CHAPTER II--THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD EASTERN WORLD

_The Median wars--The last native dynasties of Egypt--The Eastern world

on the eve of the Macedonian conquest._

[Drawn by Boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of Sidon, now

in the Museum of St. Irene. The vignette, which is by

Faucher-Gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of

Nectanebo I., now in the Egyptian Museum at the Vatican.]

Darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after

his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies

had taught him not only the condition and needs of Asia Minor, but of

the teaching the Scythians such a lesson as would prevent them from

bearing down upon his right flank during his march, or upon his rear

while engaged in a crucial struggle in the Hellenic peninsula. On the

other hand, the geographical information possessed by the Persians with

regard to the Danubian regions was of so vague a character, that Darius

must have believed the Scythians to have been nearer to his line of

operations, and their country less desolate than was really the case.* A

flotilla, commanded by Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, ventured across

the Black Sea in 515,** landed a few thousand men upon the opposite

shore, and brought back prisoners who furnished those in command with

the information they required.***

* The motives imputed to Darius by the ancients for making

this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of

the Scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which

should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes

of posterity.

** The reconnaissance of Ariaramnes is intimately connected

with the expedition itself in Ctesias, and could have

preceded it by a few months only. If we take for the date of

the latter the year 514-513, the date given in the Table of

the Capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than 515.

Ariaramnes was not satrap of Cappadocia, for Cappadocia

belonged then to the satrapy of Daskylion.

*** The supplementary paragraphs of the Inscription of

Behistun speak of an expedition of Darius against the Sako,

which is supposed to have had as its objective either the

sea of Aral or the Tigris. Would it not be possible to

suppose that the sea mentioned is the Pontus Euxinus, and to

take the mutilated text of Behistun to be a description

either of the campaign beyond the Danube, or rather of the

preliminary _reconnaissance_ of Ariaramnes a year before the

expedition itself?

Darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossed

the Bosphorus in 514, with a body of troops which tradition computed

at 800,000, conquered the eastern coast of Thrace, and won his way in

a series of conflicts as far as the Ister. The Ionian sailors built for

him a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he then

started forward into the steppes in search of the enemy. The Scythians

refused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him on

every side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowly

retreated into the interior, leaving Darius to face the vast extent of

the steppes and the terrors of famine. Later tradition stated that he

wandered for two months in these solitudes between the Ister and the

Tanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a series

of earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of Herodotus,

and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely the

loss of a few sick men. The barbarians stole a march upon him, and

advised the Greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities,

and abandon the Persians to their fate. The tyrant of the Ohersonnesus,

Miltiades the Athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; but

Histiasus, the governor of Miletus, opposed it, and eventually carried

his point. Darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, and

returned to Asia.*

* Ctesias limits the campaign beyond the Danube to a fifteen

days’ march; and Strabo places the crossing of the Danube

near the mouth of that river, at the island of Peukê, and

makes the expedition stop at the Dniester. Neither the line

of direction of the Persian advance nor their farthest point

reached is known. The eight forts which they were said to

have built, the ruins of which were shown on the banks of

the Oaros as late as the time of Herodotus, were probably

tumuli similar to those now met with on the Russian steppes,

the origin of which is ascribed by the people to persons

celebrated in their history or traditions.

The Greek towns of Thrace thought themselves rid of him, and rose in

revolt; but he left 80,000 men in Europe who, at first under Megabyzos,

and then under Otanes, reduced them to subjection one after another, and

even obliged Amyntas I., the King of Macedonia, to become a tributary of

the empire. The expedition had not only failed to secure the submission

of the Scythians, but apparently provoked reprisals on their part, and

several of their bands penetrated ere long into the Chersonnesus. It

nevertheless was not without solid result, for it showed that Darius,

even if he could not succeed in subjugating the savage Danubian tribes,

had but little to fear from them; it also secured for him a fresh

province, that of Thrace, and, by the possession of Macedonia, brought

his frontier into contact with Northern Greece. The overland route, in

any case the more satisfactory of the two, was now in the hands of the

invader.

Revolutions at Athens prevented him from setting out on his expedition

as soon as he had anticipated. Hippias had been overthrown in 510, and

having taken refuge at Sigoum, was seeking on all sides for some one

to avenge him against his fellow-citizens. The satrap of Sardes,

Arta-phernes, declined at first to listen to him, for he hoped that the

Athenians themselves would appeal to him, without his being obliged to

have recourse to their former tyrant. As a matter of fact, they sent him

an embassy, and begged his help against the Spartans. He promised it

on condition that they would yield the traditional homage of earth and

water, and their delegates complied with his demand, though on their

return to Athens they were disowned by the citizens (508). Artaphernes,

disappointed in this direction, now entered into communications with

Hippias, and such close relations soon existed between the two that

the Athenians showed signs of uneasiness. Two years later they again

despatched fresh deputies to Sardes to beg the satrap not to espouse

the cause of their former ruler. For a reply the satrap summoned them

to recall the exiles, and, on their refusing (506),* their city became

thenceforward the ostensible objective of the Persian army and fleet.

The partisans of Hippias within the town were both numerous and active;

it was expected that they would rise and hand over the city as soon as

their chief should land on a point of territory with a force sufficient

to intimidate the opposing faction. Athens in the hands of Hippias,

would mean Athens in the hands of the Persians, and Greece accessible to

the Persian hordes at all times by the shortest route. Darius therefore

prepared to make the attempt, and in order to guard against any mishap,

he caused all the countries that he was about to attack to be explored

beforehand. Spies attached to his service were sent to scour the coasts

of the Peloponnesus and take note of all its features, the state of

its ports, the position of the islands and the fortresses; and they

penetrated as far as Italy, if we may believe the story subsequently

told to Herodotus.**

* Herodotus fixes the date at the time when the Athenians

first ostracised the principal partisans of the

Pisistratids, and amongst others Hipparchus, son of Charmes,

i.e. in 507-6.

** Herodotus said that Darius sent spies with the physician

Democedes of Crotona shortly before the Scythian expedition.

While he thus studied the territory from a distance, he did not neglect

precautions nearer to hand, but ordered the Milesians to occupy in

his name the principal stations of the Ægean between Ionia and Attica.

Histiasus, whose loyalty had stood Darius in such good stead at the

bridge over the Danube, did not, however, appear to him equal to so

delicate a task: the king summoned him to Susa on some slight pretext,

loaded him with honours, and replaced him by his nephew Aristagoras.

Aristagoras at once attempted to justify the confidence placed in him by

taking possession of Naxos; but the surprise that he had prepared ended

in failure, discontent crept in among his men, and after a fruitless

siege of four months he was obliged to withdraw (499).* His failure

changed the tide of affairs. He was afraid that the Persians would

regard it as a crime, and this fear prompted him to risk everything to

save his fortune and his life. He retired from his office as tyrant,

exhorted the Milesians, who were henceforth free to do so, to make war

on the barbarians, and seduced from their allegiance the crews of the

vessels just returned from Naxos, and still lying in the mouths of the

Meander; the tyrants who commanded them were seized, some exiled,

and some put to death. The Æolians soon made common cause with their

neighbours the Ionians, and by the last days of autumn the whole of the

Ægean littoral was under arms (499).**

* Herodotus attributes an unlikely act of treachery to

Megabates the Persian, who was commanding the Iranian

contingent attached to the Ionian troops.

** The Dorian cities took no part in the revolt--at least

Herodotus never mentions them among the confederates. The

three Ionian cities of Ephesus, Kolophon, and Lebedos also

seem to have remained aloof, and we know that the Ephesians

were not present at the battle of Ladê.

From the outset Aristagoras realised that they would be promptly

overcome if Asiatic Hellas were not supported by Hellas in Europe.

While the Lydian satrap was demanding reinforcements from his sovereign,

Aristagoras therefore repaired to the Peloponnesus as a suppliant for

help. Sparta, embroiled in one of her periodical quarrels with Argos,

gave him an insolent refusal;* even Athens, where the revolution had

for the moment relieved her from the fear of the Pisistratidaa and

the terrors of a barbarian invasion, granted him merely twenty

triremes--enough to draw down reprisals on her immediately after their

defeat, without sensibly augmenting the rebels’ chances of success; to

the Athenian contingent Bretria added five vessels, and this comprised

his whole force. The leaders of the movement did not hesitate to assume

the offensive with these slender resources. As early as the spring

of 498, before Artaphernes had received reinforcements, they marched

suddenly on Sardes. They burnt the lower town, but, as on many previous

occasions, the citadel held out; after having encamped for several

days at the foot of its rock, they returned to Ephesus laden with the

spoil.**

* Aristagoras had with him a map of the world engraved on a

bronze plate, which was probably a copy of the chart drawn

up by Hecatseus of Miletus.

** Herodotus says that the Ionians on their return suffered

a serious reverse near Ephesus. The author seems to have

adopted some Lydian or Persian tradition hostile to the

Ionians, for Charon of Lampsacus, who lived nearer to the

time of these events, mentions only the retreat, and hints

at no defeat. If the expedition had really ended in this

disaster, it is not at all likely that the revolt would have

attained the dimensions it did immediately afterwards.

This indeed was a check to their hostilities, and such an abortive

attempt was calculated to convince them of their powerlessness against

the foreign rule. None the less, however, when it was generally known

that they had burnt the capital of Asia Minor, and had with impunity

made the representative of the great king feel in his palace the smoke

of the conflagration, the impression was such as actual victory could

have produced. The cities which had hitherto hesitated to join them, now

espoused their cause--the ports of the Troad and the Hellespont, Lycia,

the Carians, and Cyprus--and their triumph would possibly have been

secured had Greece beyond the Ægean followed the general movement and

joined the coalition. Sparta, however, persisted in her indifference,

and Athens took the opportunity of withdrawing from the struggle. The

Asiatic Greeks made as good a defence as they could, but their resources

fell far short of those of the enemy, and they could do no more than

delay the catastrophe and save their honour by their bravery. Cyprus

was the first to yield during the winter of 498-497. Its vessels,

in conjunction with those of the Ionians, dispersed the fleet of the

Phoenicians off Salamis, but the troops of their princes, still imbued

with the old system of military tactics, could not sustain the charge

of the Persian battalions; they gave way under the walls of Salamis, and

their chief, Onesilus, was killed in a final charge of his chariotry.*

* The movement in Cyprus must have begun in the winter of

499-498, for Onesilus was already in the field when Darius

heard of the burning of Sardes; and as it lasted for a year,

it must have been quelled in the winter of 498-497.

His death effected the ruin of the Ionian cause in Cyprus, which on the

continent suffered at the same time no less serious reverses. The towns

of the Hellespont and of Æolia succumbed one after another; Kymê and

Clazomenæ next opened their gates; the Carians were twice beaten, once

near the White Columns, and again near Labranda, and their victory at

Pedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the Persian

arms, so that towards the close of 497 the struggle was almost entirely

concentrated round Miletus. Aristagoras, seeing that his cause was

now desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriate

themselves. He fell fighting against the Edonians of Thrace, attempting

to force the important town of Enneahodoi, near the mouth of the Strymon

(496);* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and Histiseus,

who had been sent to Sardes by the great king to negotiate the

submission of the rebels, failed in his errand. Even when blockaded on

the land side, Miletus could defy an attack so long as communication

with the sea was not cut off.

* In Herodotus the town is not named, but a passage in

Thucydides shows that it was Enneahodoi, afterwards

Amphipolis, and that the death of Aristagoras took place

thirty-two years before the Athenian defeat at Drabeskos,

i.e. probably in 496.

[Illustration: 209.jpg A CYPRIOT CHARIOT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta group in the

New York Museum.

Darius therefore brought up the Phoenician fleet, reinforced it with

the Cypriot contingents, and despatched the united squadrons to the

Archipelago during the summer of 494. The confederates, even after the

disasters of the preceding years, still possessed 353 vessels, most of

them of 30 to 50 oars; they were, however, completely defeated near the

small island of Ladê, in the latter part of the summer, and Miletus,

from that moment cut off from the rest of the world, capitulated a few

weeks later. A small proportion of its inhabitants continued to dwell

in the ruined city, but the greater number were carried away to Ampê, at

the mouth of the Tigris, in the marshes of the Nâr-Marratum.*

* The year 497, i.e. three years before the capture of the

town, appears to be an unlikely date for the battle of Ladê:

Miletus must have fallen in the autumn or winter months

following the defeat.

Caria was reconquered during the winter of 494-493, and by the early

part of 493, Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, the cities of the Chersonnesus

and of Propontis--in short, all which yet held out--were reduced to

obedience. Artaphernes reorganised his vanquished states entirely in the

interest of Persia. He did not interfere with the constitutions of

the several republics, but he reinstated the tyrants. He regulated and

augmented the various tributes, prohibited private wars, and gave to the

satrap the right of disposing of all quarrels at his own tribunal. The

measures which he adopted had long after his day the force of law among

the Asiatic Greeks, and it was by them they regulated their relations

with the representatives of the great king.

If Darius had ever entertained doubts as to the necessity for occupying

European Greece to ensure the preservation of peace in her Asiatic

sister-country, the revolt of Ionia must have completely dissipated

them. It was a question whether the cities which had so obstinately

defied him for six long years, would ever resign themselves to servitude

as long as they saw the peoples of their race maintaining their

independence on the opposite shores of the Ægean, and while the misdeeds

of which the contingents of Eretria and Athens had been guilty during

the rebellion remained unpunished. A tradition, which sprang up soon

after the event, related that on hearing of the burning of Sardes,

Darius had bent his bow and let fly an arrow towards the sky, praying

Zeus to avenge him on the Athenians: and at the same time he had

commanded one of his slaves to repeat three times a day before him, at

every meal, “Sire, remember the Athenians!”*

* The legend is clearly older than the time of Herodotus,

for in the _Persæ_ of Eschylus the shade of Darius, when

coming out of his tomb, cries to the old men, “Remember

Athens and Greece!”

As a matter of fact, the intermeddling of these strangers between

the sovereign and his subjects was at once a serious insult to the

Achæmenids and a cause of anxiety to the empire; to leave it unpunished

would have been an avowal of weakness or timidity, which would not fail

to be quickly punished in Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and on the Scythian

frontiers, and would ere long give rise to similar acts of revolt and

interference. Darius, therefore, resumed his projects, but with greater

activity than before, and with a resolute purpose to make a final

reckoning with the Greeks, whatever it might cost him. The influence of

his nephew Mardonius at first inclined him to adopt the overland route,

and he sent him into Thrace with a force of men and a fleet of galleys

sufficient to overcome all obstacles. Mardonius marched against the

Greek colonies and native tribes which had throw off the yoke during the

Ionian war, and reduced those who had still managed to preserve their

independence. The Bryges opposed him with such determination, that

summer was drawing to its close before he was able to continue his

march. He succeeded, however, in laying hands on Macedonia, and obliged

its king, Alexander, to submit to the conditions accepted by his father

Amyntas; but at this juncture half of his fleet was destroyed by a

tempest in the vicinity of Mount Athos, and the disaster, which

took place just as winter was approaching, caused him to suspend his

operations (492). He was recalled on account of his failure, and

the command was transferred to Datis the Mede and to the Persian

Artaphernes. Darius, however, while tentatively using the land routes

through Greece for his expeditions, had left no stone unturned to secure

for himself that much-coveted sea-way which would carry him straight

into the heart of the enemy’s position, and he had opened negotiations

with the republics of Greece proper. Several of them had consented to

tender him earth and water, among them being Ægina,* and besides this,

the state of the various factions in Athens was such, that he had every

reason to believe that he could count on the support of a large section

of the population when the day came for him to disembark his force on

the shores of Attica.

* Herodotus states that _all_ the island-dwelling Greeks

submitted to the great king. But Herodotus himself says

later on that the people of Naxos, at all events, proved

refractory.

[Illustration: 212a.jpg ALEXANDER I. OF MACEDON]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the _Cabinet des

Médailles_.

[Illustration: 212b.jpg A PHOENICIAN GALLEY]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of Byblos in the

_Cabinet des Médailles_.

He therefore decided to direct his next expedition against Athens

itself, and he employed the year 491 in concentrating his troops and

triremes in Cilicia, at a sufficient distance from the European coast

to ensure their safety from any sudden attack. In the spring of 490 the

army recruited from among the most warlike nations of the empire--the

Persians, Medes, and Sakse--went aboard the Phoenician fleet, while

galleys built on a special model were used as transports for the

cavalry. The entire convoy sailed safely out of the mouth of the Pyramos

to the port of Samos, coasting the shores of Asia Minor, and then

passing through the Cyclades, from Samos to Naxos, where they met

with no opposition from the inhabitants, headed for Delos, where Datis

offered a sacrifice to Apollo, whom he confounded with his god

Mithra; finally they reached Eubæa, where Eretria and Carystos vainly

endeavoured to hold their own against them. Eretria was reduced to

ashes, as Sardes had been, and such of its citizens as had not fled into

the mountains at the enemy’s approach were sent into exile among the

Kissians in the township of Arderikka. Hippias meanwhile had joined the

Persians and had been taken into their confidence. While awaiting the

result of the intrigues of his partisans in Athens, he had advised

Datis to land on the eastern coast of Attica, in the neighbourhood of

Marathon, at the very place from whence his father Pisistratus had set

out forty years before to return to his country after his first exile.

The position was well chosen for the expected engagement.

[Illustration: 214.jpg MAP OF MARATHON]

The bay and the strand which bordered it afforded an excellent station

for the fleet, and the plain, in spite of its marshes and brushwood, was

one of those rare spots where cavalry might be called into play without

serious drawbacks. A few hours on foot would bring the bulk of the

infantry up to the Acropolis by a fairly good road, while by the same

time the fleet would be able to reach the roadstead of Phalerum. All had

been arranged beforehand for concerted action when the expected rising

should take place; but it never did take place, and instead of the

friends whom the Persians expected, an armed force presented itself,

commanded by the polemarch Callimachus and the ten strategi, among whom

figured the famous Miltiades. At the first news of the disembarkation

of the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger Phidippides to

Sparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sent

forward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. They comprised

about 10,000 hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as many

more light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by 1000 Platæans. They

encamped in the valley of Avlona, around a small temple of Heracles, in

a position commanding the roads into the interior, and from whence

they could watch the enemy without exposing themselves to an unexpected

attack.

[Illustration: 215.jpg THE BATTLE-FIELD OF MARATHON]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Amédée Hauvette.

The two armies watched each other for a fortnight, Datis expecting a

popular outbreak which would render an engagement unnecessary, Miltiades

waiting patiently till the Lacedaemonians had come up, or till some

false move on the part of his opponent gave him the opportunity of

risking a decisive action. What took place at the end of this time is

uncertain. Whether Datis grew tired of inaction, or whether he suddenly

resolved to send part of his forces by sea, so as to land on the

neighbouring shore of Athens, and Miltiades fell upon his rear when

only half his men had got on board the fleet, is not known. At any rate,

Miltiades, with the Platæans on his left, set his battalions in movement

without warning, and charged the enemy with a rush. The Persians and

the Sakæ broke the centre of the line, but the two wings, after having

dispersed the assailants on their front, wheeled round upon them and

overcame them: 6000 barbarians were left dead upon the field as against

some 200 Athenians and Platæans, but by dint of their valiant efforts

the remainder managed to save the fleet with a loss of only seven

galleys. Datis anchored that evening off the island of Ægilia, and at

the same moment the victorious army perceived a signal hoisted on the

heights of Pentelicus apparently to attract his attention; when he set

sail the next morning and, instead of turning eastwards, proceeded to

double Cape Sunion, Miltiades had no longer any doubt that treachery was

at work, and returned to Athens by forced marches. Datis, on entering

the roads of Phalerum, found the shore defended, and the army that he

had left at Marathon encamped upon the Cynosargê. He cruised about for

a few hours in sight of the shore, and finding no movement made to

encourage him to land, he turned his vessels about and set sail for

Ionia.

The material loss to the Persians was inconsiderable, for even the

Cyclades remained under their authority; Miltiades, who endeavoured

to retake them, met with a reverse before Paros, and the Athenians,

disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt, made no further efforts to

regain them. The moral effect of the victory on Greece and the empire

was extraordinary. Up till then the Median soldiers had been believed

to be the only invincible troops in the world; the sight of them

alone excited dread in the bravest hearts, and their name was received

everywhere with reverential awe. But now a handful of hoplites from one

of the towns of the continent, and that not the most renowned for its

prowess, without cavalry or bowmen, had rushed upon and overthrown the

most terrible of all Oriental battalions, the Persians and the Sakæ.

Darius could not put up with such an affront without incurring the risk

of losing his prestige with the people of Asia and Europe, who up till

then had believed him all-powerful, and of thus exposing himself to the

possibility of revolutions in recently subdued countries, such as Egypt,

which had always retained the memory of her past greatness. In the

interest of his own power, as well as to soothe his wounded pride, a

renewed attack was imperative, and this time it must be launched with

such dash and vigour that all resistance would be at once swept before

it. Events had shown him that the influence of the Pisistratidæ had not

been strong enough to secure for him the opening of the gates of Athens,

and that the sea route did not permit of his concentrating an adequate

force of cavalry and infantry on the field of battle; he therefore

reverted to the project of an expedition by the overland route, skirting

the coasts of Thrace and Macedonia. During three years he collected

arms, provisions, horses, men, and vessels, and was ready to commence

hostilities in the spring of 487, when affairs in Egypt prevented him.

This country had undeniably prospered under his suzerainty. It formed,

with Cyrene and the coast of Libya, the sixth of his satrapies, to which

were attached the neighbouring Nubian tribes of the southern frontier.*

The Persian satrap, installed at the White Wall in the ancient palace of

the Pharaohs, was supported by an army of 120,000 men, who occupied the

three entrenched camps of the Saites--Daphnæ and Marea on the confines

of the Delta, and Elephantinê in the south.** Outside these military

stations, where the authority of the great king was exercised in a

direct manner, the ancient feudal organisation existed intact. The

temples retained their possessions and their vassals, and the nobles

within their principalities were as independent and as inclined to

insurrection as in past times. The annual tribute, the heaviest paid by

any province with the exception of Cossæa and Assyria, amounted only

to 700 talents of silver. To this sum must be added the farming of the

fishing in Lake Moeris, which, according to Herodotus,*** brought in one

talent a day during the six months of the high Nile, but, according to

Diodorus,**** during the whole year, as well as the 120,000 medimni of

wheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnish

the court of Susa with Libyan nitre and Nile water; the total of these

impositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to the

wealth of the Nile valley.

* The Nubian tribes, who are called Ethiopians by Herodotus

and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but

were obliged to send annually two chænikes of pure gold, two

hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants’ tusks, and five

young slaves, all under the name of a free gift.

** Herodotus states that in his own time the Persians, like

the Saite Pharaohs, still had garrisons at Daphnæ and at

Elephantine.

*** Herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a

third of a talent a day during the six other months.

**** Diodorus Siculus says that the revenue produced by the

fisheries in the Lake had been handed over by Moris to his

wife for the expenses of her toilet.

[Illustration: 219.jpg DARIUS ON THE STELE OF THE ISTHMUS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the _Description de l’Egypte_.

Commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as the

tribute took out of it. Incorporated with an empire which extended over

three continents, Egypt had access to regions whither the products of

her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. The produce of

Ethiopia and the Sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract

customers in the markets of Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, and Susa, and the

isthmus of Suez and Kosseir were the nearest ports through which Arabia

and India could reach the Mediterranean. Darius therefore resumed the

work of Necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut

afresh the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez. Trilingual

stelæ in Egyptian, Persian, and Medic were placed at intervals along its

banks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which the

sovereign had brought his work to a successful end. In a similar manner

he utilised the Wadys which wind between Koptos and the Red Sea, and

by their means placed the cities of the Said in communication with the

“Ladders of Incense,” Punt and the Sabæans.*

* Several of the inscriptions engraved on the rocks of the

Wady Hammamât show to what an extent the route was

frequented at certain times during the reign. They bear the

dates of the 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and 36th years of

Darius. The country of Saba (Sheba) is mentioned on one of

the stelæ of the isthmus.

He extended his favour equally to the commerce which they carried on

with the interior of Africa; indeed, in order to ensure the safety of

the caravans in the desert regions nearest to the Nile, he skilfully

fortified the Great Oasis. He erected at Habît, Kushît, and other

places, several of those rectangular citadels with massive walls of

unburnt brick, which resisted every effort of the nomad tribes to break

through them; and as the temple at Habit, raised in former times by the

Theban Pharaohs, had become ruinous, he rebuilt it from its foundations.

[Illustration: 220.jpg WALLS OF THE FORTRESS OF DITSH-EL-QALÂA]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud. Dush is

the Kushît of the hieroglyphs, the Kysis of Græco-Roman

times, and is situated on the southern border of the Great

Oasis, about the latitude of Assuân.

He was generous in his gifts to the gods, and even towns as obscure as

Edfu was then received from him grants of money and lands. The Egyptians

at first were full of gratitude for the favours shown them, but the news

of the defeat at Marathon, and the taxes with which the Susian court

burdened them in order to make provision for the new war with Greece,

aroused a deep-seated discontent, at all events amongst those who,

living in the Delta, had had their patriotism or their interests most

affected by the downfall of the Saite dynasty. It would appear that the

priests of Buto, whose oracles exercised an indisputable influence alike

over Greeks and natives, had energetically incited the people to revolt.

The storm broke in 486, and a certain Khabbisha, who perhaps belonged

to the family of Psammetichus, proclaimed himself king both at Sais and

Memphis.*

* Herodotus does not give the name of the leader of the

rebellion, but says that it took place in the fourth year

after Marathon. A demotic contract in the Turin Museum bears

the date of the third month of the second season of the

thirty-fifth year of Darius I.: Khabbîsha’s rebellion

therefore broke out between June and September, 486. Stern

makes this prince to have been of Libyan origin. From the

form of his name, Révillout has supposed that he was an

Arab, and Birch was inclined to think that he was a Persian

satrap who made a similar attempt to that of Aryandes. But

nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to

his insurrection against Darius.

[Illustration: 221.jpg THE GREAT TEMPLE OF DARIUS AT HABÎT]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Cailliaud.

Darius did not believe the revolt to be of sufficient gravity to delay

his plans for any length of time. He hastily assembled a second

army, and was about to commence hostilities on the banks of the Nile

simultaneously with those on the Hellespont, when he died in 485, in the

thirty-sixth year of his reign. He was one of the great sovereigns of

the ancient world--the greatest without exception of those who had ruled

over Persia. Cyrus and Cambyses had been formidable warriors, and the

kingdoms of the Bast had fallen before their arms, but they were purely

military sovereigns, and if their successor had not possessed other

abilities than theirs, their empire would have shared the fate of that

of the Medes and the Chaldæans; it would have sunk to its former level

as rapidly as it had risen, and the splendour of its opening years

would have soon faded from remembrance. Darius was no less a general

by instinct and training than they, as is proved by the campaigns which

procured him his crown; but, after having conquered, he knew how to

organise and build up a solid fabric out of the materials which his

predecessors had left in a state of chaos; if Persia maintained her rule

over the East for two entire centuries, it was due to him and to him

alone. The question of the succession, with its almost inevitable

popular outbreaks, had at once to be dealt with. Darius had had several

wives, and among them, the daughter of Gobryas, who had borne him

three children: Artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the

heir-presumptive, and had probably filled the office of regent during

the expedition in Scythia. But Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who had

already been queen under Cambyses and Gaumâta, was indignant at the

thought of her sons bowing down before the child of a woman who was not

of Achæmenian race, and at the moment when affairs in Egypt augured

ill for the future, and when the old king, according to custom, had

to appoint his successor, she intreated him to choose Khshayarsha, the

eldest of her children, who had been borne to the purple, and in whose

veins flowed the blood of Cyrus. Darius acceded to her request, and

on his death, a few months after, Khshayarsha ascended the throne. His

brothers offered no opposition, and the Persian nobles did homage to

their new king. Khshayarsha, whom the Greeks called Xerxes, was at that

time thirty-four years of age. He was tall, vigorous, of an imposing

figure and noble countenance, and he had the reputation of being the

handsomest man of his time, but neither his intelligence nor disposition

corresponded to his outward appearance; he was at once violent and

feeble, indolent, narrow-minded, and sensual, and was easily swayed by

his courtiers and mistresses. The idea of a war had no attractions for

him, and he was inclined to shirk it. His uncle Artabanus exhorted him

to follow his inclination for peace, and he lent a favourable ear to his

advice until his cousin Mardonius remonstrated with him, and begged him

not to leave the disgrace of Marathon unpunished, or he would lower the

respect attached to the name of Persia throughout the world. He wished,

at all events, to bring Egyptian affairs to an issue before involving

himself in a serious European war. Khabbîsha had done his best to

prepare a stormy reception for him. During a period of two years

Khabbîsha had worked at the extension of the entrenchments along the

coast and at the mouths of the Nile, in order to repulse the attack that

he foresaw would take place simultaneously with that on land, but his

precautions proved fruitless when the decisive moment arrived, and he

was completely crushed by the superior numbers of Xerxes.

[Illustration: 224.jpg Xerxes]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a daric in the _Cabinet des

Médailles_.

The nomes of the Delta which had taken a foremost part in the rising

were ruthlessly raided, the priests heavily fined, and the oracle of

Buto deprived of its possessions as a punishment for the encouragement

freely given to the rebels. Khabbîsha disappeared, and his fate is

unknown. Achæmenes, one of the king’s brothers, was made satrap, but,

as on previous occasions, the constitution of the country underwent

no modification. The temples retained their inherited domains, and the

nomes continued in the hands of their hereditary princes, without a

suspicion crossing the mind of Xerxes that his tolerance of the priestly

institutions and the local dynasties was responsible for the maintenance

of a body of chiefs ever in readiness for future insurrection (483).*

* The only detailed information on this revolt furnished by

the Egyptian monuments is given in the Stele of Ptolemy, the

son of Lagos. An Apis, whose sarcophagus still exists, was

buried by Khabbîsha in the Serapoum in the second year of

his reign, which proves that he was in possession of

Memphis: the White Wall had perhaps been deprived of its

garrison in order to reinforce the army prepared against

Greece, and it was possibly thus that it fell into the hands

of Khabbîsha.

Order was once more restored, but he was not yet entirely at liberty to

pursue his own plan of action. Classical tradition tells us, that on

the occasion of his first visit to Babylon he had offended the religious

prejudices of the Chaldæans by a sacrilegious curiosity. He had, in

spite of the entreaties of the priests, forced an entrance into the

ancient burial-place of Bel-Etana, and had beheld the body of the old

hero preserved in oil in a glass sarcophagus, which, however, was not

quite full of the liquid. A notice posted up beside it, threatened the

king who should violate the secret of the tomb with a cruel fate, unless

he filled the sarcophagus to the brim, and Xerxes had attempted to

accomplish this mysterious injunction, but all his efforts had failed.

The example set by Egypt and the change of sovereign are sufficient to

account for the behaviour of the Babylonians; they believed that the

accession of a comparatively young monarch, and the difficulties of the

campaign on the banks of the Nile, afforded them a favourable occasion

for throwing off the yoke. They elected as king a certain Shamasherib,

whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of short

duration,* for Megabyzos, son of Zopyrus, who governed the province by

hereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months.

* This Shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated

from his accession, which is preserved in the British

Museum.

It would appear that Xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: he

pillaged the treasury and temple of Bel, appropriated the golden statue

which decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurât, and carried away

many of the people into captivity (581). Babylon never recovered this

final blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remained

uninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged.

The counsellors of Xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lesson

to the province by their treatment of Babylon, and thus prevent the

possibility of a revolution taking place in Asia while its ruler was

fully engaged in a struggle with the Greeks. Meanwhile all preparations

were completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southern

provinces concentrated at Kritalla, in Cappadocia, merely awaited the

signal to set out. Xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of

481, crossed the Halys and took up his quarters at Sardes, while his

fleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of Phocæ and Kymê.*

* Diodorus, who probably follows Ephorus, is the only writer

who informs us of the place where the fleet was assembled.

Gathered together in that little corner of the world, were forces such

as no king had ever before united under his command; they comprised 1200

vessels of various build, and probably 120,000 combatants, besides the

rabble of servants, hucksters, and women which followed all the armies

of that period. The Greeks exaggerated the number of the force beyond

all probability. They estimated it variously at 800,000, at 3,000,000,

and at 5,283,220 men; 1,700,000 of whom were able-bodied foot-soldiers,

and 80,000 of them horsemen.*

* Herodotus records the epigram to the effect that 3,000,000

men attacked Thermopylæ. Ctesias and Ephorus adopt the same

figures; Iso-crates is contented with 700,000 combatants and

5,000,000 men in all.

[Illustration: 227.jpg A TRIREME IN MOTION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin: the left portion is a free

reproduction of a photograph of the bas-relief of the

Acropolis; the right, of the picture of Pozzo. The two

partly overlap one another, and give both together the idea

of a trireme going at full speed.

The troops which they could bring up to oppose these hordes were,

indeed, so slender in number, when reckoned severally, that all hope

of success seemed impossible. Xerxes once more summoned the Greeks to

submit, and most of the republics appeared inclined to comply; Athens

and Sparta alone refused, but from different motives. Athens knew that,

after the burning of Sardes and the victory of Marathon, they could hope

for no pity, and she was well aware that Persia had decreed her complete

destruction; the Athenians were familiar with the idea of a struggle in

which their very existence was at stake, and they counted on the navy

with which Themistocles had just provided them to enable them to emerge

from the affair with honour. Sparta was not threatened with the same

fate, but she was at that time the first military state in Greece, and

the whole of the Peloponnesus acknowledged her sway; in the event of her

recognising the suzerainty of the barbarians, the latter would not fail

to require of her the renunciation of her hegemony, and she would then

be reduced to the same rank as her former rivals, Tegea and Argos.

Athens and Sparta therefore united to repulse the common enemy, and the

advantage that this alliance afforded them was so patent that none of

the other states ventured to declare openly for the great king. Argos

and Crete, the boldest of them, announced that they would observe

neutrality; the remainder, Thessalians, Boeotians, and people

of Corcyra, gave their support to the national cause, but did so

unwillingly.

Xerxes crossed the Hellespont in the spring of 480, by two bridges of

boats thrown across it between Abydos and Sestos; he then formed his

force into three columns, and made his way slowly along the coast,

protected on the left by the whole of his fleet from any possible attack

by the squadrons of the enemy. The Greeks had three lines of defence

which they could hold against him, the natural strength of which nearly

compensated them for the inferiority of their forces; these were Mount

Olympus, Mount OEta, and the isthmus of Corinth. The first, however, was

untenable, owing to the ill will of the Thessalians; as a precautionary

measure 10,000 hoplites were encamped upon it, but they evacuated the

position as soon as the enemy’s advance-guard came into sight. The

natural barrier of OEta, less formidable than that of Olympus, was

flanked by the Euboean straits on the extreme right, but the range

was of such extent that it did not require to be guarded with equal

vigilance along its whole length. The Spartans did not at first occupy

it, for they intended to accumulate all the Greek forces, both troops

and vessels, around the isthmus. At that point the neck of land was so

narrow, and the sea so shut in, that the numbers of the invading force

proved a drawback to them, and the advantage almost of necessity lay

with that of the two adversaries who should be best armed and best

officered. This plan of the Spartans was a wise one, but Athens, which

was thereby sacrificed to the general good, refused to adopt it, and

as she alone furnished almost half the total number of vessels, her

decision had to be deferred to. A body of about 10,000 hoplites

was therefore posted in the pass of Thermopylæ under the command of

Leonidas, while a squadron of 271 vessels disposed themselves near the

promontory of Artemision, off the Euripus, and protected the right flank

of the pass against a diversion from the fleet. Meanwhile Xerxes had

been reinforced in the course of his march by the contingents from

Macedonia, and had received the homage of the cities of Thessaly; having

reached the defiles of the OEta and the Euboea, he began by attacking

the Creeks directly in front, both fleets and armies facing one another.

Leonidas succeeded in withstanding the assault on two successive days,

and then the inevitable took place. A detachment of Persians, guided

by the natives of the country, emerged by a path which had been left

unguarded, and bore down upon the Greeks in the rear; a certain number

managed to escape, but the bulk of the force, along with the 300

Spartans and their king, succumbed after a desperate resistance. As for

the fleet, it had borne itself bravely, and had retained the ascendency

throughout, in spite of the superiority of the enemy’s numbers; on

hearing the news of the glorious death of Leonidas, they believed their

task ended for the time being, and retired with the Athenians in their

wake, ready to sustain the attack should they come again to close

quarters. The victorious side had suffered considerable losses in men

and vessels, but they had forced the passage, and Central Greece now

lay at their mercy. Xerxes received the submission of the Thebans, the

Phocæans, the Locrians, the Dorians, and of all who appealed to his

clemency; then, having razed to the ground Platæa and Thespisæ, the only

two towns which refused to come to terms with him, he penetrated into

Attica by the gorges of the Cithssron. The population had taken refuge

in Salamis, Ægina, and Troezen. The few fanatics who refused to desist

in their defence of the Acropolis, soon perished behind their ramparts;

Xerxes destroyed the temple of Pallas by fire to avenge the burning of

Sardes, and then entrenched his troops on the approaches to the isthmus,

stationing his squadrons in the ports of Munychia, Phalerum, and the

Piræus, and suspended all hostilities while waiting to see what policy

the Greeks would pursue. It is possible that he hoped that a certain

number of them would intreat for mercy, and others being encouraged

by their example to submit, no further serious battle would have to be

fought. When he found that no such request was proffered, he determined

to take advantage of the superiority of his numbers, and, if possible,

destroy at one blow the whole of the Greek naval reserve; he therefore

gave orders to his admirals to assume the offensive. The Greek fleet lay

at anchor across the bay of Salamis. The left squadron of the Persians,

leaving Munychia in the middle of the night, made for the promontory of

Cynosura, landing some troops as it passed on the island of Psyttalia,

on which it was proposed to fall back in case of accident, while

the right division, sailing close to the coast of Attica, closed

the entrance to the straits in the direction of Eleusis; this double

movement was all but completed, when the Greeks were informed by

fugitives of what was taking place, and the engagement was inevitable.

They accepted it fearlessly. Xerxes, enthroned with his Immortals on the

slopes of Ægialeos, could, from his exalted position, see the Athenians

attack his left squadron: the rest of the allies followed them, and

from afar these words were borne upon the breeze: “Go, sons of Greece,

deliver your country, deliver your children, your wives, and the temples

of the gods of your fathers and the tombs of your ancestors. A single

battle will decide the fate of all you possess.” The Persians fought

with their accustomed bravery, “but before long their numberless

vessels, packed closely together in a restricted space, begin to hamper

each other’s movements, and their rams of brass collide; whole rows of

oars are broken.” The Greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvre

than those of the Phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them in

detail. “The surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage and

corpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead.” At length,

towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, they

slowly fell back upon the Piræus, closely followed by their adversaries,

while Aristides bore down upon Psyttalia with a handful of Athenians.

“Like tunnies, like fish just caught in a net, with blows from broken

oars, with fragments of spars, they fall upon the Persians, they tear

them to pieces. The sea resounds from afar with groans and cries of

lamentation. Night at length unveils her sombre face” and separates the

combatants.*

* Æschylus gives the only contemporaneous account of the

battle, and the one which Herodotus and all the historians

after him have paraphrased, while they also added to it oral

traditions.

[Illustration: 233.jpg PART OF THE BATTLEFIELD OF SALAMIS]

The advantage lay that day with the Greeks, but hostilities might

be resumed on the morrow, and the resources of the Persians were so

considerable that their chances of victory were not yet exhausted.

Xerxes at first showed signs of wishing to continue the struggle; he

repaired the injured vessels and ordered a dyke to be constructed,

which, by uniting Salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust the

Athenians from their last retreat. But he had never exhibited much zest

for the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign were

irksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which he

would be obliged to spend far from Susa, in the midst of a country

wasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies. Mardonius, guessing

what was passing in his sovereign’s mind, advised him to take advantage

of the fine autumn weather to return to Sardes; he proposed to take over

from Xerxes the command of the army in Greece, and to set to work to

complete the conquest of the Peloponnesus. He was probably glad to

be rid of a sovereign whose luxurious habits were a hindrance to his

movements. Xerxes accepted his proposal with evident satisfaction,

and summarily despatching his vessels to the Hellespont to guard the

bridges, he set out on his return journey by the overland route.

At the time of his departure the issue of the struggle was as yet

unforeseen. Mardonius evacuated Attica, which was too poor and desolate

a country to support so large an army, and occupied comfortable winter

quarters in the rich plains of Thessaly, where he recruited his strength

for a supreme effort in the spring. He had with him about 60,000 men,

picked troops from all parts of Asia--Medes, Sakæ, Bactrians, and

Indians, besides the regiment of the Immortals and the Egyptian veterans

who had distinguished themselves by their bravery at Salamis; the heavy

hoplites of Thebes and of the Boeotian towns, the Thessalian cavalry,

and the battalions of Macedonia were also in readiness to join him as

soon as called on. The whole of these troops, relieved from the presence

of the useless multitude which had impeded its movements under Xerxes,

and commanded by a bold and active general, were anxious to distinguish

themselves, and the probabilities of their final success were great. The

confederates were aware of the fact, and although resolved to persevere

to the end, their maoeuvres betrayed an unfortunate indecision. Their

fleet followed the Persian squadron bound for the Hellespont for several

days, but on realising that the enemy were not planning a diversion

against the Peloponnesus, they put about and returned to their various

ports. The winter was passed in preparations on both sides. Xerxes, on

his return to Sardes, had got together a fleet of 200 triremes and an

army of 60,000 men, and had stationed them at Cape Mycale, opposite

Samos, to be ready in case of an Ionian revolt, or perhaps to bear down

upon any given point in the Peloponnesus when Mardonius had gained

some initial advantage. The Lacædemonians, on their part, seem to have

endeavoured to assume the defensive both by land and sea; while their

foot-soldiers were assembling in the neighbourhood of Corinth, their

fleet sailed as far as Delos and there anchored, as reluctant to venture

beyond as if it had been a question of proceeding to the Pillars of

Hercules. Athens, which ran the risk of falling into the enemy’s hands

for the second time through these hesitations, evinced such marked

displeasure that Mardonius momentarily attempted to take advantage of

it. He submitted to the citizens, through Alexander, King of Macedon,

certain conditions, the leniency of which gave uneasiness to the

Spartans; the latter at once promised Athens all she wanted, and on the

strength of their oaths she at once broke off the negotiations with the

Persians. Mardonius immediately resolved on action: he left his quarters

in Thessaly in the early days of May, reached Attica by a few

quick marches, and spread his troops over the country before the

Peloponnesians were prepared to resist. The people again took refuge in

Salamis; the Persians occupied Athens afresh, and once more had recourse

to diplomacy. This time the Spartans were alarmed to good purpose; they

set out to the help of their ally, and from that moment Mardonius showed

no further consideration in his dealing with Athens. He devastated the

surrounding country, razed the city walls to the ground, and demolished

and burnt the remaining houses and temples; he then returned to Boeotia,

the plains of which were more suited to the movements of his squadrons,

and took up a position in an entrenched camp on the right bank of the

Asopos. The Greek army, under the command of Pausanias, King of Sparta,

subsequently followed him there, and at first stationed themselves on

the lower slopes of Mount Cithseron. Their force was composed of about

25,000 hoplites, and about as many more light troops, and was scarcely

inferior in numbers to the enemy, but it had no cavalry of any kind.

Several days passed in skirmishing without definite results, Mardonius

fearing to let his Asiatic troops attack the heights held by the heavy

Greek infantry, and Pausanias alarmed lest his men should be crushed by

the Thessalian and Persian horse if he ventured down into the plains.

Want of water at length obliged the Greeks to move slightly westwards,

their right wing descending as far as the spring of Gargaphia, and their

left to the bank of the Asopos. But this position facing east, exposed

them so seriously to the attacks of the light Asiatic horse, that after

enduring it for ten days they raised their camp and fell back in the

night on Platæa. Unaccustomed to manouvre together, they were unable

to preserve their distances; when day dawned, their lines, instead

of presenting a continuous front, were distributed into three unequal

bodies occupying various parts of the plain. Mardonius unhesitatingly

seized his opportunity. He crossed the Asopos, ordered the Thebans to

attack the Athenians, and with the bulk of his Asiatic troops charged

the Spartan contingents. Here, as at Marathon, the superiority of

equipment soon gave the Greeks the advantage: Mardonius was killed while

leading the charge of the Persian guard, and, as is almost always the

case among Orientals, his death decided the issue of the battle. The

Immortals were cut to pieces round his dead body, while the rest took

flight and sought refuge in their camp.

[Illustration: 238.jpg MAP]

[Illustration: 239.jpg THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PLATAEA]

Almost simultaneously the Athenians succeeded in routing the Boeotians.

They took the entrenchments by assault, gained possession of an immense

quantity of spoil, and massacred many of the defenders, but they could

not prevent Artabazus from retiring in perfect order with 40,000 of

his best troops protected by his cavalry. He retired successively from

Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, reached Asia after suffering severe

losses, and European Greece was freed for ever from the presence of the

barbarians. While her fate was being decided at Platsæ, that of Asiatic

Greece was being fought out on the coast of Ionia. The entreaties of the

Samians had at length encouraged Leotychidas and Xanthippus to take the

initiative. The Persian generals, who were not expecting this aggressive

movement, had distributed the greater part of their vessels throughout

the Ionian ports, and had merely a small squadron left at their disposal

at Mycale. Surprised by the unexpected appearance of the enemy, they

were compelled to land, were routed, and their vessels burnt (479). This

constituted the signal for a general revolt: Samos, Chios, and Lesbos

affiliated themselves to the Hellenic confederation, and the cities of

the littoral, which Sparta would have been powerless to protect for want

of a fleet, concluded an alliance with Athens, whose naval superiority

had been demonstrated by recent events. The towns of the Hellespont

threw off the yoke as soon as the triremes of the confederates appeared

within their waters, and Sestos, the only one of them prevented by its

Persian garrison from yielding to the Athenians, succumbed, after a long

siege, during the winter of 479-478. The campaign of 478 completed the

deliverance of the Greeks. A squadron commanded by Pausanias roused the

islands of the Carian coast and Cyprus itself, without encountering

any opposition, and then steering northwards drove the Persians from

Byzantium. The following winter the conduct of operations passed out of

the hands of Sparta into those of Athens--from the greatest military to

the greatest naval power in Greece; and the latter, on assuming command,

at once took steps to procure the means which would enable her to carry,

out her task thoroughly. She brought about the formation of a permanent

league between the Asiatic Greeks and those of the islands. Each city

joining it preserved a complete autonomy as far as its internal affairs

were concerned, but pledged itself to abide by the advice of Athens

in everything connected with the war against the Persian empire, and

contributed a certain quota of vessels, men, and money, calculated

according to its resources, for the furtherance of the national cause.

The centre of the confederation was fixed at Delos; the treasure held

in common was there deposited under the guardianship of the god, and the

delegates from the confederate states met there every year at the solemn

festivals, Athens to audit the accounts of her administration, and

the allies to discuss the interests of the league and to decide on the

measures to be taken against the common enemy.

Oriental empires maintain their existence only on condition of being

always on the alert and always victorious. They can neither restrict

themselves within definite limits nor remain upon the defensive, for

from the day when they desist from extending their area their ruin

becomes inevitable; they must maintain their career of conquest, or they

must cease to exist. This very activity which saves them from downfall

depends, like the control of affairs, entirely on the ruling sovereign;

when he chances to be too indolent or too incapable of government, he

retards progress by his inertness or misdirects it through his want of

skill, and the fate of the people is made thus to depend entirely on the

natural disposition of the prince, since none of his subjects possesses

sufficient authority to correct the mistakes of his master. Having

conquered Asia, the Persian race, finding itself hemmed in by

insurmountable obstacles--the sea, the African and Arabian deserts, the

mountains of Turkestan and the Caucasus, and the steppes of Siberia--had

only two outlets for its energy, Greece and India. Darius had led

his army against the Greeks, and, in spite of the resistance he had

encountered from them, he had gained ground, and was on the point of

striking a crucial blow, when death cut short his career. The impetus

that he had given to the militant policy was so great that Xerxes was

at first carried away by it; but he was naturally averse to war, without

individual energy and destitute of military genius, so that he allowed

himself to be beaten where, had he possessed anything of the instincts

of a commander, he would have been able to crush his adversary with the

sheer weight of his ships and battalions. Even after Salamis, even after

Platæa and Mycale, the resources of Hellas, split up as it was into

fifty different republics, could hardly bear comparison with those

of all Asia concentrated in the hands of one man: Xerxes must have

triumphed in the end had he persevered in his undertaking, and utilised

the inexhaustible amount of fresh material with which his empire could

have furnished him. But to do that he would have had to take a serious

view of his duties as a sovereign, as Cyrus and Darius had done, whereas

he appears to have made use of his power merely for the satisfaction of

his luxurious tastes and his capricious affections. During the winter

following his return, and while he was reposing at Sardes after the

fatigues of his campaign in Greece, he fell in love with the wife of

Masistes, one of his brothers, and as she refused to entertain his suit,

he endeavoured to win her by marrying his son Darius to her daughter

Artayntas. He was still amusing himself with this ignoble intrigue

during the year which witnessed the disasters of Platæa and Mycale, when

he was vaguely entertaining the idea of personally conducting a fresh

army beyond the Ægean: but the marriage of his son having taken place,

he returned to Susa in the autumn, accompanied by the entire court, and

from thenceforward he remained shut up in the heart of his empire. After

his departure the war lost its general character, and deteriorated into

a series of local skirmishes between the satraps in the vicinity of the

Mediterranean and the members of the league of Delos. The Phoenician

fleet played the principal part in the naval operations, but the

central and eastern Asiatics--Bactrians, Indians, Parthians, Arians,

Arachosians, Armenians, and the people from Susa and Babylon--scarcely

took any part in the struggle. The Athenians at the outset assumed the

offensive under the intelligent direction of Cimon. They expelled the

Persian garrisons from Eion and Thrace in 476. They placed successively

under their own hegemony all the Greek communities of the Asianic

littoral. Towards 466, they destroyed a fleet anchored within the Gulf

of Pamphylia, close to the mouth of the Eurymedon, and, as at Mycale,

they landed and dispersed the force destined to act in concert with

the squadron. Sailing from thence to Cyprus, they destroyed a second

Phoenician fleet of eighty vessels, and returned to the Piraeus laden

with booty. Such exploits were not devoid of glory and profit for

the time being, but they had no permanent results. All these naval

expeditions were indeed successful, and the islands and towns of the

Ægean, and even those of the Black Sea and the southern coasts of Asia

Minor, succeeded without difficulty in freeing themselves from the

Persian yoke under the protection of the Athenian triremes; but their

influence did not penetrate further inland than a few miles from the

shore, beyond which distance they ran the risk of being cut off from

their vessels, and the barbarians of the interior--Lydians, Phrygians,

Mysians, Pamphylians, and even most of the Lycians and Carians--remained

subject to the rule of the satraps. The territory thus liberated formed

but a narrow border along the coast of the peninsula; a border rent and

interrupted at intervals, constantly in peril of seizure by the enemy,

and demanding considerable efforts every year for its defence. Athens

was in danger of exhausting her resources in the performance of this

ungrateful task, unless she could succeed in fomenting some revolution

in the vast possessions of her adversary which should endanger the

existence of his empire, or which, at any rate, should occupy the

Persian soldiery in constantly recurring hostilities against the

rebellious provinces. If none of the countries in the centre of Asia

Minor would respond to their call, and if the interests of their

commercial rivals, the Phoenicians, were so far opposed to their own as

to compel them to maintain the conflict to the very end, Egypt, at any

rate, always proud of her past glory and impatient of servitude,

was ever seeking to rid herself of the foreign yoke and recover her

independent existence under, the authority of her Pharaohs. It was not

easy to come to terms with her and give her efficient help from Athens

itself; but Cyprus, with its semi-Greek population hostile to the

Achæmenids, could, if they were to take possession of it, form an

admirable base of operations in that corner of the Mediterranean. The

Athenians were aware of this from the outset, and, after their victory

at the mouth of the Eurymedon, a year never elapsed without their

despatching a more or less numerous fleet into Cypriot waters; by so

doing they protected the Ægean from the piracy of the Phoenicians, and

at the same time, in the event of any movement arising on the banks of

the Nile, they were close enough to the Delta to be promptly informed

of it, and to interfere to their own advantage before any repressive

measures could be taken.

The field of hostilities having shifted, and Greece having now set

herself to attempt the dismemberment of the Persian empire, we may well

ask what has become of Xerxes. The little energy and intelligence he

had possessed at the outset were absorbed by a life of luxury and

debauchery. Weary of his hopeless pursuit of the wife of Masistes,

he transferred his attentions to the Artayntas whom he had given in

marriage to his son Darius, and succeeded in seducing her. The vanity

of this unfortunate woman at length excited the jealously of the queen.

Amestris believed herself threatened by the ascendency of this mistress;

she therefore sent for the girl’s mother, whom she believed guilty of

instigating the intrigue, and, having cut off her breasts, ears, nose,

lips, and torn out her tongue, she sent her back, thus mutilated, to her

family. Masistes, wishing to avenge her, set out for Bactriana, of which

district he was satrap: he could easily have incited the province to

rebel, for its losses in troops during the wars in Europe had been

severe, and a secret discontent was widespread; but Xerxes, warned in

time, despatched horsemen in pursuit, who overtook and killed him. The

incapacity of the king, and the slackness with which he held the reins

of government’, were soon so apparent as to produce intrigues at court:

Artabanus, the chief captain of the guards, was emboldened by the

state of affairs to attempt to substitute his own rule for that of

the Achæmenids, and one night he assassinated Xerxes. His method of

procedure was never exactly known, and several accounts of it were soon

afterwards current. One of them related that he had as his accomplice

the eunuch Aspamithres. Having committed the crime, both of them rushed

to the chamber of Artaxerxes,* one of the sons of the sovereign, but

still a child; they accused Darius, the heir to the throne, of the

murder, and having obtained an order to seize him, they dragged him

before his brother and stabbed him, while he loudly protested his

innocence.

* Artaxerxes is the form commonly adopted by the Greek

historians and by the moderns who follow them, but Ctcsias

and others after him prefer Artoxerxes. The original form of

the Persian name was Artakhshathra.

[Illustration: 247.jpg Artaxerxes]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a daric in the _Cabinet des

Médailles_.

Other tales related that Artabanus had taken advantage of the free

access to the palace which his position allowed him, to conceal himself

one night within it, in company with his seven sons. Having murdered

Xerxes, he convinced Artaxerxes of the guilt of his brother, and

conducting him to the latter’s chamber, where he was found asleep,

Artabanus stabbed him on the spot, on the pretence that he was only

feigning slumber.*

* Of the two principal accounts, the first is as old as

Ctesias, who was followed in general outline by Ephorus, of

whose account Diodorus Siculus preserves a summary

compilation; the second was circulated by Dinon, and has

come down to us through the abbreviation of Pompeius Trogus.

The remains of a third account are met with in Aristotle.

Ælian knew a fourth in which the murder was ascribed to the

son of Xerxes himself.

The murderer at first became the virtual sovereign, and he exercised his

authority so openly that later chronographers inserted his name in the

list of the Achæmenids, between that of his victim and his _protégé_;

but at the end of six months, when he was planning the murder of the

young prince, he was betrayed by Megabyzos and slain, together with his

accomplices. His sons, fearing a similar fate, escaped into the country

with some of the troops. They perished in a skirmish, sword in hand; but

their prompt defeat, though it helped to establish the new king upon his

throne, did not ensure peace, for the most turbulent provinces at the

two extremes of the empire, Bactriana on the northeast and Egypt in the

south-west, at once rose in arms. The Bactrians were led by Hystaspes,

one of the sons of Xerxes, who, being older than Artaxerxes, claimed

the throne; his pretensions were not supported by the neighbouring

provinces, and two bloody battles soon sealed his fate (462).* The

chastisement of Egypt proved a harder task. Since the downfall of the

Saites, the eastern nomes of the Delta had always constituted a single

fief, which the Greeks called the kingdom of Libya. Lords of Marea and

of the fertile districts extending between the Canopic arm of the Nile,

the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzerainty

over several of the Libyan tribes of Marmarica. Inaros, son of

Psammetichus,** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the Persians

openly. The inhabitants of the Delta, oppressed by the tax-gatherers of

Achæmenes,*** welcomed him with open arms, and he took possession of

the country between the two branches of the Nile, probably aided by the

Cyrenians; the Nile valley itself and Memphis, closely guarded by the

Persian garrisons, did not, however, range themselves on his side.

* The date 462 is approximate, and is inferred from the fact

that the war in Bactriana is mentioned in Ctesias between

the war against the sons of Artabanus which must have

occupied a part of 463, and the Egyptian rebellion which

broke out about 462, as Diodorus Siculus points out,

doubtless following Ephorus.

** The name of the father of Inaros is given us by the

contemporary testimony of Thucydides.

*** Achomenes is the form given by Herodotus and by Diodorus

Siculus, who make him the son of Darius I., appointed

governor of Egypt after the repression of the revolt of

Khabbîsha. Ctesias calls him Achæmenides, and says that he

was the son of Xerxes.

Meanwhile the satrap, fearing that the troops at his disposal were

insufficient, had gone to beg assistance of his nephew. Artaxerxes had

assembled an army and a fleet, and, in the first moment of enthusiasm,

had intended to assume the command in person; but, by the advice of his

counsellors, he was with little difficulty dissuaded from carrying this

whim into effect, and he delegated the conduct of affairs to Achæmenes.

The latter at first repulsed the Libyans (460), and would probably

have soon driven them back into their deserts, had not the Athenians

interfered in the fray. They gave orders to their fleet at Cyprus

to support the insurgents by every means in their power, and their

appearance on the scene about the autumn of 469 changed the course

of affairs. Achæmenes was overcome at Papremis, and his army almost

completely exterminated. Inaros struck him down with his own hand in the

struggle; but the same evening he caused the body to be recovered, and

sent it to the court of Susa, though whether out of bravado, or from

respect to the Achæmenian race, it is impossible to say.*

* Diodorus Siculus says in so many words that the Athenians

took part in the battle of Papremis; Thucydides and

Herodotus do not speak of their being there, and several

modern historians take this silence as a proof that their

squadron arrived after the battle had been fought.

His good fortune did not yet forsake him. Some days afterwards, the

Athenian squadron of Charitimides came up by chance with the Phoenician

fleet, which was sailing to the help of the Persians, and had not yet

received the news of the disaster which had befallen them at Papremis.

The Greeks sunk thirty of the enemy’s vessels and took twenty more, and,

after this success, the allies believed that they had merely to show

themselves to bring about a general rising of the fellahîn, and effect

the expulsion of the Persians from the whole of Egypt. They sailed up

the river and forced Memphis after a few days’ siege; but the garrison

of the White Wall refused to surrender, and the allies were obliged to

lay siege to it in the ordinary manner (459):* in the issue this proved

their ruin. Artaxerxes raised a fresh force in Cilicia, and while

completing his preparations, attempted to bring about a diversion in

Greece. The strength of Pharaoh did not so much depend on his Libyan and

Egyptian hordes, as on the little body of hoplites and the crews of

the Athenian squadron; and if the withdrawal of the latter could be

effected, the repulse of the others would be a certainty. Persian agents

were therefore employed to beg the Spartans to invade Attica; but the

remembrance of Salamis and Platæa was as yet too fresh to permit of the

Lacedæmonians allying themselves with the common enemy, and their virtue

on this occasion was proof against the darics of the Orientals.** The

Egyptian army was placed in the field early in the year 456, under the

leadership of Megabyzos, the satrap of Syria: it numbered, so it was

said, some 300,000 men, and it was supported by 300 Phoenician vessels

commanded by Artabazos.***

* The date of 459-8 for the arrival of the Athenians is

concluded from the passage of Thucydides, who gives an

account of the end of the war after the cruise of Tolmides

in 455, in the sixth year of its course.

** Megabyzos opened these negotiations, and his presence at

Sparta during the winter of 457-6 is noticed.

*** Ctesias here introduces the Persian admiral Horiscos,

but Diodorus places Artabazos and Megabyzos side by side, as

was the case later on in the war in Cyprus, one at the head

of the fleet, the other of the army; it is probable that the

historian from whom Diodorus copied, viz. Ephorus,

recognised the same division of leadership in the Egyptian

campaign.

The allies raised the blockade of the White Wall as soon as he

entered the Delta, and hastened to attack him; but they had lost their

opportunity. Defeated in a desperate encounter, in which Charitimides

was killed and Inaros wounded in the thigh, they barricaded themselves

within the large island of Prosopitis, about the first fortnight in

January of the year 455, and there sustained a regular siege for the

space of eighteen months. At the end of that time Megabyzos succeeded in

turning an arm of the river, which left their fleet high and dry, and,

rather than allow it to fall into his hands, they burned their vessels,

whereupon he gave orders to make the final assault. The bulk of the

Athenian auxiliaries perished in that day’s attack, the remainder

withdrew with Inaros into the fortified town of Byblos, where Megabyzos,

unwilling to prolong a struggle with a desperate enemy, permitted them

to capitulate on honourable terms. Some of them escaped and returned to

Cyrene, from whence they took ship to their own country; but the main

body, to the number of 6000, were carried away to Susa by Megabyzos in

order to receive the confirmation of the treaty which he had concluded.

As a crowning stroke of misfortune, a reinforcement of fifty Athenian

triremes, which at this juncture entered the Mendesian mouth of the

Nile, was surrounded by the Phoenician fleet, and more than half of them

destroyed. The fall of Prosopitis brought the rebellion to an end.*

* The accounts of these events given by Ctesias and

Thucydides are complementary, and, in spite of their

brevity, together form a whole which must be sufficiently

near the truth. That of Ephorus, preserved in Diodorus, is

derived from an author who shows partiality to the

Athenians, and who passes by everything not to their honour,

while he seeks to throw the blame for the final disaster on

the cowardice of the Egyptians. The summary of Aristodemus

comes directly from that of Thucydides.

The nomes of the Delta were restored to order, and, as was often

customary in Oriental kingdoms, the vanquished petty princes or their

children were reinvested in their hereditary fiefs; even Libya was not

taken from the family of Inaros, but was given to his son Thannyras and

a certain Psammetichus. A few bands of fugitives, however, took refuge

in the marshes of the littoral, in the place where the Saites in former

times had sought a safe retreat, and they there proclaimed king a

certain Amyrtgeus, who was possibly connected with the line of Amasis,

and successfully defied the repeated attempts of the Persians to

dislodge them.

The Greek league had risked the best of its forces in this rash

undertaking, and had failed in its enterprise. It had cost the allies so

dearly in men and galleys, that if the Persians had at once assumed the

offensive, most of the Asiatic cities would have found themselves in a

most critical situation; and Athens, then launched in a quarrel with

the states of the Peloponnesus, would have experienced the greatest

difficulty in succouring them. The feebleness of Artaxerxes, however,

and possibly the intrigues at court and troubles in various other parts

of the empire, prevented the satraps from pursuing their advantage, and

when at length they meditated taking action, the opportunity had gone

by. They nevertheless attempted to regain the ascendency over Cyprus;

Artabazos with a Sidonian fleet cruised about the island, Megabyzos

assembled troops in Cilicia, and the petty kings of Greek origin raised

a cry of alarm. Athens, which had just concluded a truce with the

Peloponnesians, at once sent two hundred vessels to their assistance

under the command of Oimon (449). Cimon acted as though he were about

to reopen the campaign in Egypt and despatched sixty of his triremes to

King Amyrtceus, while he himself took Marion and blockaded Kition with

the rest of his forces. The siege dragged on; he was perhaps about to

abandon it, when he took to his bed and died. Those who succeeded him in

the command were obliged to raise the blockade for want of provisions,

but as they returned and were passing Salamis, they fell in with the

Phoenician vessels which had just been landing the Cilician troops, and

defeated them; they then disembarked, and, as at Mycale and Eurymedon,

they gained a second victory in the open field, after which they joined

the squadron which had been sent to Egypt, and sailed for Athens with

the dead body of their chief. They had once more averted the danger of

an attack on the Ægean, but that was all. The Athenian statesmen had

for some time past realised that it was impossible for them to sustain

a double conflict, and fight the battles of Greece against the common

enemy, while half of the cities whose safety was secured by their heroic

devotion were harassing them on the continent, but the influence of

Cimon had up till now encouraged them to persist; on the death of Cimon,

they gave up the attempt, and Callias, one of their leaders, repaired in

state to Susa for the purpose of opening negotiations. The peace which

was concluded on the occasion of this embassy might at first sight

appear advantageous to their side. The Persian king, without actually

admitting his reverses, accepted their immediate consequences. He

recognised the independence of the Asiatic Creeks, of those at least who

belonged to the league of Delos, and he promised that his armies on

land should never advance further than three days’ march from the Ægean

littoral. On the seas, he forbade his squadrons to enter Hellenic waters

from the Chelidonian to the Cyanæan rocks--that is, from the eastern

point of Lycia to the opening of the Black Sea: this prohibition did

not apply to the merchant vessels of the contracting parties, and

they received permission to traffic freely in each other’s waters--the

Phoenicians in Greece, and the Greeks in Phonicia, Cilicia, and Egypt.

And yet, when we consider the matter, Athens and Hellas were, of the

two, the greater losers by this convention, which appeared to imply

their superiority. Not only did they acknowledge indirectly that they

felt themselves unequal to the task of overthrowing the empire, but

they laid down their arms before they had accomplished the comparatively

restricted task which they had set themselves to perform, that of

freeing all the Greeks from the Iranian yoke: their Egyptian compatriots

still remained Persian tributaries, in company with the cities of

Cyrenaïca, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, and, above all, that island of

Cyprus in which they had gained some of their most signal triumphs.

The Persians, relieved from a war which for a quarter of a century had

consumed their battalions and squadrons, drained their finances, and

excited their subjects to revolt, were now free to regain their former

wealth and perhaps their vigour, could they only find generals to

command their troops and guide their politics. Artaxerxes was incapable

of directing this revival, and his inveterate weakness exposed him

perpetually to the plotting of his satraps or to the intrigues of

the women of his harem. The example of Artabanus, followed by that of

Hystaspes, had shown how easy it was for an ambitious man to get rid

secretly of a monarch or a prince and seriously endanger the crown. The

members of the families who had placed Darius on the throne, possessed

by hereditary right, or something little short of it, the wealthiest

and most populous provinces--Babylonia, Syria, Lydia, Phrygia, and the

countries of the Halys--and they were practically kings in all but name,

in spite of the _surveillance_ which the general and the secretary were

supposed to exercise over their actions. Besides this, the indifference

and incapacity of the ruling sovereigns had already tended to destroy

the order of the administrative system so ably devised by Darius: the

satrap had, as a rule, absorbed the functions of a general within his

own province, and the secretary was too insignificant a personage

to retain authority and independence unless he received the constant

support of the sovereign. The latter, a tool in the hands of women and

eunuchs, usually felt himself powerless to deal with his great vassals.

His toleration went to all lengths if he could thereby avoid a revolt;

when this was inevitable, and the rebels were vanquished, he still

continued to conciliate them, and in most cases their fiefs and rights

were preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he could

rid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the case

of their proving themselves too troublesome. Megabyzos by his turbulence

was a thorn in the side of Artaxerxes during the half of his reign. He

had ended his campaign in Egypt by engaging to preserve the lives of

Inaros and the 6000 Greeks who had capitulated at Byblos, and, in spite

of the anger of the king, he succeeded in keeping his word for five

years, but at the end of that time the demands of Amestris prevailed.

She succeeded in obtaining from him some fifty Greeks whom she beheaded,

besides Inaros himself, whom she impaled to avenge Achæmenes. Megabyzos,

who had not recovered from the losses he had sustained in his last

campaign against Cimon, at first concealed his anger, but he asked

permission to visit his Syrian province, and no sooner did he reach it,

than he resorted to hostilities. He defeated in succession Usiris and

Menostates, the two generals despatched against him, and when force

failed to overcome his obstinate resistance, the government condescended

to treat with him, and swore to forget the past if he would consent

to lay down arms. To this he agreed, and reappeared at court; but once

there, his confidence nearly proved fatal to him. Having been invited to

take part in a hunt, he pierced with his javelin a lion which threatened

to attack the king: Artaxerxes called to mind an ancient law which

punished by death any intervention of that kind, and he ordered that

the culprit should be beheaded. Megabyzos with difficulty escaped this

punishment through the entreaties of Amestris and of his wife Amytis;

but he was deprived of his fiefs, and sent to Kyrta, on the shores of

the Persian Gulf. After five years this exile became unbearable; he

therefore spread the report that he was attacked by leprosy, and he

returned home without any one venturing to hinder him, from fear of

defiling themselves by contact with his person. Amestris and Amytis

brought about his reconciliation with his sovereign; and thenceforward

he regulated his conduct so successfully that the past was completely

forgotten, and when he died, at the age of seventy-six years, Artaxerxes

deeply regretted his loss.*

* These events are known to us only through Ctesias. Their

date is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they occurred

after Cimon’s campaign in Cyprus and the conclusion of the

peace of Callias.

Peace having been signed with Athens, and the revolt of Megabyzos being

at an end, Artaxerxes was free to enjoy himself without further care

for the future, and to pass his time between his various capitals and

palaces.

[Illustration: 258.jpg VIEW OF THE ACHAEMENIAN RUINS OF ISTAKHR]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving of Flandin and Coste.

His choice lay between Susa and Persepolis, between Ecbatana and

Babylon, according as the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter

induced him to pass from the plains to the mountains, or from the latter

to the plains. During his visits to Babylon he occupied one of the

old Chaldæan palaces, but at Ecbatana he possessed merely the ancient

residence of the Median kings, and the seraglio built or restored by

Xerxes in the fashion of the times: at Susa and in Persia proper, the

royal buildings were entirely the work of the Achæmenids, mostly that

of Darius and Xerxes. The memory of Cyrus and of the kings to whom

primitive Persia owed her organisation in the obscure century preceding

her career of conquest, was piously preserved in the rude buildings of

Pasargadæ, which was regarded as a sacred city, whither the sovereigns

repaired for coronation as soon as their predecessors had expired.

But its lonely position and simple appointments no longer suited their

luxurious and effeminate habits, and Darius had in consequence fixed

his residence a few miles to the south of it, near to the village, which

after its development became the immense royal city of Persepolis. He

there erected buildings more suited to the splendour of his court, and

found the place so much to his taste during his lifetime, that he was

unwilling to leave it after death. He therefore caused his tomb to be

cut in the steep limestone cliff which borders the plain about half a

mile to the north-west of the town. It is an opening in the form of a

Greek cross, the upper part of which contains a bas-relief in which the

king, standing in front of the altar, implores the help of Ahura-mazdâ

poised with extended wings above him; the platform on which the king

stands is supported by two rows of caryatides in low relief, whose

features and dress are characteristic of Persian vassals, while other

personages, in groups of three on either side, are shown in the attitude

of prayer. Below, in the transverse arms of the cross, is carved a flat

portico with four columns, in the centre of which is the entrance to

the funeral vault. Within the latter, in receptacles hollowed out of the

rock, Darius and eight of his family were successively laid.

Xerxes caused a tomb in every way similar to be cut for himself near

that of Darius, and in the course of years others were added close by.*

* The tomb of Darius alone bears an inscription. Darius III.

was also buried there by command of Alexander.

[Illustration: 260.jpg THE TOMB OF DARIUS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the heliogravure by Marcel

Dieulafoy.

Both the tombs and the palace are built in that eclectic style which

characterises the Achæmenian period of Iranian art. The main features

are borrowed from the architecture of those nations which were vassals

or neighbours of the empire--Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece; but these

various elements have been combined and modified in such a manner as to

form a rich and harmonious whole.

[Illustration: 261.jpg THE HILL OF THE ROYAL ACHAEMENIAN TOMBS AT

NAKUSH-I-RUSTEM]

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving of Flandin and Coste.