If we look particularly at the Jews--those subjects of Persia who necessarily share most of our interest with the Greeks--we find that Persian imperial rule was no sooner established securely over the former Babylonian fief in Palestine than it began to undo the destructive work of its predecessors. Vainly expecting help from the restored Egyptian power, Jerusalem had held out against Nebuchadnezzar till 587. On its capture the dispersion of the southern Jews, which had already begun with local emigrations to Egypt, was largely increased by the deportation of a numerous body to Babylonia. As early, however, as 538, the year of Cyrus' entry into Babylon (doubtless as one result of that event), began a return of exiles to Judaea and perhaps also to Samaria. By 520 the Jewish population in South Palestine was sufficiently strong again to make itself troublesome to Darius, and in 516 the Temple was in process of restoration. Before the middle of the next century Jerusalem was once more a fortified city and its population had been further reinforced by many returned exiles who had imbibed the economic civilization, and also the religiosity of Babylonia. Thenceforward the development of the Jews into a commercial people proceeds without apparent interruption from Persian governors, who (as, for example, Nehemiah) could themselves be of the subject race. Even if large accretions of other Semites, notably Aramaeans, be allowed for--accretions easily accepted by a people which had become rather a church than a nation--it remains a striking testimony to Persian toleration that after only some six or seven generations the once insignificant Jews should have grown numerous enough to contribute an important element to the populations of several foreign cities. It is worth remark also that even when, presumably, free to return to the home of their race, many Jews preferred to remain in distant parts of the Persian realm. Names mentioned on contract tablets of Nippur show that Jews found it profitable to still sit by the waters of Babylon till late in the fifth century; while in another distant province of the Persian Empire (as the papyri of Syene have disclosed) a flourishing particularist settlement of the same race persisted right down to and after 500 B.C.

SECTION 7. ASIA UNDER PERSIA

On the whole evidence the Persians might justifiably claim that their imperial organization in its best days, destitute though it was of either the centralized strength or the theoretic justification of modern civilized rule, achieved a very considerable advance, and that it is not unworthy to be compared even to the Roman in respect of the freedom and peace which in effect it secured to its subjects.

[Plate 5: PERSIAN EMPIRE (WEST) AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. TEMP. DARIUS HYSTASPIS]

Not much more need--or can--be said about the other conquered peoples before we revert to the Greeks. Though Cyrus did not live to receive in person the submission of all the west Asian peoples, his son Cambyses had received it before his short reign of eight years came to an end. Included in the empire now were not only all the mainland territories once dominated by the Medes and the Babylonians, but also much wider lands east, west and south, and even Mediterranean islands which lay near the Asiatic shores. Among these last was Cyprus, now more closely linked to Phoenicia than of old, and combining with the latter to provide navies for the Great King's needs. On the East, the Iranian plateau, watched from two royal residences, Pasargadae in the south and Ecbatana in the north, swelled this realm to greater dimensions than any previous eastern empire had boasted. On the south, Cambyses added Cyrene and, less surely, Nabia to Egypt proper, which Assyria had possessed for a short time, as we have seen. On the west, Cyrus and his generals had already secured all Asia which lay outside the Median limit, including Cilicia, where (as also in other realms, e.g. Phoenicia, Cyprus, Caria) the native dynasty accepted a client position.

This, however, is not to be taken to mean that all the East settled down at once into contented subservience. Cambyses, by putting his brother to death, had cut off the direct line of succession. A pretender appeared in the far East; Cambyses died on the march to meet him, and at once all the oriental provinces, except the homeland of Persia, were up in revolt. But a young cognate of the royal house, Darius, son of Hystaspes, a strong man, slew the pretender, and once secure on the throne, brought Media, Armenia, Elam and at last Babylonia, back to obedience. The old imperial city on the Euphrates would make one more bid for freedom six years later and then relapse into the estate of a provincial town. Darius spent some twenty years in organizing his empire on the satrap system, well known to us from Greek sources, and in strengthening his frontiers. To promote the latter end he passed over into Europe, even crossing the Danube in 511 to check Scythian raids; and he secured the command of the two straits and the safety of his northwest Asiatic possessions by annexing the south-east of the Balkan peninsula with the flourishing Greek cities on its coasts.

SECTION 8. PERSIA AND THE GREEKS

The sixth century closed and the fifth century ran three years of its course in apparently unbroken peace between East and West. But trouble was near at hand. Persia had imposed herself on cities which possessed a civilization superior, not only potentially but actually, to her own; on cities where individual and communal passion for freedom constituted the one religion incompatible with her tolerant sway; on cities conscious of national identity with a powerful group outside the Persian Empire, and certain sooner or later to engage that group in warfare on their behalf.

Large causes, therefore, lay behind the friction and intrigue which, after a generation of subjection, caused the Ionian cities, led, as of old, by Miletus, to ring up the first act of a dramatic struggle destined to make history for a very long time to come. We cannot examine here in detail the particular events which induced the Ionian Revolt. Sufficient to say they all had their spring in the great city of Miletus, whose merchant princes and merchant people were determined to regain the power and primacy which they had enjoyed till lately. A preliminary failure to aggrandize themselves with the goodwill of Persia actually brought on their revolt, but it only precipitated a struggle inevitable ultimately on one side of the Aegean or the other. After setting the whole Anatolian coast from the Bosporus to Pamphylia and even Cyprus in a blaze for two years, the Ionian Revolt failed, owing as much to the particularist jealousies of the Greek cities themselves as to vigorous measures taken against them by Darius on land and his obedient Phoenicians at sea. A naval defeat sealed the fate of Miletus, whose citizens found, to the horror of all Greece, that, on occasion, the Persian would treat rebels like a loyal successor of Shalmaneser and Nebuchadnezzar. But even though it failed, the Revolt brought on a second act in the drama. For, on the one hand, it had involved in Persian politics certain cities of the Greek motherlands, notably Athens, whose contingent, greatly daring, affronted the Great King by helping to burn the lower town of Sardes; and on the other, it had prompted a despot on the European shore of the Dardanelles, one Miltiades, an Athenian destined to immortal fame, to incense Darius yet more by seizing his islands of Lemnos and Imbros.

Evidently neither could Asiatic Greeks be trusted, even though their claws were cut by disarmament and their motives for rebellion had been lessened by the removal of their despots, nor could the Balkan province be held securely, while the western Greeks remained defiant and Athens, in particular, aiming at the control of Aegean trade, supported the Ionian colonies. Therefore Darius determined to strike at this city whose exiled despot, Hippias, promised a treacherous co-operation; and he summoned other Greek states to make formal submission and keep the peace. A first armada sent to coast round the northern shore in 492 added Macedonia to the Persian Empire; but it was crippled and stayed by storms. A second, sent two years later direct across the Aegean, reduced the Cyclad isles, revenged itself on Eretria, one of the minor culprits in the Sardian affair, and finally brought up by the Attic shore at Marathon. The world-famous defeat which its landing parties suffered there should be related by a historian rather of Greece than of the East; and so too should the issue of a third and last invasion which, ten years later, after old Darius' death, Xerxes led in person to defeat at Salamis, and left to meet final rout under his generalissimo at Plataea. For our purpose it will be enough to note the effects which this momentous series of events had on the East itself.