The Historians' History of the World 04

If we consider the condition of the Persian empire at the time Darius Codomannus ascended the throne, we see plainly how completely it was disintegrated and ripe for dissolution. The cause did not lie in the moral corruption of the court, of the ruling race, and of the peoples it ruled. This corruption, the invariable accompaniment of despotism, is never prejudicial to despotic power; and the greatest empire of modern times gives proof that in the midst of the most shocking profligacy at court, of constant cabals and scandals among the nobles, violent changes of dynasty and unnatural cruelty to the party all-powerful up to the moment of change, despotism enlarges its borders more and more. Persia’s misfortune was to have a succession of weak rulers, who were unable to hold the reins of power as firmly as was essential in the interests of the cohesion of the empire; and the consequence was that the people lost the slavish fear, the satraps the blind obedience, the whole empire the only unity which held it together. Thence there grew in the subject peoples, all of whom retained their old religion, laws, and customs, and some their native princes, the longing for independence; in the satraps, too, powerful vicegerents of large and remote districts, the lust of independent power; in the ruling race—which had forgotten in the possession and habit of command the very conditions of its establishment and continuance—indifference to the Great King and the stock of the Achæmenides. In the hundred years of almost complete inaction which followed Xerxes’ invasion of Europe, a singular development of the art of war had taken place, and Asia had lost the capacity for coping with it; Greek weapons seemed more powerful than the immense hordes of Persia the satraps trusted to in their rebellions and King Ochus in his campaign to suppress the revolt in Egypt; so that the empire founded by the victories of Persian arms was forced to protect itself by the help of Greek mercenaries.

It is true that Ochus had succeeded in restoring the external unity of the empire and in asserting his power with the fanatical severity proper to despotism; but it was too late. He sank into inaction and impotence, the satraps retained their too lofty station, and in the revival of oppression the subject peoples, particularly those of the western satrapies, did not forget that they had all but thrown it off.

A Greek General

(After Hope)

Finally, after fresh and frightful complications, Darius came to the throne. To save the empire he should have been energetic rather than virtuous, cruel rather than mild, arbitrary rather than honourable. He gained the respect of the Persians, all the satraps were devoted to him; but that could not save Persia. He was not feared but loved, and time was soon to show that the nobles of the empire preferred their own advantage to the favour or the service of a master in whom they could admire all but his imperial qualities.

The empire of Darius extended from the Indus to the Hellenic Sea, from the Jaxartes to the Libyan desert. His rule, or rather, the rule of his satraps, did not vary with the character of the various races they ruled; it was nowhere a national form of government, nor had it anywhere the guarantee of a dependent organisation; their power was limited to the satisfaction of arbitrary caprice, the exaction of perpetual impositions, and a kind of hereditary tenure which had grown customary under weak princes. Thus the Great King had hardly any authority over them except the force of arms or such as they chose to recognise for personal reasons. The conditions which existed everywhere within the Persian empire merely rendered the mouldering colossus less capable of rising in its own defence.

The tribes of Iran, Turania, and Ariana were indeed warlike, and happy under any rule which led them to battle and plunder, and horsemen from Hyrcania, Bactria, and Sogdiana formed the standing army of the satraps in most provinces, but there was no great attachment to the Persian empire to be found among them, and terrible as their onslaught had been in the armies of Cyrus and Cambyses, they were wholly incapable of a serious and prolonged defence, especially when opposed to Greek prowess and military skill.

And as for the western tribes, which were held in subjection only by force, and often with difficulty, they were certain to abandon the Persian cause if a victorious enemy approached their borders.