No. 7.
MY DEAR CHILDREN, — As soon as Cyrus was dead, Cambyses his son took the crown, and spent most of his not long, but cruel reign, in the conquest, and specially in the destruction of the idols of Egypt. He had put to death his brother Smerdis out of jealousy; but the Persians not being sure of the fact, and Cambyses being so long absent, the occasion was taken by a man named Gomates to give himself out as the real Smerdis, and to seize the crown. Rarely in the East is a revolt attempted, still less does it succeed, unless with the pretext that the intruder is the lineal successor of some former king. The inscriptions of Darius abundantly witness to this; as thus― “Says Darius the king, A man named Phraortes, a Mede, he rose up. To the state of Media thus he said, I am Xathrites, of the race of Cyaxares. Then the Median troops who were at home revolted from me.” The less enlightened the people are, the more do they cleave to the prestige which belongs to an ancient line of kings. Instances are not wanting in this country―as late as the reign of Henry VII., when Perkin Warbeck, by calling himself a son of Edward IV., caused so much bloodshed. The usurper in Persia maintained himself about eight months; for, meanwhile, Cambyses had died by a wound from his own sword. Suspicion, however, arose in the minds of some of the great Persian nobles, from their never being sent for to the palace, and from the seclusion in which Gomates kept himself. One of these great noblemen at last discovered that the usurper had no ears, and was, in fact, a man who for a crime had been punished by Cyrus with the loss of them. It was not long before seven conspirators entered the palace, and slew him, having before agreed (there being no lineal heir to the throne) that the crown should come to one of them. Through the stratagem of his groom, it fell to Darius, a young man, the son of Hystaspes, himself a sort of king. The other six secured the special privilege for themselves of having always access to the king. Perhaps there is allusion to this in Esther 1:1414And the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, which saw the king's face, and which sat the first in the kingdom;) (Esther 1:14), Ezra 7:1414Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors, to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand; (Ezra 7:14). I told you in my last letter, that whilst there are difficulties in making out the religion of these earlier Persians, they certainly were not idolaters, in the sense of being idol worshippers. Not one of their names is compounded with any god’s name, as Nebuchadnezzar was with Nebo, and Belshazzar with Bel; and it is a fact, that the moment Cyrus took Babylon, no more provision of lands was allowed for the worship in the great temple of that city; so that when Alexander came there, whose policy was to support all the deities of the countries which he conquered, he restored these lands to the priests, in order that their worship might be conducted in its former splendor. You will like to hear something of the manner in which these immense countries, subject to the Persian rule, were governed. It was as follows: ―The king appointed satraps or governors over each of them. The name is compounded of two Persian words, and signifies, “upholders of the crown.” He looked to them for a certain yearly tribute or subsidy, otherwise they, had almost regal power. The main object with the monarch was, that these governors should have a direct interest in its affairs, by their connection with the Persian crown; so they were often his brothers, or more or less related to him. He checked this otherwise great authority of the satrap by placing the command of the troops and of the fortresses in other hands, as well as by a government secretary, appointed directly by the crown. There were also occasional visitations of inquiry into the whole condition of the satrapies, by which the crown was kept cognizant of their general state. With all this, so great was the power of the satraps, that it was not an unusual thing for them to attempt, though not always with success, their independence, especially when signs of decay in the central administration began to manifest themselves. Besides a yearly tribute to the national treasury, each satrapy had to support all the Persian troops quartered within its territory. But contingents of native troops were also expected when great expeditions―as, for instance, that to Greece, under Xerxes―were projected. Otherwise, the laws and prejudices of these subjected countries were but little interfered with. Much, of course, depended on the personal character of the satrap; but in general, provided the rights of Persia were attended to, there was no unnecessary interference with local government. In fact, the system was much such as the Turkish government employs with its outlying provinces to this day. They commit them to the rule of a Pacha, who sends a certain sum of money yearly to Constantinople, which he frequently collects by communicating only with the recognized native heads of the people over whom he rules.
Perhaps the original institution of these great officers appears in Daniel 6:1, 21It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; 2And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage. (Daniel 6:1‑2): “It pleased Darius (that is, the Mede) to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, who should be over the whole kingdom.” Babylon had been the last city to dispute the Medo Persian sway, and this was followed by the governmental and political arrangement of the whole empire, which to the north was bounded by the Black Sea, the Caucasian range, and the Caspian; to the northeast it touched lake Aral and the river Araxes, along parts ‘of which river it came down in a straight line to the Indus, which was its eastern boundary; thence, to the south, it embraced all the countries washed by the Persian Gulf, from the head of which it went by a straight line across Arabia to the Red Sea. Its western and southwestern boundary was Asia Minor, Phœnicia, and Egypt, which latter was a troublesome acquisition, demanding a large army to keep it in subjection. The satrapies were, according to Herodotus, originally twenty; but after the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses they appear as twenty-two, as inscribed upon the great rock at Behistun, in the fifth year of the reign of Darius (B.C. 516); and eventually they reached up to thirty, according to another inscription. In Esther 9:3030And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth, (Esther 9:30), we find the kingdom contained 127. provinces; but a satrapy might embrace several.
In the latter times of the monarchy, when it became unwieldy, it was the Persian policy to rule upon the system of “divide and conquer.” In this way, even in its decadence, it exercised an avowed influence all over Greece and Macedonia, by taking parts with the strongest in all the intestine quarrels of this turbulent people, although it never conquered, and therefore never maintained troops in Greece proper. In like manner some outlying provinces paid tribute, thus owning their fealty to the great king, without Persia having anything to do with their internal government, or having any troops in them. To give you an idea of the size of these satrapies, I mention that four appear to have been included in the region of Asia Minor; but this region was very populous. Egypt was another, and Phœnicia, including Palestine and Cyprus, another. To the far east was Bactria, and again the satrapy of the Indians; but we are not to suppose by this that their territory ever reached beyond the Indus. It was Darius who fixed the annual tribute to be paid into the royal treasury by each satrapy: before his time the provinces had brought gifts voluntarily. He was, on this account, called by the Persians a huckster; but we should notice that this order and arrangement, which he introduced into the finances, and by which he became so powerful, is corroborated by the Scripture account of the riches of his son― “The fourth (Xerxes) shall be far richer than they all.” I will take an instance at random from Herodotus of the tribute paid yearly by one of these satrapies, and then tell you, according to modern computation, how much flowed yearly into his treasury, all external expenses being paid, ―in short, what we should call in modern times the amount of his “civil list.” Thus: “The Men ne gave three hundred and sixty white horses, one for each day in the year (the year, like the prophetic ones in Scripture, consisted of 360 days), and five hundred talents of silver. Of this sum one hundred and forty talents went to pay the cavalry which guarded the country while the remaining three hundred and sixty were received by Darius.” The yearly revenue paid by these satrapies into the royal treasury has been calculated at about three million and a half sterling, the principal part of which was melted down into ingots, and turned into coin when wanted. His whole revenue is said to have been about eighteen millions; probably much under the mark. There are still to be seen in various museums his golden daric, with the king’s head on one side and an archer with a pointed cap on the other, of about the size of one of our sovereigns, and said to be the oldest authenticated coin in existence. Its value, according to some, is as low as 15s., whilst, according to others, it was as high as £1 2S. It has been said, so rich at all times was the crown, that if a tenth part of what was laid up in the treasuries had been spent in bribing the Greeks, the invasion of Persia never could have taken place; for Alexander the Great found at Susa 50,000 talents of silver, besides large quantities at Persepolis and other cities. A talent of silver is worth about £341 of our money.
Darius, having quelled a revolt of the Babylonians, determined to march against the Scythians, in about the tenth year of his reign. This appears to have been the first time that Europe was visited by the Persian arms. These Scythians inhabited the country north of the Danube, in those parts now occupied by the Turks and Russians. The expedition was in revenge for a former attack of these people on the Median empire, which had retarded for thirty years the Median conquest of Nineveh by the ancestors of Darius. The expedition is said to have numbered 700,000 men, with a fleet of 600 large ships. He built a bridge of boats across the Bosphorus, somewhere near Constantinople, and crossed his army upon it into Europe, and marched for the Danube then called the Deer, which he passed by means of a bridge of boats also, leaving a guard of Asiatic Greeks over it, whom he desired to keep it for sixty days only. By this act we suppose that his intention was to march into Asia across the Caucasus. He now entered Scythia, and, proceeding still northward, crossed the several rivers―the Don, then called the Tacnais, in particular―in pursuit of the retiring Scythians, until, as some say, he came to the great lake Mœotis, and even as far (which we may doubt, because the expedition, from the time he left the Danube, hardly lasted more than eighty days) as the Volga. Whatever may have been the northern limits of his march, it is certain that he returned with disgrace, never having been able to draw the Scythians into battle. With great difficulty he reached the Danube, on his return, having been obliged to abandon all the weak and sickly in his army; for it was well-nigh famished. He found the bridge of boats, which he had left under the care of Histiæus and Ionian, still standing, and was fortunate enough to get back to Sardis, leaving 80,000 men in Thrace to subdue that country. This expedition into Scythia was probably scarcely a less disaster than that which subsequently happened to Xerxes, although, from the small political importance of the Scythians, it had no lasting result. He rested a few years before the breaking out of the Greek war, and the whole of his dominions enjoyed a period of repose like that which in nature sometimes precedes a storm; but I must reserve the account of the battle of Marathon, the death of Darius, and the accession of Xerxes, until the next letter. Your affectionate Father, ―.