The Rise of Athens

However hard he might try, the Great King was not able to respond quickly enough to events as they arose in the more remote corners of his dominions. He established a network of provincial governors, called satraps, whose main duty was to collect taxes and remit them to the central authority in Persia (in some places local kings were employed rather than satraps). The precise details are unclear, but, according to Xenophon, there was also a network of military garrisons and commanders who looked after security but were not to meddle with anything else. This division of powers was obviously intended to guard against plots and insurrections. However, it seems that on occasion one man controlled both the army and civilian affairs. Such satraps ran small wars and were known to fight with one another and even to rise up against the Great King himself.

Until now this had been a world without coinage. It is said that Croesus invented coins and the Persian government picked up on the idea, less as a means of day-to-day exchange than of making bulk payments with gold and silver currency. Most of the Great King’s subjects did not use coins and restricted themselves to barter: they would have been hard put to recognize them or know what they were for. Satraps minted their own coinages, but they only did so in extraordinary military circumstances when armies needed to be paid. The golden daric

of the Persians and the silver siglos did not merely have practical uses, they were symbols of the wealth, grandeur, and stability of the empire.

The Great King seldom went on progresses throughout his realms and spent most of his time in his palaces in Persia, but he needed to check on the performance of his satraps and generals. Every year (again according to Xenophon) a government inspector at the head of an army went out on a provincial tour. An advance announcement would be made: “the King’s son is coming down,” or “the King’s brother,” or, more anonymous and sinister, “the King’s eye,” but one never knew whether he would actually turn up, for at any moment the Great King might recall him. It was an economical way of keeping people alert to their duties.

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The Persian system of government was hardly ideal. As we shall see, satraps often misbehaved and acted in their own rather than their employer’s interest. Palace politics could be lethal and the transition from one ruler to his successor fraught and murderous. But the Great King understood that the majority of his subjects were at their most productive and governable if they were left alone to live their own lives. It was a sound and civilized imperial principle.

Cyrus wanted to be regarded as a just ruler and sought the moral approval of his subjects; in the Cyrus Cylinder he speaks of the blessings of his kingship and boasts: “I have enabled all the lands to live in peace.” Political and economic stability was indeed the chief benefit that the empire could confer. It also promoted religious and linguistic diversity. Communities were expected to speak in their own tongues and to practice their own faiths. The empire tried not to intrude.

It was annoying to have to pay tribute, but there was a return on the investment. In his book The Education of Cyrus,

Xenophon has the Great King say of tribute: “It is no more than fair, for if any danger comes it is we who have to fend it off.” And peace fostered the main source of most people’s solvency—mainly agricultural production, but also, especially in cities, manufacturing (pottery, tools, weapons, and luxury goods).

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We are not sure of the religious faith of Cyrus the Great, for there is no direct reference to it in his surviving inscriptions, and the same applies to his son Cambyses. But he is polite about other peoples’ gods. He even gave financial assistance for the building or rebuilding of temples dedicated to foreign faiths. It was forbidden to disturb the cult of Ahura Mazda or any other religion. In the Cyrus Cylinder the Great King pays his respects to the Babylonian deity, Marduk, and in the Bible receives the honorific title of Messiah. According to Isaiah, he was the anointed of Jehovah (this was a thank-you for repatriating the Jews exiled to Babylon).

Thereafter the Achaemenid kings speak of themselves as worshippers of Ahura Mazda (literally Being and Mind). He was a perfectly good, benevolent uncreated spirit who created the universe. His worship often took place in the open air in walled gardens (in Greek, paradeisos, whence our word “paradise”) or even mountaintops. Except for Cyrus. Great Kings were buried in tombs built into a high cliff-face not far from the imperial city of Persepolis.