1611; (“revised version”) London, 1884.--=Bird=, I., Journeys in Persia and Kurdestan, London, 1893.--=Boettger=, B., Persische Heldensagen, Eppendorf, 1900.--=Bonvalot=, Revolutions de la Perse ancienne et moderne, Paris, 1833.--=Booth=, A. J., The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, New York, 1902.--=Borrichius=, A., De Persico Imperio, Hafn, 1688.--=Brodbeck=, A. Zoroaster, ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Geschichte der Religionen und philosophischen Systeme des Morgen- und Abendlandes, Leipsic, 1893.--=Brugsch=, H., Reise der k. preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien, Berlin, 1860-1861.--=Brun-Renaud=, C. G. N., La Perse politique et militaire au XIX siècle, Paris, 1894.--=Bruyn=, Le, Reysen over Moscovien door Persien en Oost-Indien, Delft, 1711.--=Buchholz=, A., Quæstiones de Persarum Satrapis Satrapusque, Leipsic, 1895.--=Buckingham=, J. S., Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, London, 1828.--=Burnouf=, E., Mémoire sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes, Paris, 1836; Études sur la langue et les textes Zendes, Paris, 1840-1850; Science of Religions, London, 1888.

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=Casartelli=, L. C., The Philosophy of the Mazdayasnian Religion under the Sassanides, Bombay, 1889; La religion des rois achéménides d’après leurs inscriptions, Brussels, 1895.--=Castonnet des Fosses=, H., Les Relations de la France avec la Perse, Angers, 1889.--=Champollion-Figeac=, J. F., Histoire des peuples anciens et modernes, Asie orientale, la Perse, Lagny, 1857.--=Chardin=, F., Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de l’orient, Paris, 1811, 10 vols.; Travels into Persia and the East Indies, London, 1836.--=Clermont-Ganneau=, C. S., Études d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1895.--=Cloquet=, L., L’art monumental des Indous et des Perses, Brussels, 1896.--=Collins=, E. T., In the Kingdom of the Shah, London, 1896.--=Ctesias=, Persica.--=Curzon=, G. V., Persia and the Persian Question, London, 1892, 2 vols.

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