READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE

CHAPTER LIV (54)

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 Aegean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting anyone of them.” He alludes to the Bactrians and the Sakae, who are also named by Ctesias 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 Massagetae. In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ctesias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon; but his narrative, as tar as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different.

“I shall mention (says Herodotus) 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 Nitokris—mother of that very Labynetus 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 Euphrates for the purpose of obstructing their approach. Moreover, there existed w hat 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, across the entire space of seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of the canals of the Euphrates. And the canals themselves, as we may see by the march of the Ten Thousand Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa, 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. 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.

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. And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Cunaxa against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. 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 Euphrates, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-five 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 inarched 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: instead of which, two days afterwards, Artaxerxes 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.

This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because all its circumstances are transmitted to ns by a discerning eye­witness. 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. 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.

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 Gyndes (one of the affluents from the East which joins the Tigris near the modem Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ecbatana), when one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him. insulted the river so far as to march in and try to cross it by himself. The Gyndes 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 its 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 w ere 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 Euphrates; 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 Lis army at the two points w here the Euphrates 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 degree 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.

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 half­authenticated stories respecting its capture; but the other exploits ascribed to Cyrus,—his invasion of India, across the desert of Arachosia,—and his attack upon the Massagetae, nomads ruled by queen Tomyris, and greatly resembling the Scythians, across the mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxes,—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. He was buried at Pasargadae, in his native province of Persis proper, where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire, while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians.

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. lie left the Persian empire extending from Sogdiana and the rivers Jaxartes 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 Judaea 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 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 Ecbatana during the summer; the primitive territory of Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargadae, being reserved for the burial-place of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana vu 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 Choaspes, 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.

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 Ecbatana,—being the only district so exempted between the Jaxartes 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 pacha lies, 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,—for the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or docks, 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 Ecbatana 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 Cunaxa) from the region of insupportable heal 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, and be in a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers.

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. 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. They could not thus purchase safety for the family hearth, since we find instances of noble Grecian maidens torn from their parents fur the harem of the satrap.

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. lie had found them slaves, and made them masters; he was the first and greatest of national benefactors, 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,—Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes,—until it was at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Platea and Salamis; after which the Persians became content with defending themselves at home, and playing a secondary game. But al the time when Cambyses son of Cyrus succeeded to his father’s sceptre, Persian spirit was at its Ugliest point, and he was not long in fixing upon a prey both richer and less hazardous than the Massagetae, at the opposite extremity of the empire. Phenicia and Judaea 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 Apries, 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.

Cambyses summoned the forces of his empire for this new enterprise, and among them both the Phenicians and the Asiatic Greeks, Aeolic as well as Ionic, insular as well as continental,—nearly all the maritime force and skill of the Aegean sea. He was apprized by a Greek deserter from the mercenaries in Egypt, named Phanes, 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 Judaea. 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 Carian troops in the Egyptian service, as well as the Egyptian military, were assembled to oppose him.

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. Ilis 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. Cambyses had sent forward a Mitylenaean 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.

There yet lay beyond Egypt territories for Cambyses to conquer,—though Cyrene 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 w ell as the ties both of relationship and traffic. Even the frantic Cambyses was compelled to accept, and perhaps to respect, this honorable refusal, which was not imitated by the Ionic Greeks when Darius and Xerxes 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 Cambyses.

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 K 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 Cambyses 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 after wards died of the wound.

After this brutal deed,—calculated to efface in the minds of the Egyptian priests the enormities of Cheops and Chephren, and doubtless unparalleled in all the twenty-four thousand years of their anterior history,—Cambyses 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. That jealousy was aggravated into alarm and hatred by a dream, portending dominion and conquest to Smerdis; so that the frantic Cambyses sent to Susa secretly a confidential Persian, Prexaspes, with express orders to get rid of his brother. Prexaspes fulfilled his commission effectively, burying the slain prince with his own hands, and keeping the deed concealed from all except a few of the chiefs at the regal residence.

Among these few chiefs, however, there was one, the Median Patizeithes, 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 Cambyses, he had been left by that prince, on departing for Egypt, in the entire management of the palace and treasures, with extensive authority. Moreover, he happened to have a brother extremely resembling in person the deceased Smerdis; and as the open and dangerous madness of Cambyses 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. Cambyses, 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 Achaemenid. But if it be true that he ever made known the facts, no one believed him. For Prexaspes, 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, and thus the opportune death of Cambyses 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. Cambyses had reigned for seven years and five months.

For seven months did Smerdis reign without opposition, seconded by his brother Patizeithes; 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. Such a departure from the Persian principle of government was in itself sufficient to disgust the warlike and rapacious Achaemenids 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 Phaedyme, daughter of a distinguished Per­sian, named Otanes. At the instance of her father, Phaedyme undertook the dangerous task of feeling the head of Smerdis while he slept, and thus detected the absence of ears. Otanes, possessed of the decisive information, lost no time in concerting, with five other noble Achaemenids, means for ridding themselves of a king who was at once a Mede, a Magian, and a man without ears; Darius, son of Hystaspes, 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 Oebares,—how Oetanes, 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 wight 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.

It was thus that the upright tiara, the privileged head-dress of the Persian kings, passed away from the lineage of Cyrus, yet without departing from the great phratry of the Achaemenidae,—to which Darius and his father Hystaspes, 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 narra­ive—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 np 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. 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. 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. The descendants of the Seven maintained a privi­leged name and rank, even down to the extinction of the mon­archy by Alexander the Great.

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. 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 Oroetes, 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, but even took advantage of the disturbed state of the government to put to death his private enemy Mitrobates satrap of Phrygia, and appropriate that satrapy in addition to his own. Aryandes also, the satrap nominated by Cambyses in Egypt, comported himself as the equal of Darius rather than as his subject. 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. 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 fake 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 Astyages; 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.

It has already been observed that the subjugation of the recusant Medes was not the only embarrassment of the first years of Darius. Oroetes, 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 body­guard 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, pro posed to the chief Persians at Susa, the dangerous problem of destroying him by stratagem. Thirty among them volunteered to undertake it, and Bagaeus, son of Artontes, to whom on drawing lots the task devolved, accomplished it by a manoeuvre which might serve as a lesson to the Ottoman government, in its embarrassments with contumacious Pashas. Haring proceeded to Sardis, furnished with many different royal ordinances, formally set forth and bearing the seal of Darius,—he was presented to Oroetes 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 Oroetes.” The obedient guards at once delivered up their spears, when Bagaeus caused the final warrant to be read to them: “King Darius commands the Persians in Sardis to kill Oroetes.” The guards drew their swords and killed him on the spot: his large treasure was conveyed to Susa: Darius became undisputed master, and probably Bagaeus satrap.

Another devoted adherent, and another yet more memorable piece of cunning, laid prostrate before Darius the mighty Avails 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. We cannot but sup­pose that this has been magnified from a partial into an universal destruction. Yet taking it even with such allowance, it illustrates that ferocious force of will,—and that predominance of strong nationality, combined with antipathy to foreigners, over all the gentler sympathies,—which seems to mark the Semitic nations, and which may be traced so much in the Jewish history of Josephus.

Darius, assembling all the forces in his power, laid siege to the revolted city, but could make no impression upon it, either by force or by stratagem. He tried to repeat the proceeding by which Cyrus had taken it at first; but the besieged were found this time on their guard. The siege had lasted twenty months without the smallest progress, and the Babylonians derided the besiegers from the height of their impregnable walls, when a distinguished Persian nobleman Zopyrus,—son of Megabyzus, who had been one of the seven conspirators against Smerdis,—presented himself one day before Darius in a state of frightful mutilation: his nose and ears were cut off, and his body misused in every way. He had designedly so maimed himself, “thinking it intolerable that Assyrians should thus laugh the Persians to scorn,” 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.

Thus was the impregnable Babylon a second time reduced, 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. 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. We may presume that this was intended in part as a punishment for the past revolt, since the like obligation was not imposed upon any other satrapy.

Thus firmly established on the throne, Darius occupied it for thirty-six years, and his reign was one of organization, different from that of his two predecessors; a difference which the Per­sians well understood and noted, calling Cyrus the father, Cambyses the master, and Darius the retail-trader, or huckster. 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, w ho 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, 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 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. 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, though distinguished materially by the many differences arising out of Mohammedanism and Christianity, and apparently not reaching the same extreme of rapacity, corruption, and cruelty in detail.

Darius distributed the Persian empire into twenty satrapies, each including a certain continuous territory, and one or more nations inhabiting it, the names of which Herodotus sets forth. The amount of tribute payable by each satrapy was determined: payable in gold, according to the Euboic talent, by the Indians in the easternmost satrapy,—in silver, according to the Babylonian, or larger talent, by the remaining nineteen. Herodotus computes the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1. From the nine­teen satrapies which paid in silver, there was levied annually the sum of seven thousand seven hundred and forty Babylonian talents, equal to something about two million nine hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds sterling: from the Indians, who alone paid in gold, there was received a sum equal (at the rate of 1 : 13) to four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents of silver, or to about one million two hundred and ninety thousand pounds sterling.

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 Bactria 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 southwestern coast of Asia Minor; who, if this statement be correct, executed a scheme of nautical enterprise not only one hundred and seventy years earlier, but also far more extensive, than the famous voyage of Nearchus, admiral of Alexander the Great,—since the latter only went from the Indus to the Persian gulf. The eastern portions of the Persian empire remained so unknown and unvisited until the Macedonian invasion, that we are unable to criticize these isolated statements of Herodotus. None of the Persian kings subsequent to Darius appear to have visited them, and whether the prodigious sum demandable from them accord­ing to the Persian rent-roll was ever regularly levied, may reasonably be doubted. At the same time, we may reasonably believe that the mountains in the northern parts of Persian India—Cabul and Little Thibet—were at that time extremely productive in gold, and that quantities of that metal, such as now appear almost fabulous, may have been often obtained. It appears that the produce of gold in all parts of the earth, as far as hitherto known, is obtained exclusively near the surface; so that a country once rich in that metal may well have been exhausted of its whole supply, and left at a later period without any gold at all.

Of the nineteen silver-paying satrapies, the most heavily imposed was Babylonia, which paid one thousand talents: the next in amount of charge was Egypt, paying seven hundred talents, besides the produce of the fish from the lake of Moeris. 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 Sattagydae, the Gandarii, the Dodikae, and the Aparytae. The Jenians, Aeolians, Magnesians on the Maeander, and on Mount Sipylus, Carians, Lycians, Milyans, and Pamphylians,— including the coast of Asia Minor, southward of Kane, and from thence round the southern promontory to Phaselis,—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 Themistocles a revenue of fifty talents annually. 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 Judaea, with the island of Cyprus. Independent of this regular tribute, and the undefined sums extorted over and above it, 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. It was paid in produce, as indeed the peculiar productions of every part of the empire seem to have been sent up for the regal consumption.

However imperfectly we are now able to follow the geographical distribution of the subject nations as given by Herodotus, it is extremely valuable as the only professed statistics remaining, of the entire Persian empire. The arrangement of satrapies, which he describes, underwent modification in subsequent times; at least it does not harmonize with various statements in the Anabasis of Xenophon, and in other authors who recount Persian affairs belonging to the fourth century bc. 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, 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. 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. 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 Ecbatana 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 Euphrates, the Tigris, the Greater and Lesser Zab, the Gyndes, and the Choaspes. And we may see by this account that in his time it was kept in excellent order, with convenience for travellers.

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 bad 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 Polycrates. That ambitious Samian, about ten years after the conquest of Sardis by Cyrus (seemingly between 536-532 BC), contrived to seize by force or fraud the government of his native island, with the aid of his brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson, and a small band of conspirators. At first, the three brothers shared the supreme power; but presently Polycrates put to death Pantagnotus, banished Syloson, 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 Miletus; and signally defeated the Lesbian ships which came to assist Miletus; 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 Aegean. 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. He had been in inornate 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 Polycrates,—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 Polycrates, 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. Pursuant to such counsel, Polycrates 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 Polycrates 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 Croesus, and elsewhere.

The facts mentioned by Herodotus rather lead us to believe that it was Polycrates, who, with characteristic faithlessness, broke off his friendship with Amasis; finding it suitable to his policy to cultivate the alliance of Cambyses, when that prince was preparing for his invasion of Egypt. In that invasion, the Ionic subjects of Persia were called upon to serve, and Polycrates, deeming it a good opportunity to rid himself of some Samian malcontents, sent to the Persian king to tender auxiliaries from himself. Cambyses, having eagerly caught at the prospect of aid from the first naval potentate in the Aegean, 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 Polycrates at home, and were driven off by his superior force without making any impres­sion. Whereupon they repaired to Sparta to entreat assist­ance.

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 Croesus 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 Peisistratidae 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, saying: “Our wallet has no meal in it.” “Your wallet is superfluous,” (said the Spartans ;) i. e. the words would have been sufficient without it. The aid which they implored was granted.

We are told that both the Lacedaemonians and the Corinthians—who joined them in the expedition now contemplated,—had separate grounds of quarrel with the Samians, 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 Lacedaemonian interference against Polycrates 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 Lacedaemonians had credit, are, their proceedings against Polycrates and Hippias; there may have been other analogous cases, but we cannot specify them with certainty. However this may be, a joint Lacedaemonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles back to Samos, and assailed Polycrates 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 Lacedaemonians had acted like Archias and Lykopas,”—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. It is rarely that Herodotus thus specifies his informants: had he done so more frequently the value as well as the interest of Lis history would have been materially increased.

On the retirement of the Lacedaemonian 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 Aegean, 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. 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 Hermione, 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 Troezenians, and repaired themselves to Crete, for the purpose of expelling the Zakynthian settlers at Cydonia. 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 Egina, whereby the place was recovered, and the Samian intruders finally sold into slavery.

Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polycrates: meanwhile, that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous than ever. Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hellenic or barbaric”, and the great works admired by Herodotus in the island,—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 east temple of Here, may probably have been enlarged and completed, if not begun, by him. Aristotle quotes the public works of Polycrates as instances of the profound policy of despots, to occupy as well as to impoverish their subjects. The earliest of all Grecian thalassokrats, or sea-kings,—master of the greatest naval force in the Aegean, 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 Dehan Apollo the neighboring island of Rheneia. 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; 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 ho had never wronged and never even seen. The Persian satrap Oroetes, 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 Polycrates, Oroetes sent to Samos a messenger, pretending that his life was menaced by Cambyses, and that he was anxious to make his escape with his abundant treasures. He proposed to Polycrates 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. Maeandrius, secretary of Polycrates, was sent over to Magnesia on the Maeander, 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,—tied up ready for departure. The cupidity of Polycrates was not proof against so rich a bait: he crossed over to Magnesia with a considerable suite, and thus came into the power of Oroetes, 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. The death of Oroetes 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 Polykrates.

At the departure of the latter from Samos, in anticipation of a speedy return, Maeandrius had been left as his lieutenant at Samos; and the unexpected catastrophe of Polycrates 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) 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 Polycrates 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 Polycrates, and others like him, for seeking to rule over men as good as themselves. Now that Polycrates 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 Polycrates,—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.”

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.”

Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind of Maeandrius. 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 Maeandrius remained in the acropolis, with his soldiers and his treasures, as the avowed successor of Polycrates. 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.”

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 effort forces very greatly superior. If we compare the reflections of Herodotus on the one case and on the other, 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.

The events which succeeded in Samos are little better than a series of crimes and calamities. The prisoners, whom Maeandrius had detained in the acropolis, were slain during his dangerous illness, by his brother Lykaretus, under the idea that this would enable him more easily to seize the sceptre. But Maeandrius 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 Polycrates In this untoward condition, the Samians were surprised by tin arrival of a new claimant for their sceptre and acropolis,—and, what was much more formidable, a Persian army to back him.

Syloson, the brother of Polycrates, 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 Polycrates, and until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, which followed about a year after the death of Polycrates. He happened to be at Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when Cambyses was there with his conquering army, and when Darius, then a Persian of little note, was serving among his guards. Syloson 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 Syloson to reply, “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 good­nature. But as events came round, Syloson 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 Syloson 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. Otanes, the originator of the conspiracy against Smerdis, was sent down to the coast of Ionia with an army, carried Syloson over to Samos, and landed him unexpectedly on the island.

Maeandrius was in no condition to resist the invasion, nor were the Samians generally disposed to sustain him. He accordingly concluded a convention with Otanes, whereby he agreed to make way for Syloson, 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 Polycrates. Otanes willingly granted these conditions, and himself with his principal officers entered the town, the army being quartered around; while Syloson 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. Maeandrius 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. 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.”

Maeandrius, 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 Polycrates, nor was he displeased to hand over to Syloson 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 Otanes collected his troops and drove the assailants back into the acropolis. While he immediately began the siege of that fortress, he also resolved, as Mirandrius had foreseen, to take a signal revenge lor 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 Syloson, stripped of its male inhabitants. Of Charilaus and the acropolis we hear no farther, perhaps he and his guards may have escaped by sea. Lykaretus, the other brother of Maeandrius, must have remained cither in the service of Syloson or in that of the Persians; for we find him some years afterwards intrusted by the latter with an important command.

Syloson 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 Otanes, who was induced sometime afterwards, by a dream and by a painful disease, to take measures for repeopling the island. 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.

Maeandrius, following the example of the previous Samian exiles under Polycrates, went to Sparta and sought aid for the purpose of reestablishing himself at Samos. But the Lacedaemonians had no disposition to repeat an attempt which had before turned out so unsuccessfully, nor could he seduce king Kleomenes 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 Maeandrius away.

Syloson 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 Aeakes reigning in the island. Strabo states that it was the harsh rule of Syloson 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 lie has incorrectly remembered his authority.

CHAPTER LV (55).

DEMOKEDES.-DARIUS INVADES SCYTHIA.