CHAPTER XXXIII.

GROWTH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.

In the preceding chapter an account has been given, the best which we

can pick out from Herodotus, of the steps by which the Asiatic Greeks

became subject to Persia. And if his narrative is meagre, on a matter

which vitally concerned not only so many of his brother Greeks, but

even his own native city, we can hardly expect that he should tell us

much respecting the other conquests of Cyrus. He seems to withhold

intentionally various details which had come to his knowledge, and

merely intimates in general terms that while Harpagus was engaged

on the coast of the Ægean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all

the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting any one of them.”[366]

He alludes to the Baktrians and the Sakæ,[367] who are also named

by Ktêsias as having become subject partly by force, partly by

capitulation; but he deems only two of the exploits of Cyrus worthy

of special notice,—the conquest of Babylon, and the final expedition

against the Massagetæ. In the short abstract which we now possess

of the lost work of Ktêsias, no mention appears of the important

conquest of Babylon; but his narrative, as far as the abstract

enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus,

and must have been founded on data altogether different.

[366] Herodot. i, 177.

[367] Herodot. i, 153.

“I shall mention (says Herodotus)[368] those conquests which gave

Cyrus most trouble, and are most memorable: after he had subdued all

the rest of the continent, he attacked the Assyrians.” Those who

recollect the description of Babylon and its surrounding territory,

as given in a former chapter, will not be surprised to learn that

the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor much trouble: their

only surprise will be, how it could ever have been taken at

all,—or, indeed, how a hostile army could have even reached it.

Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitôkris—mother of

that very Labynêtus who was king when Cyrus attacked the place—had

been apprehensive of invasion from the Medes after their capture of

Nineveh, and had executed many laborious works near the Euphratês

for the purpose of obstructing their approach. Moreover, there

existed what was called the wall of Media (probably built by her,

but certainly built prior to the Persian conquest), one hundred

feet high and twenty feet thick,[369] across the entire space of

seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of the canals of

the Euphratês. And the canals themselves, as we may see by the march

of the Ten Thousand Greeks after the battle of Kunaxa, presented

means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as that

of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was defended

by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the ancient Nineveh

or the modern Mosul.[370] In addition to these ramparts, natural as

well as artificial, to protect the territory,—populous, cultivated,

productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist

even the entrance of an enemy,—we are told that the Babylonians

were so thoroughly prepared for the inroad of Cyrus that they had

accumulated a store of provisions within the city walls for many

years.

[368] Herodot. i, 177. τὰ δὲ οἱ πάρεσχε πόνον τε πλεῖστον, καὶ

ἀξιαπηγητότατά ἐστι, τούτων ἐπιμνήσομαι.

[369] See Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 12. For the

inextricable difficulties in which the Ten Thousand Greeks were

involved, after the battle of Kunaxa, and the insurmountable

obstacles which impeded their march, assuming any resisting force

whatever, see Xenoph. Anab. ii, 1, 11; ii, 2, 3; ii, 3, 10; ii,

4, 12-13. These obstacles, doubtless, served as a protection to

them against attack, not less than as an impediment to their

advance; and the well-supplied villages enabled them to obtain

plenty of provisions: hence the anxiety of the Great King to

help them across the Tigris out of Babylonia. But it is not easy

to see how, in the face of such difficulties, any invading army

could reach Babylon.

Ritter represents the wall of Media as having reached across from

the Euphratês to the Tigris at the point where they come nearest

together, about two hundred stadia or twenty-five miles across.

But it is nowhere stated, so far as I can find, that this wall

reached to the Euphratês,—still less that its length was two

hundred stadia, for the passages of Strabo cited by Ritter do not

prove either point (ii, 80; xi, 529). And Xenophon (ii, 4, 12)

gives the length of the wall as I have stated it in the text, =

20 parasangs = 600 stadia = 75 miles.

The passage of the Anabasis (i, 7, 15) seems to connect the

Median wall with the canals, and not with the river Euphratês.

The narrative of Herodotus, as I have remarked in a former

chapter, leads us to suppose that he descended that river to

Babylon; and if we suppose that the wall did not reach the

Euphratês, this would afford some reason why he makes no mention

of it. See Ritter, West Asien, b. iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschn. i,

sect. 29, pp. 19-22.

[370] Ὁ Τίγρης μέγας τε καὶ οὐδαμοῦ διαβατὸς ἔς τε ἐπὶ τὴν

ἐκβολὴν (Arrian, vii, 7, 7). By which he means, that it is not

fordable below the ancient Nineveh, or Mosul; for a little above

that spot, Alexander himself forded it with his army, a few days

before the battle of Arbêla—not without very great difficulty

(Arrian, iii, 7, 8; Diodor. xvii, 55).

Strange as it may seem, we must suppose that the king of Babylon,

after all the cost and labor spent in providing defences for the

territory, voluntarily neglected to avail himself of them, suffered

the invader to tread down the fertile Babylonia without resistance,

and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived under

the walls of the city,—if the statement of Herodotus is correct.[371]

And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we

know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Kunaxa

against his brother Artaxerxês Mnêmon. The latter had caused to be

dug, expressly in preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep

ditch, thirty feet wide and eight feet deep, from the wall of Media

to the river Euphratês, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-live

English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close

alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this

important pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of

them marched without resistance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the

younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother

would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of defending

Babylon:[372] instead of which, two days afterwards, Artaxerxês

attacked him on an open plain of ground, where there was no advantage

of position on either side; though the invaders were taken rather

unawares in consequence of their extreme confidence, arising from

recent unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch.

[371] Herodot. i, 190. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐγένετο ἐλαύνων ἀγχοῦ τῆς πόλιος,

συνέβαλόν τε οἱ Βαβυλώνιοι, καὶ ἑσσωθέντες τῇ μάχῃ, κατειλήθησαν

ἐς τὸ ἄστυ.

Just as if Babylon was as easy to be approached as Sardis,—οἷά τε

ἐπιστάμενοι ἔτι πρότερον τὸν Κῦρον οὐκ ἀτρεμίζοντα, ἀλλ᾽ ὁρέοντες

αὐτὸν παντὶ ὁμοίως ἔθνεϊ ἐπιχειρέοντα, προεσάξαντο σίτια ἐτέων

κάρτα πολλῶν.

[372] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 14-20; Diodor. xiv, 22; Plutarch,

Artaxerxês, c. 7. I follow Xenophon without hesitation, where he

differs from these two latter.

This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because all

its circumstances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness.

And both the two incidents here brought into comparison demonstrate

the recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity of calculation,

belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day,—as well as the great

command of hands possessed by these kings, and their prodigal waste

of human labor.[373] We shall see, as we advance in this history,

farther evidences of the same attributes, which it is essential to

bear in mind, for the purpose of appreciating both Grecian dealing

with Asiatics, and the comparative absence of such defects in the

Grecian character. Vast walls and deep ditches are an inestimable

aid to a brave and well commanded garrison; but they cannot be made

entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence.

[373] Xenophon, Cyropæd. iii, 3, 26, about the πολυχειρία of the

barbaric kings.

In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have

been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain.

On first setting out for this conquest, he was about to cross the

river Gyndês (one of the affluents from the East which joins the

Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road

crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana), when

one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him, insulted the

river[374] so far as to march in and try to cross it by himself.

The Gyndês resented this insult, and the horse was drowned: upon

which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength

of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting

their knees. Accordingly, he employed his entire army, during the

whole summer season, in digging three hundred and sixty artificial

channels to disseminate the unity of the stream. Such, according to

Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year the fall of

the great Babylon; but in the next spring Cyrus and his army were

before the walls, after having defeated and driven in the population

who came out to fight. But the walls were artificial mountains (three

hundred feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square

of fifteen miles to each side), within which the besieged defied

attack, and even blockade, having previously stored up several years’

provision. Through the midst of these walls, however, flowed the

Euphratês; and this river, which had been so laboriously trained

to serve for protection, trade, and sustenance to the Babylonians,

was now made the avenue of their ruin. Having left a detachment of

his army at the two points where the Euphratês enters and quits

the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of

its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of

the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of need the

superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another

reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of

which he drew off the water of the Euphrates to such a decree that

it became not above the height of a man’s thigh. The period chosen

was that of a great Babylonian festival, when the whole population

were engaged in amusement and revelry; and the Persian troops left

near the town, watching their opportunity, entered from both sides

along the bed of the river, and took it by surprise with scarcely

any resistance. At no other time, except during a festival, could

they have done this, says Herodotus, had the river been ever so low;

for both banks throughout the whole length of the town were provided

with quays, with continuous walls, and with gates at the end of every

street which led down to the river at right angles: so that if the

population had not been disqualified by the influences of the moment,

they would have caught the assailants in the bed of the river “as a

trap,” and overwhelmed them from the walls alongside. Within a square

of fifteen miles to each side, we are not surprised to hear that both

the extremities were already in the power of the besiegers before the

central population heard of it, and while they were yet absorbed in

unconscious festivity.[375]

[374] Herodot. i, 189-202. ἐνθαῦτά οἱ τῶν τις ἱρῶν ἵππων τῶν

λευκῶν ὑπὸ ὕβριος ἐσβὰς ἐς τὸν ποταμὸν, διαβαίνειν ἐπειρᾶτο....

Κάρτα τε δὴ ἐχαλέπαινε τῷ ποταμῷ ὁ Κῦρος τοῦτο ὑβρίσαντι, etc.

[375] Herodot. i, 191. This latter portion of the story, if we

may judge from the expression of Herodotus, seems to excite

more doubt in his mind than all the rest, for he thinks it

necessary to add, “as the residents at Babylon say,” ὡς λέγεται

ὑπὸ τῶν ταύτῃ οἰκημένων. Yet if we assume the size of the place

to be what he has affirmed, there seems nothing remarkable in

the fact that the people in the centre did not at once hear of

the capture; for the first business of the assailants would be

to possess themselves of the walls and gates. It is a lively

illustration of prodigious magnitude, and as such it is given by

Aristotle (Polit. iii, 1, 12); who, however, exaggerates it by

giving as a report that the inhabitants in the centre did not

hear of the capture until the third day. No such exaggeration as

this appears in Herodotus.

Xenophon, in the Cyropædia (vii, 5, 7-18), following the story

that Cyrus drained off the Euphratês, represents it as effected

in a manner differing from Herodotus. According to him, Cyrus

dug two vast and deep ditches, one on each side round the town,

from the river above the town to the river below it: watching the

opportunity of a festival day in Babylon, he let the water into

both of these side ditches, which fell into the main stream again

below the town: hence the main stream in its passage through

the town became nearly dry. The narrative of Xenophon, however,

betrays itself, as not having been written from information

received on the spot, like that of Herodotus; for he talks of

αἱ ἄκραι of Babylon, just as he speaks of the ἄκραι of the

hill-towns of Karia (compare Cyropædia, vii, 4, 1, 7, with vii,

5, 34). There were no ἄκραι on the dead flat of Babylon.

Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances which

placed Babylon—the greatest city of western Asia—in the power of the

Persians. To what extent the information communicated to him was

incorrect, or exaggerated, we cannot now decide; but the way in which

the city was treated would lead us to suppose that its acquisition

cannot have cost the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus

comes into the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with

their whole territory become tributary to the Persians, forming the

richest satrapy in the empire; but we do not hear that the people

were otherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and

gates were left untouched. This was very different from the way in

which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems to have been ruined

and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, though reoccupied on a

reduced scale under the Parthian empire; and very different also from

the way in which Babylon itself was treated twenty years afterwards

by Darius, when reconquered after a revolt.

The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the

peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world

in a state of full development, gives an interest even to the

half-authenticated stories respecting its capture; but the other

exploits ascribed to Cyrus,—his invasion of India, across the desert

of Arachosia,[376]—and his attack upon the Massagetæ, nomads ruled

by queen Tomyris, and greatly resembling the Scythians, across the

mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxês,—are too little known

to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he is said to have perished,

his army being defeated in a bloody battle.[377] He was buried at

Pasargadæ, in his native province of Persis proper, where his tomb

was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire,[378]

while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians.

[376] Arrian, vi, 24, 4.

[377] Herodot. i, 205-214; Arrian, v, 4, 14; Justin, i, 8;

Strabo, xi, p. 512.

According to Ktêsias, Cyrus was slain in an expedition against

the Derbikes, a people in the Caucasian regions,—though his army

afterwards prove victorious and conquer the country (Ktesiæ

Persica, c. 8-9),—see the comment of Bähr on the passage, in his

edition of Ktêsias.

[378] Strabo, xv, pp. 730, 731; Arrian, vi, 29.

Of his real exploits, we know little except their results; but in

what we read respecting him there seems, though amidst constant

fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon has selected his life as

the subject of a moral romance, which for a long time was cited

as authentic history, and which even now serves as an authority,

expressed or implied, for disputable and even incorrect conclusions.

His extraordinary activity and conquests admit of no doubt. He left

the Persian empire[379] extending from Sogdiana and the rivers

Jaxartês and Indus eastward, to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast

westward, and his successors made no permanent addition to it except

that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judæa were dependencies of Babylon, at

the time when he conquered it, with their princes and grandees in

Babylonian captivity. They seem to have yielded to him, and become

his tributaries,[380] without difficulty; and the restoration of

their captives was conceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the

habits of the Persian kings took commencement, to dwell at Susa in

the winter, and Ekbatana during the summer; the primitive territory

of Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargadæ, being

reserved for the burial-place of the kings and the religious

sanctuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was

made, we are not informed; it lay eastward of the Tigris, between

Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, as far as

we can discern, were of Assyrian and not of Arian race. The river

Choaspês, near Susa, was supposed to furnish the only water fit for

the palate of the Great King, and is said to have been carried about

with him wherever he went.[381]

[379] The town Kyra, or Kyropolis, on the river Sihon, or

Jaxartês, was said to have been founded by Cyrus,—it was

destroyed by Alexander (Strabo, xi, pp. 517, 518; Arrian, iv, 2,

2; Curtius, vii, 6, 16).

[380] Herodot. iii, 19.

[381] Herodot. i, 188; Plutarch, Artaxerxês, c. 3; Diodor. xvii,

71.

While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the distinct

types of civilization in western Asia,—not by elevating the worse,

but by degrading the better,—upon the native Persians themselves

they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, provoking alike their

pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike propensities. Not only did the

territory of Persis proper pay no tribute to Susa or Ekbatana,—being

the only district so exempted between the Jaxartês and the

Mediterranean,—but the vast tributes received from the remaining

empire were distributed to a great degree among its inhabitants.

Empire to them meant,—for the great men, lucrative satrapies, or

pachalics, with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to

that of the Great King, and standing armies which they employed

at their own discretion, sometimes against each other,[382]—for

the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant

plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either

in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troop

which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. And if the

entire population of Persis proper did not migrate from their abodes

to occupy some of those more inviting spots which the immensity of

the imperial dominion furnished,—a dominion extending (to use the

language of Cyrus the younger, before the battle of Kunaxa)[383] from

the region of insupportable heat to that of insupportable cold,—this

was only because the early kings discouraged such a movement, in

order that the nation might maintain its military hardihood,[384] and

be in a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers.

[382] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 1, 8.

[383] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 6; Cyropæd. viii, 6, 19.

[384] Herodot. ix, 122.

The self-esteem and arrogance of the Persians was no less remarkable

than their avidity for sensual enjoyment. They were fond of wine to

excess; their wives and their concubines were both numerous; and

they adopted eagerly from foreign nations new fashions of luxury as

well as of ornament. Even to novelties in religion, they were not

strongly averse; for though they were disciples of Zoroaster, with

magi as their priests, and as indispensable companions of their

sacrifices, worshipping Sun, Moon, Earth, Fire, etc., and recognizing

neither image, temple, nor altar,—yet they had adopted the voluptuous

worship of the goddess Mylitta from the Assyrians and Arabians. A

numerous male offspring was the Persian’s boast, and his warlike

character and consciousness of force were displayed in the education

of these youths, who were taught, from five years old to twenty,

only three things,—to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the

truth.[385] To owe money, or even to buy and sell, was accounted

among the Persians disgraceful,—a sentiment which they defended by

saying, that both the one and the other imposed the necessity of

telling falsehood. To exact tribute from subjects, to receive pay or

presents from the king, and to give away without forethought whatever

was not immediately wanted, was their mode of dealing with money.

Industrious pursuits were left to the conquered, who were fortunate

if by paying a fixed contribution, and sending a military contingent

when required, they could purchase undisturbed immunity for their

remaining concerns.[386] They could not thus purchase safety for the

family hearth, since we find instances of noble Grecian maidens torn

from their parents for the harem of the satrap.[387]

[385] The modern Persians at this day exhibit almost matchless

skill in shooting with the firelock, as well as with the bow, on

horseback. See Sir John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, ch. xvii, p.

201; see also Kinneir, Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire,

p. 32.

[386] About the attributes of the Persian character, see Herodot.

i, 131-140: compare i, 153.

He expresses himself very strongly as to the facility with which

the Persians imbibed foreign customs, and especially foreign

luxuries (i, 135),—ξεινικὰ δὲ νόμαια Πέρσαι προσίενται ἀνδρῶν

μάλιστα,—καὶ εὐπαθείας τε παντοδαπὰς πυνθανόμενοι ἐπιτηδεύουσι.

That rigid tenacity of customs and exclusiveness of tastes,

which mark the modern Orientals, appear to be of the growth of

Mohammedanism, and to distinguish them greatly from the old

Zoroastrian Persians.

[387] Herodot. ix, 76; Plutarch, Artaxerx. c. 26.

To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political society

went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror like

Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm of

which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them

masters; he was the first and greatest of national benefactors,[388]

as well as the most forward of leaders in the field; they followed

him from one conquest to another, during the thirty years of his

reign, their love of empire growing with the empire itself. And this

impulse of aggrandizement continued unabated during the reigns of

his three next successors,—Kambysês, Darius, and Xerxês,—until it

was at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Platæa

and Salamis; after which the Persians became content with defending

themselves at home, and playing a secondary game. But at the time

when Kambysês son of Cyrus succeeded to his father’s sceptre, Persian

spirit was at its highest point, and he was not long in fixing upon

a prey both richer and less hazardous than the Massagetæ, at the

opposite extremity of the empire. Phenicia and Judæa being already

subject to him, he resolved to invade Egypt, then highly flourishing

under the long and prosperous reign of Amasis. Not much pretence

was needed to color the aggression, and the various stories which

Herodotus mentions as causes of the war, are only interesting

inasmuch as they imply a vein of Egyptian party feeling,—affirming

that the invasion was brought upon Amasis by a daughter of Apriês,

and was thus a judgment upon him for having deposed the latter. As to

the manner in which she had produced this effect, indeed, the most

contradictory stories were circulated.[389]

[388] Herodot. i, 210; iii, 159.

[389] Herodot. iii, 1-4.

Kambysês summoned the forces of his empire for this new enterprise,

and among them both the Phenicians and the Asiatic Greeks, Æolic

as well as Ionic,[390] insular as well as continental,—nearly all

the maritime force and skill of the Ægean sea. He was apprized by a

Greek deserter from the mercenaries in Egypt, named Phanês, of the

difficulties of the march, and the best method of surmounting them;

especially the three days of sandy desert, altogether without water,

which lay between Egypt and Judæa. By the aid of the neighboring

Arabians,—with whom he concluded a treaty, and who were requited

for this service with the title of equal allies, free from all

tribute,—he was enabled to surmount this serious difficulty, and to

reach Pelusium at the eastern mouth of the Nile, where the Ionian

and Karian troops in the Egyptian service, as well as the Egyptian

military, were assembled to oppose him.[391]

[390] Herodot. iii, 1, 19, 44.

[391] The narrative of Ktêsias is, in respect both to the

Egyptian expedition and to the other incidents of Persian

history, quite different in its details from that of Herodotus,

agreeing only in the main events (Ktêsias, Persica, c. 7). To

blend the two together is impossible.

Tacitus (Histor. i, 11) notes the difficulty of approach for an

invading army to Egypt: “Egyptum, provinciam aditu difficilem,

annonæ fecundam, superstitione ac lasciviâ discordem et mobilem,”

etc.

Fortunately for himself, the Egyptian king Amasis had died during

the interval of the Persian preparations, a few months before the

expedition took place,—after forty-four years of unabated prosperity.

His death, at this critical moment, was probably the main cause of

the easy conquest which followed; his son Psammenitus succeeding

to his crown, but neither to his abilities nor his influence. The

result of the invasion was foreshadowed, as usual, by a menacing

prodigy,—rain falling at Thebes in Upper Egypt; and was brought about

by a single victory, though bravely disputed, at Pelusium,—followed

by the capture of Memphis, with the person of king Psammenitus, after

a siege of some duration. Kambysês had sent forward a Mitylenæan ship

to Memphis, with heralds to summon the city; but the Egyptians, in a

paroxysm of fury, rushed out of the walls, destroyed the vessel, and

tore the crew into pieces,—a savage proceeding, which drew upon them

severe retribution after the capture. Psammenitus, after being at

first treated with harshness and insult, was at length released, and

even allowed to retain his regal dignity as a dependent of Persia.

But being soon detected, or at least believed to be concerned, in

raising revolt against the conquerors, he was put to death, and Egypt

was placed under a satrap.[392]

[392] Herodot. iii, 10-16. About the Arabians, between Judæa and

Egypt, see iii, c. 5, 88-91.

There yet lay beyond Egypt territories for Kambysês to

conquer,—though Kyrênê and Barka, the Greek colonies near the coast

of Libya, placed themselves at once out of the reach of danger by

sending to him tribute and submission at Memphis. He projected three

new enterprises: one against Carthage, by sea; the other two, by

land, against the Ethiopians, far to the southward up the course of

the Nile, and against the oracle and oasis of Zeus Ammon, amidst the

deserts of Libya. Towards Ethiopia he himself conducted his troops,

but was compelled to bring them back without reaching it, since they

were on the point of perishing with famine; while the division which

he sent against the temple of Ammon is said to have been overwhelmed

by a sand-storm in the desert. The expedition against Carthage was

given up, for a reason which well deserves to be commemorated.

The Phenicians, who formed the most efficient part of his navy,

refused to serve against their kinsmen and colonists, pleading the

sanctity of mutual oaths as well as the ties both of relationship and

traffic.[393] Even the frantic Kambysês was compelled to accept, and

perhaps to respect, this honorable refusal, which was not imitated

by the Ionic Greeks when Darius and Xerxês demanded the aid of their

ships against Athens,—we must add, however, that they were then in

a situation much more exposed and helpless than that in which the

Phenicians stood before Kambysês.

[393] Herodot. iii, 19.

Among the sacred animals so numerous and so different throughout the

various nomes of Egypt, the most venerated of all was the bull Apis.

Yet such peculiar conditions were required by the Egyptian religion

as to the birth, the age, and the marks of this animal, that, when

he died, it was difficult to find a new calf properly qualified to

succeed him. Much time was sometimes spent in the search, and when

an unexceptionable successor was at last found, the demonstrations

of joy in Memphis were extravagant and universal. At the moment

when Kambysês returned to Memphis from his Ethiopian expedition,

full of humiliation for the result, it so happened that a new Apis

was just discovered; and as the population of the city gave vent

to their usual festival pomp and delight, he construed it into an

intentional insult towards his own recent misfortunes. In vain did

the priests and magistrates explain to him the real cause of these

popular manifestations; he persisted in his belief, punished some

of them with death and others with stripes, and commanded every man

seen in holiday attire to be slain. Furthermore,—to carry his outrage

against Egyptian feeling to the uttermost pitch,—he sent for the

newly-discovered Apis, and plunged his dagger into the side of the

animal, who shortly afterwards died of the wound.[394]

[394] Herodot. iii, 29.

After this brutal deed,—calculated to efface in the minds of the

Egyptian priests the enormities of Cheops and Chephrên, and doubtless

unparalleled in all the twenty-four thousand years of their anterior

history,—Kambysês lost every spark of reason which yet remained to

him, and the Egyptians found in this visitation a new proof of the

avenging interference of their gods. Not only did he commit every

variety of studied outrage against the conquered people among whom

he was tarrying, as well as their temples and their sepulchres,—but

he also dealt his blows against his Persian friends and even his

nearest blood-relations. Among these revolting atrocities, one of the

greatest deserves peculiar notice, because the fate of the empire was

afterwards materially affected by it. His younger brother Smerdis had

accompanied him into Egypt, but had been sent back to Susa, because

the king became jealous of the admiration which his personal strength

and qualities called forth.[395] That jealousy was aggravated into

alarm and hatred by a dream, portending dominion and conquest to

Smerdis; so that the frantic Kambysês sent to Susa secretly a

confidential Persian, Prexaspês, with express orders to get rid of

his brother. Prexaspês fulfilled his commission effectively, burying

the slain prince with his own hands,[396] and keeping the deed

concealed from all except a few of the chiefs at the regal residence.

[395] Ktêsias calls the brother Tanyoxarkês, and says that

Cyrus had left him satrap, without tribute, of Baktria and the

neighboring regions (Persica, c. 8). Xenophon, in the Cyropædia,

also calls him Tanyoxarkês, but gives him a different satrapy

(Cyropæd. viii, 7, 11).

[396] Herodot. iii, 30-62.

Among these few chiefs, however, there was one, the Median

Patizeithês, belonging to the order of the Magi, who saw in it a

convenient stepping-stone for his own personal ambition, and made use

of it as a means of covertly supplanting the dynasty of the great

Cyrus. Enjoying the full confidence of Kambysês, he had been left

by that prince, on departing for Egypt, in the entire management of

the palace and treasures, with extensive authority.[397] Moreover,

he happened to have a brother extremely resembling in person the

deceased Smerdis; and as the open and dangerous madness of Kambysês

contributed to alienate from him the minds of the Persians, he

resolved to proclaim this brother king in his room, as if it were

the younger son of Cyrus succeeding to the disqualified elder. On

one important point, the false Smerdis differed from the true. He

had lost his ears, which Cyrus himself had caused to be cut off for

an offence; but the personal resemblance, after all, was of little

importance, since he was seldom or never allowed to show himself

to the people.[398] Kambysês, having heard of this revolt in Syria

on his return from Egypt, was mounting his horse in haste for the

purpose of going to suppress it, when an accident from his sword

put an end to his life. Herodotus tells us that, before his death,

he summoned the Persians around him, confessed that he had been

guilty of putting his brother to death, and apprized them that the

reigning Smerdis was only a Median pretender,—conjuring them at

the same time not to submit to the disgrace of being ruled by any

other than a Persian and an Achæmenid. But if it be true that he

ever made known the facts, no one believed him. For Prexaspês, on

his part, was compelled by regard to his own safety, to deny that

he had imbrued his hands in the blood of a son of Cyrus;[399] and

thus the opportune death of Kambysês placed the false Smerdis without

opposition at the head of the Persians, who all, or for the most

part, believed themselves to be ruled by a genuine son of Cyrus.

Kambysês had reigned for seven years and five months.

[397] Herodot. iii, 61-63.

[398] Herodot. iii, 68-69.—“Auribus decisis vivere jubet,” says

Tacitus, about a case under the Parthian government (Annal. xii,

14),—nor have the Turkish authorities given up the infliction

of it at the present moment, or at least down to a very recent

period.

[399] Herodot. iii, 64-66.

For seven months did Smerdis reign without opposition, seconded

by his brother Patizeithês; and if he manifested his distrust of

the haughty Persians around him, by neither inviting them into his

palace nor showing himself out of it, he at the same time studiously

conciliated the favor of the subject provinces, by remission of

tribute and of military service for three years.[400] Such a

departure from the Persian principle of government was in itself

sufficient to disgust the warlike and rapacious Achæmenids at Susa.

But it seems that their suspicions as to his genuine character had

never been entirely set at rest, and in the eighth month those

suspicions were converted into certainty. According to what seems

to have been the Persian usage, he had taken to himself the entire

harem of his predecessor, among whose wives was numbered Phædymê,

daughter of a distinguished Persian, named Otanês. At the instance

of her father, Phædymê undertook the dangerous task of feeling the

head of Smerdis while he slept, and thus detected the absence of

ears.[401] Otanês, possessed of the decisive information, lost no

time in concerting, with five other noble Achæmenids, means for

ridding themselves of a king who was at once a Mede, a Magian, and a

man without ears;[402] Darius, son of Hystaspês, the satrap of Persis

proper, arriving just in time to join the conspiracy as the seventh.

How these seven noblemen slew Smerdis in his palace at Susa,—how they

subsequently debated among themselves whether they should establish

in Persia a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy,—how, after the

first of the three had been resolved upon, it was determined that the

future king, whichever he might be, should be bound to take his wives

only from the families of the seven conspirators,—how Darius became

king, from the circumstance of his horse being the first to neigh

among those of the conspirators at a given spot, by the stratagem of

the groom Œbarês,—how Otanês, standing aside beforehand from this

lottery for the throne, reserved for himself as well as for his

descendants perfect freedom and exemption from the rule of the future

king, whichsoever might draw the prize,—all these incidents may be

found recounted by Herodotus with his usual vivacity, but with no

small addition of Hellenic ideas as well as of dramatic ornament.

[400] Herodot. iii, 67.

[401] Herodot. iii, 68-69.

[402] Herodot. iii, 69-73. ἀρχόμεθα μὲν ἐόντες Πέρσαι, ὑπὸ Μήδου

ἀνδρὸς μάγου, καὶ τούτου ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντος.

Compare the description of the insupportable repugnance of the

Greeks of Kyrênê to be governed by the _lame_ Battus (Herodot.

iv, 161).

It was thus that the upright tiara, the privileged head-dress of

the Persian kings,[403] passed away from the lineage of Cyrus, yet

without departing from the great phratry of the Achæmenidæ,—to

which Darius and his father Hystaspês, as well as Cyrus, belonged.

That important fact is unquestionable, and probably the acts

ascribed to the seven conspirators are in the main true, apart from

their discussions and intentions. But on this as well as on other

occasions, we must guard ourselves against an illusion which the

historical manner of Herodotus is apt to create. He presents to us

with so much descriptive force the personal narrative,—individual

action and speech, with all its accompanying hopes, fears, doubts,

and passions,—that our attention is distracted from the political

bearing of what is going on; which we are compelled often to gather

up from hints in the speeches of performers, or from consequences

afterwards indirectly noticed. When we put together all the

incidental notices which he lets drop, it will be found that the

change of sceptre from Smerdis to Darius was a far larger political

event than his direct narrative would seem to announce. Smerdis

represents preponderance to the Medes over the Persians, and

comparative degradation to the latter; who, by the installation of

Darius, are again placed in the ascendent. The Medes and the Magians

are in this case identical; for the Magians, though indispensable

in the capacity of priests to the Persians, were essentially one of

the seven Median tribes.[404] It thus appears that though Smerdis

ruled as a son of the great Cyrus, yet he ruled by means of Medes

and Magians, depriving the Persians of that supreme privilege and

predominance to which they had become accustomed.[405] We see this by

what followed immediately after the assassination of Smerdis and his

brother in the palace. The seven conspirators, exhibiting the bloody

heads of both these victims as an evidence of their deed, instigated

the Persians in Susa to a general massacre of the Magians, many

of whom were actually slain, and the rest only escaped by flight,

concealment, or the hour of night. And the anniversary of this day

was celebrated afterwards among the Persians by a solemnity and

festival, called the Magophonia; no Magian being ever allowed on that

day to appear in public.[406] The descendants of the Seven maintained

a privileged name and rank,[407] even down to the extinction of the

monarchy by Alexander the Great.

[403] Compare Aristophan. Aves, 487, with the Scholia, and

Herodot. vii, 61; Arrian, iv, 6, 29. The cap of the Persians

generally was loose, low, clinging about the head in folds; that

of the king was high and erect above the head. See the notes of

Wesseling and Schweighaüser, upon πῖλοι ἀπαγέες in Herodot. _l.

c._

[404] Herodot. i, 101-120.

[405] In the speech which Herodotus puts into the mouth of

Kambysês on his deathbed, addressed to the Persians around him

in a strain of prophetic adjuration (iii, 65), he says: Καὶ δὴ

ὑμῖν τάδε ἐπισκήπτω, θεοὺς τοὺς βασιληΐους ἐπικαλέων, καὶ πᾶσιν

ὑμῖν καὶ μάλιστα Ἀχαιμενιδέων τοῖσι παρεοῦσι, μὴ περιϊδεῖν

τὴν ἡγεμονίην αὖτις ἐς Μήδους περιελθοῦσαν· ἀλλ᾽ εἴτε δόλῳ

ἔχουσι αὐτὴν κτησάμενοι (the personification of the deceased

son of Cyrus), δόλῳ ἀπαιρεθῆναι ὑπὸ ὑμέων· εἴτε καὶ σθένεϊ τεῷ

κατεργασάμενοι, σθένεϊ κατὰ τὸ κάρτερον ἀνασώσασθαι (the forcible

opposition of the Medes to Darius, which he put down by superior

force on the Persian side): compare the speech of Gobryas, one of

the seven Persian conspirators (iii, 73), and that of Prexaspês

(iii, 75); also Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695.

Heeren has taken a correct view of the reign of Smerdis the

Magian, and its political character (Ideen über den Verkehr,

etc., der Alten Welt, part i, abth. i, p. 431).

[406] Herodot. iii, 79. Σπασάμενοι δὲ τὰ ἐγχειρίδια, ἔκτεινον

ὅκου τινὰ μάγον εὕρισκον· εἰ δὲ μὴ νὺξ ἐπελθοῦσα ἔσχε, ἔλιπον ἂν

οὐδένα μάγον. Ταύτην τὴν ἡμέρην θεραπεύουσι Πέρσαι κοινῇ μάλιστα

τῶν ἡμερέων· καὶ ἐν αὐτῇ ὁρτὴν μεγάλην ἀνάγουσι, ἣ κέκληται ὑπὸ

Περσέων Μαγοφόνια.

The periodical celebration of the Magophonia is attested by

Ktêsias,—one of the few points of complete agreement with

Herodotus. He farther agrees in saying that a Magian usurped the

throne, through likeness of person to the deceased son of Cyrus,

whom Kambysês had slain,—but all his other statements differ from

Herodotus (Ktêsias, 10-14).

[407] Even at the battle of Arbela,—“Summæ Orsines præerat, a

septem Persis oriundus, ad Cyrum quoque, nobilissimum regem,

originem sui referens.” (Quintus Curtius, iv, 12, 7, or iv, 45,

7, Zumpt.): compare Strabo, xi, p. 531; Florus, iii, 5, 1.

Furthermore, it appears that the authority of Darius was not readily

acknowledged throughout the empire, and that an interval of confusion

ensued before it became so.[408] The Medes actually revolted, and

tried to maintain themselves by force against Darius, who however

found means to subdue them: though, when he convoked his troops from

the various provinces, he did not receive from the satraps universal

obedience. The powerful Orœtês, especially, who had been appointed

by Cyrus satrap of Lydia and Ionia, not only sent no troops to the

aid of Darius against the Medes,[409] but even took advantage of

the disturbed state of the government to put to death his private

enemy Mitrobatês satrap of Phrygia, and appropriate that satrapy

in addition to his own. Aryandês also, the satrap nominated by

Kambysês in Egypt, comported himself as the equal of Darius rather

than as his subject.[410] The subject provinces generally, to whom

Smerdis had granted remission of tribute and military service for

the space of three years, were grateful and attached to his memory,

and noway pleased with the new dynasty; moreover, the revolt of the

Babylonians, conceived a year or two before it was executed, took its

rise from the feelings of this time.[411] But the renewal of the old

conflict between the two principal sections of the empire, Medes and

Persians, is doubtless the most important feature in this political

revolution. The false Smerdis with his brother, both of them Medes

and Magians, had revived the Median nationality to a state of

supremacy over the Persian, recalling the memory of what it had been

under Astyagês; while Darius,—a pure Persian, and not (like the mule

Cyrus) half Mede and half Persian,—replaced the Persian nationality

in its ascendent condition, though not without the necessity of

suppressing by force a rebellion of the Medes.[412]

[408] Herodot. iii, 127. Δαρεῖος—ἅτε οἰδεόντων οἱ ἔτι τῶν

πρηγμάτων, etc.,—mention of the ταραχή (iii, 126, 150).

[409] Herodot. iii, 126. Μετὰ γὰρ τὸν Καμβύσεω θάνατον, καὶ τῶν

Μάγων τὴν βασιληΐην, μένων ἐν τῇσι Σάρδισι Ὀροίτης, ὠφέλει μὲν

οὐδὲν Πέρσας, ~ὑπὸ Μήδων ἀπαραιρημένους τὴν ἀρχήν~· ὁ δὲ ἐν

ταύτῃ τῇ ταραχῇ κατὰ μὲν ἔκτεινε Μιτροβάτεα ... ἄλλα τε ἐξύβρισε

παντοῖα, etc.

[410] Herodot. iv, 166. Ὁ δὲ Ἀρυάνδης ἦν οὗτος τῆς Αἰγύπτου

ὕπαρχος ὑπὸ Καμβύσεω κατεστεώς· ὃς ὑστέρῳ χρόνῳ παρισεύμενος

Δαρείῳ διεφθάρη.

[411] Herodot. iii, 67-150.

[412] Herodot. i, 130. Ἀστυάγης μέν νυν βασιλεύσας ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα πέντε

καὶ τριήκοντα, οὕτω τῆς ἀρχῆς κατεπαύσθη. Μῆδοι δὲ ὑπέκυψαν

Πέρσῃσι διὰ τὴν τούτου πικρότητα.... Ὑστέρῳ μέντοι χρόνῳ

μετεμέλησέ τέ σφι ταῦτα ποιήσασι, καὶ ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ Δαρείου·

ἀποστάντες δὲ, ὀπίσω κατεστράφθησαν, μάχῃ νικηθέντες· τότε δὲ,

ἐπὶ Ἀστυάγεος, οἱ Πέρσαι τε καὶ ὁ Κῦρος ἐπαναστάντες τοῖσι

Μήδοισι, ἦρχον τὸ ἀπὸ τούτου τῆς Ἀσίης.

This passage—asserting that the Medes, some time after the

deposition of Astyagês and the acquisition of Persian supremacy

by Cyrus, repented of having suffered their discontent

against Astyagês to place this supremacy in the hands of

the Persians, revolted from Darius, and were reconquered

after a contest—appears to me to have been misunderstood by

chronologists. Dodwell, Larcher, and Mr. Fynes Clinton (indeed,

most, if not all, of the chronologists) explain it as alluding

to a revolt of the Medes against the Persian king Darius Nothus,

mentioned in the Hellenica of Xenophon (i, 2, 12), and belonging

to the year 408 B. C. See Larcher ad Herodot. i, 130, and his Vie

d’Hérodote, prefixed to his translation (p. lxxxix); also Mr.

Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 408 and 455, and his Appendix,

c, 18, p. 316.

The revolt of the Medes alluded to by Herodotus is, in my

judgment, completely distinct from the revolt mentioned by

Xenophon: to identify the two, as these eminent chronologists do,

is an hypothesis not only having nothing to recommend it, but

open to grave objection. The revolt mentioned by Herodotus was

against Darius son of Hystaspês, not against Darius Nothus; and

I have set forth with peculiar care the circumstances connected

with the conspiracy and accession of the former, for the purpose

of showing that they all decidedly imply that conflict between

Median and Persian supremacy, which Herodotus directly announces

in the passage now before us.

1. When Herodotus speaks of Darius, without any adjective

designation, why should we imagine that he means any other than

Darius the son of Hystaspês, on whom he dwells so copiously in

his narrative? Once only in the course of his history (ix, 108)

another Darius (the young prince, son of Xerxês the First) is

mentioned; but with this exception, Darius son of Hystaspês is

uniformly, throughout the work, spoken of under his simple name:

Darius Nothus is never alluded to at all.

2. The deposition of Astyagês took place in 559 B. C.; the

beginning of the reign of Darius occurred in 520 B. C.; now

repentance on the part of the Medes, for what they had done at

the former of those two epochs, might naturally prompt them to

try to repair it in the latter. But between the deposition of

Astyagês in 559 B. C., and the revolt mentioned by Xenophon

against Darius Nothus in 408 B. C., the interval is more than one

hundred and fifty years. To ascribe a revolt which took place in

408 B. C., to repentance for something which had occurred one

hundred and fifty years before, is unnatural and far-fetched, if

not positively inadmissible.

The preceding arguments go to show that the natural construction

of the passage in Herodotus points to Darius son of Hystaspês,

and not to Darius Nothus; but this is not all. There are yet

stronger reasons why the reference to Darius Nothus should be

discarded.

The supposed mention, in Herodotus, of a fact so late as 408 B.

C., perplexes the whole chronology of his life and authorship.

According to the usual statement of his biography, which every

one admits, and which there is no reason to call in question,

he was born in 484 B. C. Here, then, is an event alluded to in

his history, which occurred when the historian was seventy-six

years old, and the allusion to which he must be presumed to

have written when about eighty years old, if not more; for his

mention of the fact by no means implies that it was particularly

recent. Those who adopt this view, do not imagine that he wrote

his whole history at that age; but they maintain that he made

later additions, of which they contend that this is one. I do

not say that this is impossible: we know that Isokratês composed

his Panathenaic oration at the age of ninety-four; but it must

be admitted to be highly improbable,—a supposition which ought

not to be advanced without some cogent proof to support it. But

here no proof whatever is produced. Herodotus mentions a revolt

of the Medes against Darius,—Xenophon also mentions a revolt of

the Medes against Darius; hence, chronologists have taken it as

a matter of course, that both authors must allude to the same

event; though the supposition is unnatural as regards the text,

and still more unnatural as regards the biography, of Herodotus.

In respect to that biography, Mr. Clinton appears to me to have

adopted another erroneous opinion; in which, however, both

Larcher and Wesseling are against him, though Dahlmann and Heyse

agree with him. He maintains that the passage in Herodotus

(iii, 15), wherein it is stated that Pausiris succeeded his

father Amyrtæus by consent of the Persians in the government of

Egypt, is to be referred to a fact which happened subsequent to

the year 414 B. C., or the tenth year of Darius Nothus; since

it was in that year that Amyrtæus acquired the government of

Egypt. But this opinion rests altogether upon the assumption

that a certain Amyrtæus, whose name and date occur in Manetho

(see Eusebius, Chronicon), is the same person as the Amyrtæus

mentioned in Herodotus; which identity is not only not proved,

but is extremely improbable, since Mr. Clinton himself admits

(F. H. Appendix, p. 317), while maintaining the identity: “He

(Amyrtæus) had conducted a war against the Persian government

_more than fifty years before_.” This, though not impossible, is

surely very improbable; it is at least equally probable that the

Amyrtæus of Manetho was a different person from (perhaps even the

_grandson_ of) that Amyrtæus in Herodotus, who had carried on war

against the Persians more than fifty wars before; it appears to

me, indeed, that this is the more reasonable hypothesis of the

two.

I have permitted myself to prolong this note to an unusual

length, because the supposed mention of such recent events in the

history of Herodotus, as those in the reign of Darius Nothus, has

introduced very gratuitous assumptions as to the time and manner

in which that history was composed. It cannot be shown that there

is a single event of precise and ascertained date, alluded to in

his history, later than the capture of the Lacedæmonian heralds

in the year 430 B. C. (Herodot. vii, 137: see Larcher, Vie

d’Hérodote, p. lxxxix); and this renders the composition of his

history as an entire work much more smooth and intelligible.

It may be worth while to add, that whoever reads attentively

Herodotus, vi, 98,—and reflects at the same time that the

destruction of the Athenian armament at Syracuse (the greatest

of all Hellenic disasters, hardly inferior, for its time, to the

Russian campaign of Napoleon, and especially impressive to one

living at Thurii, as may be seen by the life of Lysias, Plutarch,

Vit. x, Oratt. p. 835) happened during the reign of Darius Nothus

in 413 B. C.,—will not readily admit the hypothesis of additions

made to the history during the reign of the latter, or so late

as 408 B. C. Herodotus would hardly have dwelt so expressly and

emphatically upon mischief done by Greeks to each other in the

reigns of Darius son of Hystaspês, Xerxês, and Artaxerxês, if he

had lived to witness the greater mischiefs so inflicted during

the reign of Darius Nothus, and had kept his history before him

for the purpose of inserting new events. The destruction of the

Athenians before Syracuse would have been a thousand times more

striking to his imagination than the revolt of the Medes against

Darius Nothus, and would have impelled him with much greater

force to alter or enlarge the chapter vi, 98.

The sentiment too which Herodotus places in the mouth of

Demaratus respecting the Spartans (vii, 104) appears to have been

written _before_ the capture of the Spartans in Sphakteria, in

425 B. C., rather than _after_ it: compare Thucyd. iv, 40.

Dahlmann (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. ii,

pp. 41-47) and Heyse (Quæstiones Herodoteæ, pp. 74-77, Berlin,

1827) both profess to point out six passages in Herodotus

which mark events of later date than 430 B. C. But none of

the chronological indications which they adduce appear to me

trustworthy.

It has already been observed that the subjugation of the recusant

Medes was not the only embarrassment of the first years of Darius.

Orœtês, satrap of Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia, ruling seemingly the

entire western coast of Asia Minor,—possessing a large military

force and revenue, and surrounded by a body-guard of one thousand

native Persians,—maintained a haughty independence. He secretly made

away with couriers sent to summon him to Susa, and even wreaked his

vengeance upon some of the principal Persians who had privately

offended him. Darius, not thinking it prudent to attack him by open

force, proposed to the chief Persians at Susa, the dangerous problem

of destroying him by stratagem. Thirty among them volunteered to

undertake it, and Bagæus, son of Artontês, to whom on drawing lots

the task devolved, accomplished it by a manœuvre which might serve

as a lesson to the Ottoman government, in its embarrassments with

contumacious Pashas. Having proceeded to Sardis, furnished with

many different royal ordinances, formally set forth and bearing

the seal of Darius,—he was presented to Orœtês in audience, with

the public secretary of the satrapy close at hand, and the Persian

guards standing around. He presented his ordinances to be read aloud

by the secretary, choosing first those which related to matters of

no great importance; but when he saw that the guards listened with

profound reverence, and that the king’s name and seal imposed upon

them irresistibly, he ventured upon the real purport of his perilous

mission. An ordinance was handed to the secretary, and read by him

aloud, as follows: “Persians, king Darius forbids you to serve any

longer as guards to Orœtês.” The obedient guards at once delivered

up their spears, when Bagæus caused the final warrant to be read to

them: “King Darius commands the Persians in Sardis to kill Orœtês.”

The guards drew their swords and killed him on the spot: his large

treasure was conveyed to Susa: Darius became undisputed master, and

probably Bagæus satrap.[413]

[413] Herodot. iii, 127, 128.

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.

[414] Herodot. iii, 150.

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]

[415] Herodot. iii, 155. δεινόν τι ποιεύμενος, Ἀσσυρίους Πέρσῃσι

καταγελᾷν. Compare the speech of Mardonius, vii, 9.

The horror of Darius, at the first sight of Zopyrus in this

condition, is strongly dramatized by Herodotus.

[416] Herodot. iii, 154-158.

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.

[417] Ktêsias represents the revolt and recapture of Babylon

to have taken place, not under Darius, but under his son and

successor Xerxês. He says that the Babylonians, revolting,

slew their satrap Zopyrus; that they were besieged by Xerxês,

and that Megabyzus son of Zopyrus caused the city to be taken

by practising that very stratagem which Herodotus ascribes to

Zopyrus himself (Persica, c. 20-22).

This seems inconsistent with the fact, that Megabyzus was general

of the Persian army in Egypt in the war with the Athenians,

about 460 B. C. (Diodor. Sic. xi, 75-77): he would hardly have

been sent on active service had he been so fearfully mutilated;

moreover, the whole story of Ktêsias appears to me far less

probable than that of Herodotus; for on this, as on other

occasions, to blend the two together is impossible.

[418] Herodot. iii, 159, 160. “From the women thus introduced

(says Herodotus) the present Babylonians are sprung.”

To crucify subdued revolters by thousands is, fortunately, so

little in harmony with modern European manners, that it may

not be amiss to strengthen the confidence of the reader in the

accuracy of Herodotus, by producing an analogous narrative of

incidents far more recent. Voltaire gives, from the MS. of

General Lefort, one of the principal and confidential officers of

Peter the Great, the following account of the suppression of the

revolted Strelitzes at Moscow, in 1698: these Strelitzes were the

old native militia, or Janissaries, of the Russian Czars, opposed

to all the reforms of Peter.

“Pour étouffer ces troubles, le czar part secrètement de

Vienne, arrive enfin à Moscou, et surprend tout le monde par sa

présence: il récompense les troupes qui ont vaincu les Strélitz:

les prisons étaient pleines de ces malheureux. Si leur crime

était grand, le châtiment le fut aussi. Leurs chefs, plusieurs

officiers, et quelques prêtres, furent condamnés à la mort:

quelques-uns furent roués, deux femmes enterrées vives. On pendit

autour des murailles de la ville et on fit périr dans d’autres

supplices deux mille Strélitz; leurs corps restèrent deux jours

exposés sur les grands chemins, et surtout autour du monastère

où résidaient les princesses Sophie et Eudoxe. On érigea des

colonnes de pierre où le crime et le châtiment furent gravés.

Un très-grand nombre qui avaient leurs femmes et leurs enfans

furent dispersés avec leurs familles dans la Sibérie, dans le

royaume d’Astrakhan, dans le pays d’Azof: par là du moins leur

punition fut utile à l’état: ils servirent à défricher des terres

qui manquaient d’habitans et de culture.” (Voltaire, Histoire

de Russie, part i, ch. x, tom. 31, of the Œuvres Complètes de

Voltaire, p. 148, ed. Paris, 1825.)

[419] Herodot. iii, 92.

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.

[420] Herodot. iii, 89. What the Persian denomination was,

which Herodotus or his informants translated κάπηλος, we do not

know; but this latter word was used often by Greeks to signify

a cheat, or deceiver generally: see Etymologic. Magn. p. 490,

11, and Suidas, v. Κάπελος. Ὁ δ᾽ Αἴσχυλος τὰ δόλια πáντα καλεῖ

κάπηλα—“Κάπηλα προσφέρων τεχνήματα.” (Æschylus, Fragment. 328,

ed. Dindorf: compare Euripid. Hippolyt. 953.)

[421] Herodot. iii, 128. This division of power, and double

appointment by the Great King, appears to have been retained

until the close of the Persian empire: see Quintus Curtius, v,

l, 17-20 (v, 3, 19-21, Zumpt). The present Turkish government

nominates a Defterdar as finance administrator in each province,

with authority derived directly from itself, and professedly

independent of the Pacha.

[422] Herodot. iii, 15.

[423] Respecting the administration of the modern Persian empire,

see Kinneir, Geograph. Memoir of Persia, pp. 29, 43, 47.

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]

[424] Herodot. iii, 95. The text of Herodotus contains an

erroneous summing up of items, which critics have no means of

correcting with certainty. Nor is it possible to trust the huge

sum which he alleges to have been levied from the Indians, though

all the other items, included in the nineteen silver-paying

divisions, seem within the probable truth; and indeed both

Rennell and Robertson think the total too small: the charges on

some of the satrapies are decidedly smaller than the reality.

The vast sum of fifty thousand talents is said to have been

found by Alexander the Great, laid up by successive kings at

Susa alone, besides the treasures at Persepolis, Pasargadæ,

and elsewhere (Arrian, iii, 16, 12; Plutarch, Alexand. 37).

Presuming these talents to be Babylonian or Æginæan talents (in

the proportion 5 : 3 to Attic talents), fifty thousand talents

would be equal to nineteen million pounds sterling; if they were

Attic talents, it would be equal to eleven million six hundred

thousand pounds sterling. The statements of Diodorus give even

much larger sums (xvii, 66-71: compare Curtius, v, 2, 8; v, 6, 9;

Strabo, xv, p. 730). It is plain that the numerical affirmations

were different in different authors, and one cannot pretend to

pronounce on the trustworthiness of such large figures without

knowing more of the original returns on which they were founded.

That there were prodigious sums of gold and silver, is quite

unquestionable. Respecting the statement of the Persian revenue

given by Herodotus, see Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. v, 1-2.

Amedée Jaubert, in 1806, estimated the population of the modern

Persian empire at about seven million souls; of which about

six million were settled population, the rest nomadic: he also

estimated the Schah’s revenue at about two million nine hundred

thousand tomans, or one million five hundred thousand pounds

sterling. Others calculated the population higher, at nearer

twelve million souls. Kinneir gives the revenue at something more

than three million pounds sterling: he thinks that the whole

territory between the Euphratês and the Indus does not contain

above eighteen millions of souls (Geogr. Memoir of Persia, pp.

44-47: compare Ritter, West Asien, Abtheil. ii, Abschn. iv, pp.

879-889).

The modern Persian empire contains not so much as the eastern

half of the ancient, which covered all Asiatic Turkey and Egypt

besides.

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.

[425] Herodot. iii, 102; iv, 44. See the two Excursus of Bähr

on these two chapters, vol. ii, pp. 648-671 of his edit. of

Herodotus.

It certainly is singular that neither Nearchus, nor Ptolemy,

nor Aristobulus, nor Arrian, take any notice of this remarkable

voyage distinctly asserted by Herodotus to have been

accomplished. Such silence, however, affords no sufficient reason

for calling the narrative in question. The attention of the

Persian kings, successors to Darius, came to be far more occupied

with the western than with the eastern portions of their empire.

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.

[426] Thucyd. i, 138.

[427] Herodot. iii, 117.

[428] Herodot. i, 192. Compare the description of the dinner and

supper of the Great King, in Polyænus, iv, 3, 32; also Ktêsias

and Deinôn ap Athenæum, ii, p. 67.

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]

[429] Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695.

[430] Herodot. iv, 166; Plutarch, Kimon, 10.

The gold Daric, of the weight of two Attic drachmæ; (Stater

Daricus), equivalent to twenty Attic silver drachmæ (Xenoph.

Anab. i, 7, 18), would be about 16_s._ 3_d._ English. But it

seems doubtful whether that ratio between gold and silver (10 :

1) can be reckoned upon as the ordinary ratio in the fifth and

fourth centuries B. C. Mr. Hussey calculates the golden Daric as

equal to £1, 1_s._ 3_d._ English (Hussey, Essay on the Ancient

Weights and Money, Oxford, 1836, ch. iv, s. 8, p. 68; ch. vii, s.

3, p. 103).

I cannot think, with Mr. Hussey, that there is any reason for

believing either the name or the coin _Daric_ to be older than

Darius son of Hystaspês. Compare Boeckh, Metrologie, ix, 5, p.

129.

Particular statements respecting the value of gold and silver,

as exchanged one against the other, are to be received with some

reserve as the basis of any general estimate, since we have not

the means of comparing a great many such statements together.

For the process of coinage was imperfectly performed, and the

different pieces, both of gold and silver, in circulation,

differed materially in weight one with the other. Herodotus gives

the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1.

[431] Herodot. iii, 96.

[432] Herodot. v, 52-53; viii, 98. “It appears to be a favorite

idea with all barbarous princes, that the badness of the roads

adds considerably to the natural strength of their dominions. The

Turks and Persians are undoubtedly of this opinion: the public

highways are, therefore, neglected, and particularly so towards

the frontiers.” (Kinneir, Geog. Mem. of Pers. p. 43.)

The description of Herodotus contrasts favorably with the picture

here given by Mr. Kinneir.

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.

[433] Herodot. iii, 120.

[434] Herodot. iii, 39; Thucyd. i, 13.

[435] Herodot. iii, 40-42. ... ἤν δὲ μὴ ἐναλλὰξ ἤδη τὠπὸ τούτου

αἱ εὐτυχίαι τοι τοιαύταισι πάθαισι προσπίπτωσι, τρόπῳ τῷ ἐξ ἐμεῦ

ὑποκειμένῳ ~ἀκέο~: compare vii, 203, and i, 32.

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]

[436] Herodot. iii, 44.

[437] Herodot. iii, 44.

We may here notice the gradually increasing tendency in the Grecian

world to recognize Sparta as something like a head, protector, or

referee, in cases either of foreign danger or internal dispute. The

earliest authentic instance known to us, of application to Sparta

in this character, is that of Crœsus against Cyrus: next, that of

the Ionic Greeks against the latter: the instance of the Samians now

before us, is the third. The important events connected with, and

consequent upon, the expulsion of the Peisistratidæ from Athens,

manifesting yet more formally the headship of Sparta, occur fifteen

years after the present event; they have been already recounted in

a previous chapter, and serve as a farther proof of progress in the

same direction. To watch the growth of these new political habits, is

essential to a right understanding of Grecian history.

On reaching Sparta, the Samian exiles, borne down with despondency

and suffering, entered at large into the particulars of their case.

Their long speaking annoyed instead of moving the Spartans, who

said, or are made to say: “We have forgotten the first part of the

speech, and the last part is unintelligible to us.” Upon which the

Samians appeared the next day, simply with an empty wallet, saving:

“Our wallet has no meal in it.” “Your wallet is superfluous,” (said

the Spartans;) _i. e._ the words would have been sufficient without

it.[438] The aid which they implored was granted.

[438] Herodot. iii, 46. τῷ θυλάκῳ περιείργασθαι.

We are told that both the Lacedæmonians and the Corinthians,—who

joined them in the expedition now contemplated,—had separate

grounds of quarrel with the Samians,[439] which operated as a

more powerful motive than the simple desire to aid the suffering

exiles. But it rather seems that the subsequent Greeks generally

construed the Lacedæmonian interference against Polykratês as an

example of standing Spartan hatred against despots. Indeed, the only

facts which we know, to sustain this anti-despotic sentiment for

which the Lacedæmonians had credit, are, their proceedings against

Polykratês and Hippias; there may have been other analogous cases,

but we cannot specify them with certainty. However this may be,

a joint Lacedæmonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles

back to Samos, and assailed Polykratês in the city. They did their

best to capture it, for forty days, and were at one time on the

point of succeeding, but were finally obliged to retire without any

success. “The city would have been taken,” says Herodotus, “if all

the Lacedæmonians had acted like Archias and Lykôpas,”—who, pressing

closely upon the retreating Samians, were shut within the town-gates,

and perished. The historian had heard this exploit in personal

conversation with Archias, grandson of the person above mentioned, in

the deme Pitana at Sparta,—whose father had been named Samius, and

who respected the Samians above any other Greeks, because they had

bestowed upon the two brave warriors, slain within their town, an

honorable and public funeral.[440] It is rarely that Herodotus thus

specifies his informants: had he done so more frequently the value

as well as the interest of his history would have been materially

increased.

[439] Herodot. iii, 47, 48, 52.

[440] Herodot. iii, 54-56.

On the retirement of the Lacedæmonian force, the Samian exiles were

left destitute; and looking out for some community to plunder,

weak as well as rich, they pitched upon the island of Siphnos. The

Siphnians of that day were the wealthiest islanders in the Ægean,

from the productiveness of their gold and silver mines,—the produce

of which was annually distributed among the citizens, reserving a

tithe for the Delphian temple.[441] Their treasure-chamber was among

the most richly furnished of which that holy place could boast, and

they themselves, probably, in these times of early prosperity, were

numbered among the most brilliant of the Ionic visitors at the Delian

festival. The Samians landing at Siphnos, demanded a contribution,

under the name of a loan, of ten talents: which being refused, they

proceeded to ravage the island, inflicting upon the inhabitants

a severe defeat, and ultimately extorting from them one hundred

talents. They next purchased from the inhabitants of Hermionê, in

the Argolic peninsula, the neighboring island of Hydrea, famous in

modern Greek warfare. But it appears that their plans must have been

subsequently changed, for, instead of occupying it, they placed it

under the care of the Trœzenians, and repaired themselves to Krete,

for the purpose of expelling the Zakynthian settlers at Kydônia. In

this they succeeded, and were induced to establish themselves in that

place. But after they had remained there five years, the Kretans

obtained naval aid from Ægina, whereby the place was recovered, and

the Samian intruders finally sold into slavery.[442]

[441] Herodot. iii, 57. νησιωτέων μάλιστα ἐπλούτεον.

[442] Herodot. iii, 58, 59.

Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polykratês: meanwhile,

that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous than ever.

Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hellenic or

barbaric:[443]” and the great works admired by Herodotus in the

island,[444]—an aqueduct for the city, tunnelled through a mountain

for the length of seven furlongs,—a mole to protect the harbor, two

furlongs long and twenty fathoms deep, and the vast temple of Hêrê,

may probably have been enlarged and completed, if not begun, by

him. Aristotle quotes the public works of Polykratês as instances of

the profound policy of despots, to occupy as well as to impoverish

their subjects.[445] The earliest of all Grecian thalassokrats,

or sea-kings,—master of the greatest naval force in the Ægean, as

well as of many among its islands,—he displayed his love of letters

by friendship to Anakreon, and his piety by consecrating to the

Delian Apollo[446] the neighboring island of Rhêneia. But while

thus outshining all his contemporaries, victorious over Sparta and

Corinth, and projecting farther aggrandizement, he was precipitated

on a sudden into the abyss of ruin;[447] and that too, as if to

demonstrate unequivocally the agency of the envious gods, not from

the revenge of any of his numerous victims, but from the gratuitous

malice of a stranger whom he had never wronged and never even seen.

The Persian satrap Orœtês, on the neighboring mainland, conceived

an implacable hatred against him: no one could tell why,—for he

had no design of attacking the island; and the trifling reasons

conjecturally assigned, only prove that the real reason, whatever it

might be, was unknown. Availing himself of the notorious ambition

and cupidity of Polykratês, Orœtês sent to Samos a messenger,

pretending that his life was menaced by Kambysês, and that he was

anxious to make his escape with his abundant treasures. He proposed

to Polykratês a share in this treasure, sufficient to make him master

of all Greece, as far as that object could be achieved by money,

provided the Samian prince would come over to convey him away.

Mæandrius, secretary of Polykratês, was sent over to Magnêsia on

the Mæander, to make inquiries; he there saw the satrap with eight

large coffers full of gold,—or rather apparently so, being in reality

full of stones, with a layer of gold at the top,[448]—tied up ready

for departure. The cupidity of Polykratês was not proof against so

rich a bait: he crossed over to Magnêsia with a considerable suite,

and thus came into the power of Orœtês, in spite of the warnings of

his prophets and the agony of his terrified daughter, to whom his

approaching fate had been revealed in a dream. The satrap slew him

and crucified his body; releasing all the Samians who accompanied

him, with an intimation that they ought to thank him for procuring

them a free government,—but retaining both the foreigners and the

slaves as prisoners.[449] The death of Orœtês himself, which ensued

shortly afterwards, has already been described. It is considered

by Herodotus as a judgment for his flagitious deed in the case of

Polykratês.[450]

[443] Herodot. iii, 139. πολίων πασέων πρώτην Ἑλληνίδων καὶ

βαρβάρων.

[444] Herodot. iii, 60.

[445] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 4. τῶν περὶ Σάμον ἔργα Πολυκράτεια·

πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα δύναται ταὐτὸν, ἀσχολίαν καὶ πενίαν τῶν ἀρχομένων.

[446] Thucyd. i, 14; iii, 104.

[447] Herodot. iii, 120.

[448] Compare the trick of Hannibal at Gortyn in Krete,—Cornelius

Nepos (Hannibal, c. 9).

[449] Herodot. iii, 124, 125.

[450] Herodot. iii, 126. Ὀροίτεα Πολυκράτεος τίσιες μετῆλθον.

At the departure of the latter from Samos, in anticipation of a

speedy return, Mæandrius had been left as his lieutenant at Samos;

and the unexpected catastrophe of Polykratês filled him with surprise

and consternation. Though possessed of the fortresses, the soldiers,

and the treasures, which had constituted the machinery of his

powerful master, he knew the risk of trying to employ them on his

own account. Partly from this apprehension, partly from the genuine

political morality which prevailed with more or less force in every

Grecian bosom, he resolved to lay down his authority and enfranchise

the island. “He wished (says the historian, in a remarkable

phrase)[451] to act like the justest of men; but he was not allowed

to do so.” His first proceeding was to erect in the suburbs an altar

in honor of Zeus Eleutherius, and to inclose a piece of ground as

a precinct, which still existed in the time of Herodotus: he next

convened an assembly of the Samians. “You know (says he) that the

whole power of Polykratês is now in my hands, nor is there anything

to hinder me from continuing to rule over you. Nevertheless, what

I condemn in another I will not do myself,—and I have always

disapproved of Polykratês, and others like him, for seeking to rule

over men as good as themselves. Now that Polykratês has come to the

end of his destiny, I at once lay down the command, and proclaim

among you equal law; reserving to myself as privileges, first, six

talents out of the treasures of Polykratês,—next, the hereditary

priesthood of Zeus Eleutherius for myself and my descendants forever.

To him I have just set apart a sacred precinct, as the God of that

freedom which I now hand over to you.”

[451] Herodot. iii, 142. τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ ἀνδρῶν βουλομένῳ γενέσθαι,

οὐκ ἐξεγένετο. Compare his remark on Kadmus, who voluntarily

resigned the despotism at Kôs (vii, 164).

This reasonable and generous proposition fully justifies the epithet

of Herodotus. But very differently was it received by the Samian

hearers. One of the chief men among them, Telesarchus, exclaimed,

with the applause of the rest, “_You_ rule us, low-born and scoundrel

as you are! you are not worthy to rule: don’t think of that, but give

us some account of the money which you have been handling.”[452]

[452] Herodot. iii, 142. Ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἄξιος εἶ σύ γε ἡμέων ἄρχειν,

γεγονώς τε κακὸς, καὶ ἐὼν ὄλεθρος· ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅκως λόγον δώσεις

τῶν ἐνεχείρισας χρημάτων.

Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind

of Mæandrius. It left him no choice but to maintain dominion at

all hazards,—which he accordingly resolved to do. Retiring into

the acropolis, under pretence of preparing his money-accounts for

examination, he sent for Telesarchus and his chief political enemies,

one by one,—intimating that they were open to inspection. As fast as

they arrived they were put in chains, while Mæandrius remained in

the acropolis, with his soldiers and his treasures, as the avowed

successor of Polykratês. And thus the Samians, after a short hour

of insane boastfulness, found themselves again enslaved. “It seemed

(says Herodotus) that they were not willing to be free.”[453]

[453] Herodot. iii, 143. οὐ γὰρ δὴ, ὡς οἴκασι, ἐβουλέατο εἶναι

ἐλεύθεροι.

We cannot but contrast their conduct on this occasion with that

of the Athenians about twelve years afterwards, on the expulsion

of Hippias, which has been recounted in a previous chapter. The

position of the Samians was far the more favorable of the two, for

the quiet and successful working of a free government; for they had

the advantage of a voluntary as well as a sincere resignation from

the actual despot. Yet the thirst for reactionary investigation

prevented them even from taking a reasonable estimate of their own

power of enforcing it: they passed at once from extreme subjection

to overbearing and ruinous rashness. Whereas the Athenians, under

circumstances far less promising, avoided the fatal mistake of

sacrificing the prospects of the future to recollections of the

past; showed themselves both anxious to acquire the rights, and

willing to perform the obligations, of a free community; listened

to wise counsels, maintained unanimous action, and overcame, by

heroic efforts, forces very greatly superior. If we compare the

reflections of Herodotus on the one case and on the other,[454] we

shall be struck with the difference which those reflections imply

between the Athenians and the Samians,—a difference partly referable,

doubtless, to the pure Hellenism of the former, contrasted with the

half-Asiatized Hellenism of the latter,—but also traceable in a great

degree to the preliminary lessons of the Solonian constitution,

overlaid, but not extinguished, during the despotism of the

Peisistratids which followed.

[454] Herodot. v, 78, and iii, 142, 143.

The events which succeeded in Samos are little better than a series

of crimes and calamities. The prisoners, whom Mæandrius had detained

in the acropolis, were slain during his dangerous illness, by his

brother Lykarêtus, under the idea that this would enable him more

easily to seize the sceptre. But Mæandrius recovered, and must have

continued as despot for a year or two: it was, however, a weak

despotism, contested more or less in the island, and very different

from the iron hand of Polykratês. In this untoward condition, the

Samians were surprised by the arrival of a new claimant for their

sceptre and acropolis,—and, what was much more formidable, a Persian

army to back him.

Sylosôn, the brother of Polykratês, having taken part originally in

his brother’s conspiracy and usurpation, had been at first allowed

to share the fruits of it, but quickly found himself banished. In

this exile he remained during the whole life of Polykratês, and

until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, which followed

about a year after the death of Polykratês. He happened to be at

Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when Kambysês was there with his

conquering army, and when Darius, then a Persian of little note,

was serving among his guards. Sylosôn was walking in the agora of

Memphis, wearing a scarlet cloak, to which Darius took a great

fancy, and proposed to buy it. A divine inspiration prompted Sylosôn

to reply,[455] “I cannot for any price sell it; but I give it you

for nothing, if it must be yours.” Darius thanked him, and accepted

the cloak; and for some years the donor accused himself of a silly

piece of good-nature.[456] But as events came round, Sylosôn at

length heard with surprise that the unknown Persian, whom he had

presented with the cloak at Memphis, was installed as king in the

palace at Susa. He went thither, proclaimed himself as a Greek, as

well as benefactor of the new king, and was admitted to the regal

presence. Darius had forgotten his person, but perfectly remembered

the adventure of the cloak, when it was brought to his mind,—and

showed himself forward to requite, on the scale becoming the Great

King, former favors, though small, rendered to the simple soldier

at Memphis. Gold and silver were tendered to Sylosôn in profusion,

but he rejected them,—requesting that the island of Samos might be

conquered and handed over to him, without slaughter or enslavement of

inhabitants. His request was complied with. Otanês, the originator

of the conspiracy against Smerdis, was sent down to the coast of

Ionia with an army, carried Sylosôn over to Samos, and landed him

unexpectedly on the island.[457]

[455] Herodot. iii, 139. Ὁ δὲ Συλοσῶν, ὁρέων τὸν Δαρεῖον μεγάλως

ἐπιθυμέοντα τῆς χλάνιδος, θείῃ τύχῃ χρεώμενος, λέγει, etc.

[456] Herodot. iii, 140. ἠπίστατό οἱ τοῦτο ἀπολωλέναι δι᾽ εὐηθίην.

[457] Herodot. iii, 141-144.

Mæandrius was in no condition to resist the invasion, nor were the

Samians generally disposed to sustain him. He accordingly concluded a

convention with Otanês, whereby he agreed to make way for Sylosôn, to

evacuate the island, and to admit the Persians at once into the city;

retaining possession, however—for such time as might be necessary

to embark his property and treasures—of the acropolis, which had a

separate landing-place, and even a subterranean passage and secret

portal for embarkation,—probably one of the precautionary provisions

of Polykratês. Otanês willingly granted these conditions, and

himself with his principal officers entered the town, the army being

quartered around; while Sylosôn seemed on the point of ascending the

seat of his deceased brother without violence or bloodshed. But the

Samians were destined to a fate more calamitous. Mæandrius had a

brother named Charilaus, violent in his temper, and half a madman,

whom he was obliged to keep in confinement. This man looking out

of his chamber-window, saw the Persian officers seated peaceably

throughout the town and even under the gates of the acropolis,

unguarded, and relying upon the convention: it seems that these were

the chief officers, whose rank gave them the privilege of being

carried about on their seats.[458] The sight inflamed both his wrath

and his insane ambition; he clamored for liberty and admission to his

brother, whom he reviled as a coward no less than a tyrant. “Here

are you, worthless man, keeping me, your own brother, in a dungeon,

though I have done no wrong worthy of bonds; while you do not dare

to take your revenge on the Persians, who are casting you out as a

houseless exile, and whom it would be so easy to put down. If you are

afraid of them, give me your guards; I will make the Persians repent

of their coming here, and I will send you safely out of the island

forthwith.”[459]

[458] Herodot. iii, 146. τῶν Περσέων τοὺς διφροφορευμένους καὶ

λόγου πλείστου ἀξίους.

[459] Herodot. iii, 145. Ἐμὲ μὲν, ὦ κάκιστε ἀνδρῶν, ἐόντα σεωϋτοῦ

ἀδελφεὸν, καὶ ἀδικήσαντα οὐδὲν ἄξιον δεσμοῦ, δήσας γοργύρης

ἠξίωσας· ὁρέων δὲ τοὺς Πέρσας ἐκβάλλοντάς τέ σε καὶ ἄνοικον

ποιεῦντας, οὐ τολμᾷς τίσασθαι, οὕτω δή τι ἐόντας εὐπετέας

χειρωθῆναι.

The highly dramatic manner of Herodotus cannot be melted down

into smooth historical recital.

Mæandrius, on the point of quitting Samos forever, had little

personal motive to care what became of the population. He had

probably never forgiven them for disappointing his honorable

intentions after the death of Polykratês, nor was he displeased to

hand over to Sylosôn an odious and blood-stained sceptre, which he

foresaw would be the only consequence of his brother’s mad project.

He therefore sailed away with his treasures, leaving the acropolis

to his brother Charilaus; who immediately armed the guards, sallied

forth from his fortress, and attacked the unsuspecting Persians.

Many of the great officers were slain without resistance before

the army could be got together; but at length Otanês collected his

troops and drove the assailants back into the acropolis. While he

immediately began the siege of that fortress, he also resolved, as

Mæandrius had foreseen, to take a signal revenge for the treacherous

slaughter of so many of his friends and companions. His army, no

less incensed than himself, were directed to fall upon the Samian

people and massacre them without discrimination,—man and boy, on

ground sacred as well as profane. The bloody order was too faithfully

executed, and Samos was handed over to Sylosôn, stripped of its male

inhabitants.[460] Of Charilaus and the acropolis we hear no farther,

perhaps he and his guards may have escaped by sea. Lykarêtus,[461]

the other brother of Mæandrius, must have remained either in the

service of Sylosôn or in that of the Persians; for we find him some

years afterwards intrusted by the latter with an important command.

[460] Herodot. iii, 149. ἔρημον ἐοῦσαν ἀνδρῶν.

[461] Herodot. v, 27.

Sylosôn was thus finally installed as despot of an island peopled

chiefly, if not wholly, with women and children: we may, however,

presume, that the deed of blood has been described by the historian

as more sweeping than it really was. It seems, nevertheless, to have

sat heavily on the conscience of Otanês, who was induced sometime

afterwards, by a dream and by a painful disease, to take measures

for repeopling the island.[462] From whence the new population came,

we are not told: but wholesale translations of inhabitants from one

place to another were familiar to the mind of a Persian king or

satrap.

[462] Herodot. iii, 148.

Mæandrius, following the example of the previous Samian exiles

under Polykratês, went to Sparta and sought aid for the purpose

of reëstablishing himself at Samos. But the Lacedæmonians had no

disposition to repeat an attempt which had before turned out so

unsuccessfully, nor could he seduce king Kleomenês by the display of

his treasures and finely-wrought gold plate. The king, however, not

without fear that such seductions might win over some of the Spartan

leading men, prevailed with the ephors to send Mæandrius away.[463]

[463] Herodot. iii, 149.

Sylosôn seems to have remained undisturbed at Samos, as a tributary

of Persia, like the Ionic cities on the continent: some years

afterwards we find his son Æakês reigning in the island.[464]

Strabo states that it was the harsh rule of Sylosôn which caused

the depopulation of the island. But the cause just recounted out

of Herodotus is both very different and sufficiently plausible in

itself; and as Strabo seems in the main to have derived his account

from Herodotus, we may suppose that on this point he has incorrectly

remembered his authority.[465]

[464] Herodot. vi, 13.

[465] Strabo, xiv, p. 638. He gives a proverbial phrase about the

depopulation of the island—

Ἕκητι Συλοσῶντος εὐρυχορίη,

which is perfectly consistent with the narrative of Herodotus.