Another devoted adherent, and another yet more memorable piece of cunning, laid prostrate before Darius the mighty walls and gates of the revolted Babylon. The inhabitants of that city had employed themselves assiduously,—both during the lax provincial superintendence of the false Smerdis, and during the period of confusion and conflict which elapsed before Darius became firmly established and obeyed,—in making every preparation both for declaring and sustaining their independence. Having accumulated a large store of provisions and other requisites for a long siege, without previous detection, they at length proclaimed their independence openly. And such was the intensity of their resolution to maintain it, that they had recourse to a proceeding, which, if correctly reported by Herodotus, forms one of the most frightful enormities recorded in his history. To make their provisions last out longer, they strangled all the women in the city, reserving only their mothers, and one woman to each family for the purpose of baking.[414] We cannot but suppose that this has been magnified from a partial into an universal destruction. Yet taking it even with such allowance, it illustrates that ferocious force of will,—and that predominance of strong nationality, combined with antipathy to foreigners, over all the gentler sympathies,—which seems to mark the Semitic nations, and which may be traced so much in the Jewish history of Josephus.
Darius, assembling all the forces in his power, laid siege to the revolted city, but could make no impression upon it, either by force or by stratagem. He tried to repeat the proceeding by which Cyrus had taken it at first; but the besieged were found this time on their guard. The siege had lasted twenty months without the smallest progress, and the Babylonians derided the besiegers from the height of their impregnable walls, when a distinguished Persian nobleman Zopyrus,—son of Megabyzus, who had been one of the seven conspirators against Smerdis,—presented himself one day before Darius in a state of frightful mutilation: his nose and ears were cut off, and his body misused in every way. He had designedly so maimed himself, “thinking it intolerable that Assyrians should thus laugh the Persians to scorn,”[415] in the intention which he presently intimated to Darius, of passing into the town as a deserter, with a view of betraying it,—for which purpose measures were concerted. The Babylonians, seeing a Persian of the highest rank in so calamitous a condition, readily believed his assurance, that he had been thus punished by the king’s order, and that he came over to them as the only means of procuring for himself single vengeance. They intrusted him with the command of a detachment, with which he gained several advantages in different sallies, according to previous concert with Darius, until at length, the confidence of the Babylonians becoming unbounded, they placed in his hands the care of the principal gates. At the critical moment these gates were thrown open, and the Persians became masters of the city.[416]
Thus was the impregnable Babylon a second time reduced,[417] and Darius took precautions on this occasion to put it out of condition for resisting a third time. He caused the walls and gates to be demolished, and three thousand of the principal citizens to be crucified: the remaining inhabitants were left in the dismantled city, fifty thousand women being levied by assessment upon the neighboring provinces, to supply the place of the women strangled when it first revolted.[418] Zopyrus was appointed satrap of the territory for life, with enjoyment of its entire revenues, receiving besides every additional reward which it was in the power of Darius to bestow, and generous assurances from the latter that he would rather have Zopyrus without wounds than the possession of Babylon. I have already intimated in a former chapter that the demolition of the walls here mentioned is not to be regarded as complete and continuous, nor was there any necessity that it should be so. Partial demolition would be quite sufficient to leave the city without defence; and the description given by Herodotus of the state of things as they stood at the time of his visit, proves that portions of the walls yet subsisted. One circumstance is yet to be added in reference to the subsequent condition of Babylon under the Persian empire. The city with the territory belonging to it constituted a satrapy, which not only paid a larger tribute (one thousand Euboic talents of silver) and contributed a much larger amount of provisions in kind for the maintenance of the Persian court, than any other among the twenty satrapies of the empire, but furnished besides an annual supply of five hundred eunuch youths.[419] We may presume that this was intended in part as a punishment for the past revolt, since the like obligation was not imposed upon any other satrapy.
Thus firmly established on the throne, Darius occupied it for thirty-six years, and his reign was one of organization, different from that of his two predecessors; a difference which the Persians well understood and noted, calling Cyrus the father, Kambysês the master, and Darius the retail-trader, or huckster.[420] In the mouth of the Persians this latter epithet must be construed as no insignificant compliment, since it intimates that he was the first to introduce some methodical order into the imperial administration and finances. Under the two former kings there was no definite amount of tribute levied upon the subject provinces: which furnished what were called presents, subject to no fixed limit except such as might be satisfactory to the satrap in each district. But Darius—succeeding as he did to Smerdis, who had rendered himself popular with the provinces by large financial exemptions, and having farther to encounter jealousy and dissatisfaction from Persians, his former equals in rank—probably felt it expedient to relieve the provinces from the burden of undefined exactions. He distributed the whole empire into twenty departments, imposing upon each a fixed annual tax, and a fixed contribution for the maintenance of the court. This must doubtless have been a great improvement, though the limitation of the sum which the Great King at Susa would require, did not at all prevent the satrap in his own province from indefinite requisitions beyond it. The latter was a little king, who acted nearly as he pleased in the internal administration of his province,—subject only to the necessity of sending up the imperial tribute, of keeping off foreign enemies, and of furnishing an adequate military contingent for the foreign enterprises of the Great King. To every satrap was attached a royal secretary, or comptroller, of the revenue,[421] who probably managed the imperial finances in the province, and to whom the court of Susa might perhaps look as a watch upon the satrap himself. It is not to be supposed that the Persian authorities in any province meddled with the details of taxation, or contribution, as they bore upon individuals. The court having fixed the entire sum payable by the satrapy in the aggregate, the satrap or the secretary apportioned it among the various component districts, towns, or provinces, leaving to the local authorities in each of these latter the task of assessing it upon individual inhabitants. From necessity, therefore, as well as from indolence of temper and political incompetence, the Persians were compelled to respect authorities which they found standing both in town and country, and to leave in their hands a large measure of genuine influence; frequently overruled, indeed, by oppressive interference on the part of the satrap, whenever any of his passions prompted,—but never entirely superseded. In the important towns and stations, Persian garrisons were usually kept, and against the excesses of the military there was probably little or no protection to the subject people. Yet still, the provincial governments were allowed to continue, and often even the petty kings who had governed separate districts during their state of independence prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dignity as tributaries to the court of Susa.[422] The empire of the Great King was thus an aggregate of heterogeneous elements, connected together by no tie except that of common fear and subjection,—noway coherent nor self-supporting, nor pervaded by any common system or spirit of nationality. It resembled, in its main political features, the Turkish and Persian empires of the present day,[423] though distinguished materially by the many differences arising out of Mohammedanism and Christianity, and apparently not reaching the same extreme of rapacity, corruption, and cruelty in detail.
Darius distributed the Persian empire into twenty satrapies, each including a certain continuous territory, and one or more nations inhabiting it, the names of which Herodotus sets forth. The amount of tribute payable by each satrapy was determined: payable in gold, according to the Euboic talent, by the Indians in the easternmost satrapy,—in silver, according to the Babylonian, or larger talent, by the remaining nineteen. Herodotus computes the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1. From the nineteen satrapies which paid in silver, there was levied annually the sum of seven thousand seven hundred and forty Babylonian talents, equal to something about two million nine hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds sterling: from the Indians, who alone paid in gold, there was received a sum equal (at the rate of 1 : 13) to four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents of silver, or to about one million two hundred and ninety thousand pounds sterling.[424]
To explain how it happened that this one satrapy was charged with a sum equal to two-fifths of the aggregate charge on the other nineteen, Herodotus dwells upon the vast population, the extensive territory, and the abundant produce in gold, among those whom he calls Indians,—the easternmost inhabitants of the earth, since beyond them there was nothing but uninhabitable sand,—reaching, as far as we can make it out, from Baktria southward along the Indus to its mouth, but how far eastward we cannot determine. Darius is said to have undertaken an expedition against them and subdued them: moreover, he is affirmed to have constructed and despatched vessels down the Indus, from the city of Kaspatyri and the territory of the Paktyes, in its upper regions, all the way down to its mouth: then into the Indian ocean, round the peninsula of Arabia, and up the Red Sea to Egypt. The ships were commanded by Skylax,—a Greek of Karyanda on the south-western coast of Asia Minor;[425] who, if this statement be correct, executed a scheme of nautical enterprise not only one hundred and seventy years earlier, but also far more extensive, than the famous voyage of Nearchus, admiral of Alexander the Great,—since the latter only went from the Indus to the Persian gulf. The eastern portions of the Persian empire remained so unknown and unvisited until the Macedonian invasion, that we are unable to criticize these isolated statements of Herodotus. None of the Persian kings subsequent to Darius appear to have visited them, and whether the prodigious sum demandable from them according to the Persian rent-roll was ever regularly levied, may reasonably be doubted. At the same time, we may reasonably believe that the mountains in the northern parts of Persian India—Cabul and Little Thibet—were at that time extremely productive in gold, and that quantities of that metal, such as now appear almost fabulous, may have been often obtained. It appears that the produce of gold in all parts of the earth, as far as hitherto known, is obtained exclusively near the surface; so that a country once rich in that metal may well have been exhausted of its whole supply, and left at a later period without any gold at all.
Of the nineteen silver-paying satrapies, the most heavily imposed was Babylonia, which paid one thousand talents: the next in amount of charge was Egypt, paying seven hundred talents, besides the produce of the fish from the lake of Mœris. The remaining satrapies varied in amount, down as low as one hundred and seventy talents, which was the sum charged on the seventh satrapy (in the enumeration of Herodotus), comprising the Sattagydæ, the Gandarii, the Dodikæ, and the Aparytæ. The Ionians, Æolians, Magnesians on the Mæander, and on Mount Sipylus, Karians, Lykians, Milyans, and Pamphylians,—including the coast of Asia Minor, southward of Kanê, and from thence round the southern promontory to Phasêlis,—were rated as one division, paying four hundred talents. But we may be sure that much more than this was really taken from the people, when we read that Magnesia alone afterwards paid to Themistoklês a revenue of fifty talents annually.[426] The Mysians and Lydians were included, with some others, in another division, and the Hellespontine Greeks in a third, with Phrygians, Bithynians, Paphlagonians, Mariandynians, and Syrians, paying three hundred and sixty talents,—nearly the same as was paid by Syria proper, Phenicia, and Judæa, with the island of Cyprus. Independent of this regular tribute, and the undefined sums extorted over and above it,[427] there were some dependent nations, which, though exempt from tribute, furnished occasional sums called presents; and farther contributions were exacted for the maintenance of the vast suite who always personally attended the king. One entire third of this last burden was borne by Babylonia alone in consequence of its exuberant fertility.[428] It was paid in produce, as indeed the peculiar productions of every part of the empire seem to have been sent up for the regal consumption.
However imperfectly we are now able to follow the geographical distribution of the subject nations as given by Herodotus, it is extremely valuable as the only professed statistics remaining, of the entire Persian empire. The arrangement of satrapies, which he describes, underwent modification in subsequent times; at least it does not harmonize with various statements in the Anabasis of Xenophon, and in other authors who recount Persian affairs belonging to the fourth century B. C. But we find in no other author except Herodotus any entire survey and distribution of the empire. It is, indeed, a new tendency which now manifests itself in the Persian Darius, compared with his predecessors: not simply to conquer, to extort, and to give away,—but to do all this with something like method and system,[429] and to define the obligations of the satraps towards Susa. Another remarkable example of the same tendency is to be found in the fact, that Darius was the first Persian king who coined money: his coin, both in gold and silver, the Daric, was the earliest produce of a Persian mint.[430] The revenue, as brought to Susa in metallic money of various descriptions, was melted down separately, and poured in a fluid state into jars or earthenware vessels; when the metal had cooled and hardened, the jar was broken, leaving a standing solid mass, from which portions were cut off as the occasion required.[431] And in addition to these administrative, financial, and monetary arrangements, of which Darius was the first originator, we may probably ascribe to him the first introduction of that system of roads, resting-places, and permanent relays of couriers, which connected both Susa and Ekbatana with the distant portions of the empire. Herodotus describes in considerable detail the imperial road from Sardis to Susa, a journey of ninety days, crossing the Halys, the Euphratês, the Tigris, the Greater and Lesser Zab, the Gyndês, and the Choaspês. And we may see by this account that in his time it was kept in excellent order, with convenience for travellers.[432]
It was Darius also who first completed the conquest of the Ionic Greeks by the acquisition of the important island of Samos. That island had maintained its independence, at the time when the Persian general Harpagus effected the conquest of Ionia. It did not yield voluntarily when Chios and Lesbos submitted, and the Persians had no fleet to attack it; nor had the Phenicians yet been taught to round the Triopian cape. Indeed, the depression which overtook the other cities of Ionia, tended rather to the aggrandizement of Samos, under the energetic and unscrupulous despotism of Polykratês. That ambitious Samian, about ten years after the conquest of Sardis by Cyrus (seemingly between 536-532 B. C.), contrived to seize by force or fraud the government of his native island, with the aid of his brothers Pantagnôtus and Sylosôn, and a small band of conspirators.[433] At first, the three brothers shared the supreme power; but presently Polykratês put to death Pantagnôtus, banished Sylosôn, and made himself despot alone. In this station, his ambition, his perfidy, and his good fortune, were alike remarkable. He conquered several of the neighboring islands, and even some towns on the mainland; he carried on successful war against Milêtus; and signally defeated the Lesbian ships which came to assist Milêtus; he got together a force of one hundred armed ships called pentekonters, and one thousand mercenary bowmen,—aspiring to nothing less than the dominion of Ionia, with the islands in the Ægean. Alike terrible to friend and foe by his indiscriminate spirit of aggression, he acquired a naval power which seems at that time to have been the greatest in the Grecian world.[434] He had been in intimate alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, who, however, ultimately broke with him. Considering his behavior towards allies, such rupture is not at all surprising; but Herodotus ascribes it to the alarm which Amasis conceived at the uninterrupted and superhuman good fortune of Polykratês,—a degree of good fortune sure to draw down ultimately corresponding intensity of suffering from the hands of the envious gods. Indeed, Herodotus,—deeply penetrated with this belief in an ever-present nemesis, which allows no man to be very happy, or long happy, with impunity,—throws it into the form of an epistolary warning from Amasis to Polykratês, advising him to inflict upon himself some seasonable mischief or suffering; in order, if possible, to avert the ultimate judgment,—to let blood in time, so that the plethora of happiness might not end in apoplexy.[435] Pursuant to such counsel, Polykratês threw into the sea a favorite ring, of matchless price and beauty; but unfortunately, in a few days, the ring reappeared in the belly of a fine fish, which a fisherman had sent to him as a present. Amasis now foresaw that the final apoplexy was inevitable, and broke off the alliance with Polykratês without delay,—a well-known story, interesting as evidence of ancient belief, and not less to be noted as showing the power of that belief to beget fictitious details out of real characters, such as I have already touched upon in the history of Solon and Crœsus, and elsewhere.
The facts mentioned by Herodotus rather lead us to believe that it was Polykratês, who, with characteristic faithlessness, broke off his friendship with Amasis;[436] finding it suitable to his policy to cultivate the alliance of Kambysês, when that prince was preparing for his invasion of Egypt. In that invasion, the Ionic subjects of Persia were called upon to serve, and Polykratês, deeming it a good opportunity to rid himself of some Samian malcontents, sent to the Persian king to tender auxiliaries from himself. Kambysês, having eagerly caught at the prospect of aid from the first naval potentate in the Ægean, forty Samian triremes were sent to the Nile, having on board the suspected persons, as well as conveying a secret request to the Persian king that they might never be suffered to return. Either they never went to Egypt, however, or they found means to escape; very contradictory stories had reached Herodotus. But they certainly returned to Samos, attacked Polykratês at home, and were driven off by his superior force without making any impression. Whereupon they repaired to Sparta to entreat assistance.[437]