Again, in a political point of view, we have the Persians clearly exhibited as standing in the same relation to the Medes, which the Helli held to the Pelasgi. The needy highlanders[951] come down upon and overpower the richer and more advanced inhabitants of the central valleys: under the Magian upstart, the latter take advantage of the absence of the sovereign to rebel, but they are, after a short interval, finally put down.
The political system of Darius.
Darius, having obtained the throne, and established the Persian supremacy, proceeded to organize the empire; and he appears to have displayed in this great sphere the same thoroughly political mind as the Hellenic races exhibited in their diminutive, but still extraordinary polities. He divided the empire by a cadastral system, under provincial governors; and he established everywhere fixed rates of tribute. These were great departures from the old Greek form of sovereignty: but we are now five centuries later than the heroic age: and, besides, we must remember that the paternal and everywhere fixed forms of government, which will suffice for very small states, are not always applicable to large ones. Yet, as we learn from Herodotus, the innovations of Darius were much resented by the Persians, who under Cyrus, and even under Cambyses, knew nothing of fixed rates of taxation, but offered benevolences (δῶρα) to the throne[952]; and a saying came into vogue, that Cyrus was a father, Cambyses an autocrat (δεσπότης), and Darius a tradesman (κάπηλος).
‘Landlord of England art thou now, not King[953].’
We seem to have here an emphatic testimony to the original identity of the Persian and Hellic, or Hellenic ideas of government.
It is also worthy of remark, that in the case of Minos, who seems to have held a large and disjointed empire, we have traditional, and even Homeric indications of some proceeding not wholly unlike this of Darius. For this prince, according to Thucydides, governed the islands through his sons, that is, by a provincial organization under local officers[954]; in Homer we find Rhadamanthus acting at a distance, probably on his behalf; and we may perhaps hence conceive, that there was truth in the tradition, afterwards so odious, that he imposed tribute upon the then Pelasgian Attica. Minos indeed was a reputed Phœnician: but in Homer the Phœnician and Persian traditions are closely combined, and the poet appears to have treated Phœnicia as the medium, perhaps even the symbol, of much that was Persian. Even geographically I believe that he placed the two countries in very close proximity.
It seems probable also, that we may consider the long continued application of the term Βασιλεὺς by the Greeks to the Persian kings, as having reference to an original identity of race and manners. It had been their own original name for a monarch. When the ancient monarchies passed away, so did the name from their usage; and the possessor of singlehanded power among the Greeks, having in all cases obtained it by the suppression of liberty, came to be called τύραννος; but the word Βασιλεὺς continued to be used with reference to Persia, where the chain of traditions had not been broken, and where monarchy had never ceased to prevail; so that there had been no reason for a change of usage, or for a deviation from the ancient respect and reverence towards the possessor of a throne. Again, the traditional throne of Lacedæmon continued to be held by Βασιλεῖς[955].
For the word Βασιλεὺς was one of no ordinary force; and down to a very late date it must have been surrounded with venerable recollections. It was borne by the emperors of Constantinople, and even at times stickled for by them, as a title distinguishing them from the emperors of the West. Though essentially Greek, it was also written in the Latin character. Unlike the word Rex, it appears never to have been applied to any ruler who exercised a merely derivative power. It travelled so far westward as to our own island: and King Edgar, in a charter, calls himself Anglorum Basileus, omniumque Regum, Insularum, Oceanique Britanniam circumjacentis, cunctarumque nationum, quæ infra eam includuntur, Imperator et Dominus[956].
Hellenic traits in modern Persia.
Even now, after so many centuries of vicissitude, the Persian presents numerous points of resemblance, perhaps more than we can find in Modern Greece itself, to the primitive and heroic Greek of Homer. Upon the whole, without doubt, he stands upon a lower level. Lying, drunkenness, unnatural vice[957], the degradation of women, are all now rife in Persia. But such things were to be expected after so many ages of estrangement from the revealed knowledge of God, of moral contamination, and of political depression and misgovernment. But with allowance on these accounts, and on the score of the changes to Magianism and Mahometanism, the old features are still retained, and they present to our view abundant presumptions of identity.