PERSIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF DARIUS AND XERXES
(From casts in the British Museum, London.)
[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.
[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.