Writers have spoken much of the decay of the early Persian virtue. Originally Persia was a land of hardy shepherds. The small population had now to furnish garrisons for all the great centers of the empire, while the nobles were employed as governors in the vast imperial organization. Of course the old simplicity of life was lost; it is true, too, that the attitude of the Persians toward their king was one of Oriental slavishness; but the charge of degeneracy is not well sustained. Herodotus admired their manly sports and the training of the boys—"to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth." To the last they fought gallantly, and the Greeks conquered in battle because of improved weapons and better tactics, not from superior bravery.

71. Political Contributions. - The Persians were soldiers and rulers. They borrowed their art and their material civilization from Babylon; and, apart from the influence of their religion, their three important services to the world were connected with their political history: (a) the immense expansion of the map; (b) the repulse of the Scythians; (c) the higher organization of imperial government. The first of these has been dwelt upon in connection with the rise of the empire; the other two demand separate treatment.

III. PERSIA AND THE SCYTHIANS.

72. Persia the Champion of Civilization. — In Greek history, Persia was to appear as the foe of the rising European culture, and so we are apt to forget her great service as the defender of civilization. About 630 B.c., shortly before the downfall of Nineveh, the frozen steppes of the north had poured hordes of savages into Western Asia (§ 41). These destructive nomads were called Scythians by the Greeks. We do not know who they were, but the irruption seems in some respects similar to those of the Huns, Turks, and Tartars, in later history. They plundered as far as Egypt, and made a real danger to all the culture the world had been building

up so painfully for four thousand years. Assyria and Lydia were both overrun; and empire fell rightfully to the Medes and Persians, who could and did champion the cause of civilization against barbarism. The Medes drove the ruthless ravagers back to their own deserts; and the repeated and imposing expeditions of the early Persian kings into the Scythian country awed the barbarians and averted the danger for centuries. Darius, the greatest of the successors of Cyrus, seems to have justified his conquests on this ground. In a famous inscription on a rock cliff, enumerating his conquests, he says: "Auramazda [the God of Light] delivered unto me these countries when he saw them in uproar. grace of Auramazda I have brought them to order again."1

IV. IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT.

By the

73. The Old Kingdom-empires. Each kingdom in ancient times was administered by a complex bureaucracy, as in Egypt (§ 22); but until about 700 B.C., the various "empires" as wholes had a very simple machinery. The tributary states retained kings from their old royal families; the peoples kept their separate languages, religions, forms of government, laws, and customs. Indeed, they remained in almost all respects as separate as before they were incorporated in the conquering empire, except for the obligation to pay tribute and to assist in war, and except that their kings were expected to attend the court of the imperial master from time to time and to bring him presents. Two subject kingdoms might even make war upon each other without interference from the higher king. The brief empire of the Jews was of this nature. Solomon, the Book of Kings tells us, "reigned over all the kingdoms. . . unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents and served Solomon."

1 Quoted by Ranke, Universal History, 113. The translation, however, is disputed. The inscription from which this is taken is in three parallel columns, in different languages, and served as the "Rosetta Stone" of the cuneiform writing (§ 11).

Plainly, such a conglomerate empire would fall to pieces easily. If any reverse happened to the dominant state, - if a foreign invasion or the unexpected death of a sovereign occurred, the whole fabric might be shattered at a moment into its original parts. Then would follow years of bloody war, until some power restored the imperial structure. Tranquillity and security could not exist; and, worst of all, a sovereign state was sure to try to check chronic rebellion by severe punishments that often ruined flourishing countries. A common practice, to break the spirit of a rebellious people, was the wholesale deportation of inhabitants to colonize some distant territory, whose old inhabitants then, without fault of their own, were transferred to the depopulated district. In this way the Assyrians transplanted Chaldeans to Armenia, Israelites to Media, and Arabians and Persians to Palestine.1

74. Government by Satraps. The first improvement came from Assyria in her second period. The re-founders of the Assyrian power in the eighth century were organizers as well as conquerors. They left the subject peoples their own laws and customs as before, but they broke up many of the old kingdoms into satrapies, or provinces, ruled by appointed officers, who in theory were dependent wholly upon the pleasure of the Great King.

75. System perfected by Darius. - The Persians inherited. and perfected this advance in centralization. Darius I., the fourth Persian king (521-485 B.C.), is sometimes called the organizer of the empire, as Cyrus was its founder. Improvement though it was, the Assyrian system was poor enough. Each satrap remained virtually sovereign in his own government, and was always tempted to make himself an independent king. Darius introduced effective checks upon this danger.

1 Longfellow's picture, in Evangeline, of the removal of a small population in modern times with all possible gentleness, will help us to imagine the misery that must have come from such transportation of whole nations by over land journeys of a thousand miles.

In each of the twenty provinces, power was divided between the satrap himself and the commander of the standing army, who were separately responsible to the capital; moreover, in each province was placed a royal secretary (the "King's Ear") to communicate constantly with the Great King; and, most important of all, a special royal commissioner (the "King's Eye"), backed with military forces, appeared at intervals in each satrapy to inquire into the government, and, if necessary, to arrest the satrap.

76. Post Roads. To draw the distant parts of the empire closer, Darius instituted a magnificent system of post roads, with ferries and bridges, with milestones and excellent inns, and with relays of horses for the royal couriers. The chief road, from Susa to Sardis, was over fifteen hundred miles long; but it is said that dispatches were sometimes carried its whole length in six days, although ordinary travel required three months. Benjamin Ide Wheeler writes graphically of this great highway (Alexander the Great, 196-197):

"All the diverse life of the countries it traversed was drawn into its paths. Carians and Cilicians, Phrygians and Cappadocians, staid Lydians, sociable Greeks, crafty Armenians, rude traders from the Euxine shores, nabobs of Babylon, Medes and Persians, galloping couriers mounted on their Bokhara ponies or fine Arab steeds, envoys with train and state, peasants driving their donkeys laden with skins of oil or wine or sacks of grain, stately caravans bearing the wares and fabrics of the south to exchange for the metals, slaves, and grain of the north, travelers and traders seeking to know and exploit the world, — all were there, and all were safe under the protection of an empire, the roadway of which pierced the strata of many tribes and many cultures, and helped set the world a-mixing."

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77. Permanency of the Political System. This was as far as imperial organization went until the time of the Roman world. It seems to us that little was done to promote a spirit of unity among the diverse peoples. Each kept its separate language, customs, and religion. Still, for the times, the organization of Darius was a marvelous work. It decayed somewhat, after a

while, but it remained effective enough to maintain political unity against all peril from within, and the empire lost no important territory until attacked by Europe. Certainly the Persian system marked a great advance over the earlier two thousand years of looser kingdom-empires. Indeed, it is the most effective ever used yet in the East, and it is essentially the same as that of the later Saracen and Turkish empires. It was much more like the later Roman imperial government than like the older Asiatic system, and it gave to large parts of Asia a better government than they have had during the past five hundred years of Turkish misrule in our era — during which time populous regions that under Persia blossomed like gardens have become desert wastes and the lairs of beasts.

FOR FURTHER READING. The best short reference on Persia is Wheeler's Alexander the Great, 187-207.

SPECIAL REPORTS.-1. Zoroaster and his teachings (James Freeman Clarke, Ten Great Religions; Maspero, Passing of the Empires). 2. Persian architecture (Rawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, III.). campaigns of Cambyses in Egypt. 4. The accession of

3. The

Darius.

5. Anecdotes from Herodotus regarding Persian kings, and the historical value of the stories.