chapter vi

, 98.

The sentiment too which Herodotus places in the mouth of Demaratus respecting the Spartans (vii, 104) appears to have been written _before_ the capture of the Spartans in Sphakteria, in 425 B. C., rather than _after_ it: compare Thucyd. iv, 40.

Dahlmann (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. ii, pp. 41-47) and Heyse (Quæstiones Herodoteæ, pp. 74-77, Berlin, 1827) both profess to point out six passages in Herodotus which mark events of later date than 430 B. C. But none of the chronological indications which they adduce appear to me trustworthy.

It has already been observed that the subjugation of the recusant Medes was not the only embarrassment of the first years of Darius. Orœtês, 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 body-guard 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, proposed to the chief Persians at Susa, the dangerous problem of destroying him by stratagem. Thirty among them volunteered to undertake it, and Bagæus, son of Artontês, to whom on drawing lots the task devolved, accomplished it by a manœuvre which might serve as a lesson to the Ottoman government, in its embarrassments with contumacious Pashas. Having proceeded to Sardis, furnished with many different royal ordinances, formally set forth and bearing the seal of Darius,—he was presented to Orœtês 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 Orœtês.” The obedient guards at once delivered up their spears, when Bagæus caused the final warrant to be read to them: “King Darius commands the Persians in Sardis to kill Orœtês.” The guards drew their swords and killed him on the spot: his large treasure was conveyed to Susa: Darius became undisputed master, and probably Bagæus satrap.[413]

[413] Herodot. iii, 127, 128.

Another devoted adherent, and another yet more memorable piece of cunning, laid prostrate before Darius the mighty walls 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.[414] 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.

[414] Herodot. iii, 150.

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,”[415] 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.[416]

[415] Herodot. iii, 155. δεινόν τι ποιεύμενος, Ἀσσυρίους Πέρσῃσι καταγελᾷν. Compare the speech of Mardonius, vii, 9.

The horror of Darius, at the first sight of Zopyrus in this condition, is strongly dramatized by Herodotus.

[416] Herodot. iii, 154-158.

Thus was the impregnable Babylon a second time reduced,[417] 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.[418] 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.[419] 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.

[417] Ktêsias represents the revolt and recapture of Babylon to have taken place, not under Darius, but under his son and successor Xerxês. He says that the Babylonians, revolting, slew their satrap Zopyrus; that they were besieged by Xerxês, and that Megabyzus son of Zopyrus caused the city to be taken by practising that very stratagem which Herodotus ascribes to Zopyrus himself (Persica, c. 20-22).

This seems inconsistent with the fact, that Megabyzus was general of the Persian army in Egypt in the war with the Athenians, about 460 B. C. (Diodor. Sic. xi, 75-77): he would hardly have been sent on active service had he been so fearfully mutilated; moreover, the whole story of Ktêsias appears to me far less probable than that of Herodotus; for on this, as on other occasions, to blend the two together is impossible.

[418] Herodot. iii, 159, 160. “From the women thus introduced (says Herodotus) the present Babylonians are sprung.”

To crucify subdued revolters by thousands is, fortunately, so little in harmony with modern European manners, that it may not be amiss to strengthen the confidence of the reader in the accuracy of Herodotus, by producing an analogous narrative of incidents far more recent. Voltaire gives, from the MS. of General Lefort, one of the principal and confidential officers of Peter the Great, the following account of the suppression of the revolted Strelitzes at Moscow, in 1698: these Strelitzes were the old native militia, or Janissaries, of the Russian Czars, opposed to all the reforms of Peter.

“Pour étouffer ces troubles, le czar part secrètement de Vienne, arrive enfin à Moscou, et surprend tout le monde par sa présence: il récompense les troupes qui ont vaincu les Strélitz: les prisons étaient pleines de ces malheureux. Si leur crime était grand, le châtiment le fut aussi. Leurs chefs, plusieurs officiers, et quelques prêtres, furent condamnés à la mort: quelques-uns furent roués, deux femmes enterrées vives. On pendit autour des murailles de la ville et on fit périr dans d’autres supplices deux mille Strélitz; leurs corps restèrent deux jours exposés sur les grands chemins, et surtout autour du monastère où résidaient les princesses Sophie et Eudoxe. On érigea des colonnes de pierre où le crime et le châtiment furent gravés. Un très-grand nombre qui avaient leurs femmes et leurs enfans furent dispersés avec leurs familles dans la Sibérie, dans le royaume d’Astrakhan, dans le pays d’Azof: par là du moins leur punition fut utile à l’état: ils servirent à défricher des terres qui manquaient d’habitans et de culture.” (Voltaire, Histoire de Russie, part i, ch. x, tom. 31, of the Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, p. 148, ed. Paris, 1825.)

[419] Herodot. iii, 92.

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, Kambysês the master, and Darius the retail-trader, or huckster.[420] 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, who 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,[421] 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 on 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.[422] 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,[423] 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.

[420] Herodot. iii, 89. What the Persian denomination was, which Herodotus or his informants translated κάπηλος, we do not know; but this latter word was used often by Greeks to signify a cheat, or deceiver generally: see Etymologic. Magn. p. 490, 11, and Suidas, v. Κάπελος. Ὁ δ᾽ Αἴσχυλος τὰ δόλια πáντα καλεῖ κάπηλα—“Κάπηλα προσφέρων τεχνήματα.” (Æschylus, Fragment. 328, ed. Dindorf: compare Euripid. Hippolyt. 953.)

[421] Herodot. iii, 128. This division of power, and double appointment by the Great King, appears to have been retained until the close of the Persian empire: see Quintus Curtius, v, l, 17-20 (v, 3, 19-21, Zumpt). The present Turkish government nominates a Defterdar as finance administrator in each province, with authority derived directly from itself, and professedly independent of the Pacha.

[422] Herodot. iii, 15.

[423] Respecting the administration of the modern Persian empire, see Kinneir, Geograph. Memoir of Persia, pp. 29, 43, 47.

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.[424]

[424] Herodot. iii, 95. The text of Herodotus contains an erroneous summing up of items, which critics have no means of correcting with certainty. Nor is it possible to trust the huge sum which he alleges to have been levied from the Indians, though all the other items, included in the nineteen silver-paying divisions, seem within the probable truth; and indeed both Rennell and Robertson think the total too small: the charges on some of the satrapies are decidedly smaller than the reality.

The vast sum of fifty thousand talents is said to have been found by Alexander the Great, laid up by successive kings at Susa alone, besides the treasures at Persepolis, Pasargadæ, and elsewhere (Arrian, iii, 16, 12; Plutarch, Alexand. 37). Presuming these talents to be Babylonian or Æginæan talents (in the proportion 5 : 3 to Attic talents), fifty thousand talents would be equal to nineteen million pounds sterling; if they were Attic talents, it would be equal to eleven million six hundred thousand pounds sterling. The statements of Diodorus give even much larger sums (xvii, 66-71: compare Curtius, v, 2, 8; v, 6, 9; Strabo, xv, p. 730). It is plain that the numerical affirmations were different in different authors, and one cannot pretend to pronounce on the trustworthiness of such large figures without knowing more of the original returns on which they were founded. That there were prodigious sums of gold and silver, is quite unquestionable. Respecting the statement of the Persian revenue given by Herodotus, see Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. v, 1-2.

Amedée Jaubert, in 1806, estimated the population of the modern Persian empire at about seven million souls; of which about six million were settled population, the rest nomadic: he also estimated the Schah’s revenue at about two million nine hundred thousand tomans, or one million five hundred thousand pounds sterling. Others calculated the population higher, at nearer twelve million souls. Kinneir gives the revenue at something more than three million pounds sterling: he thinks that the whole territory between the Euphratês and the Indus does not contain above eighteen millions of souls (Geogr. Memoir of Persia, pp. 44-47: compare Ritter, West Asien, Abtheil. ii, Abschn. iv, pp. 879-889).

The modern Persian empire contains not so much as the eastern half of the ancient, which covered all Asiatic Turkey and Egypt besides.

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 Baktria 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 south-western coast of Asia Minor;[425] 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.

[425] Herodot. iii, 102; iv, 44. See the two Excursus of Bähr on these two chapters, vol. ii, pp. 648-671 of his edit. of Herodotus.

It certainly is singular that neither Nearchus, nor Ptolemy, nor Aristobulus, nor Arrian, take any notice of this remarkable voyage distinctly asserted by Herodotus to have been accomplished. Such silence, however, affords no sufficient reason for calling the narrative in question. The attention of the Persian kings, successors to Darius, came to be far more occupied with the western than with the eastern portions of their empire.

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 Mœris. 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 Sattagydæ, the Gandarii, the Dodikæ, and the Aparytæ. The Ionians, Æolians, Magnesians on the Mæander, and on Mount Sipylus, Karians, Lykians, Milyans, and Pamphylians,—including the coast of Asia Minor, southward of Kanê, and from thence round the southern promontory to Phasêlis,—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 Themistoklês a revenue of fifty talents annually.[426] 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 Judæa, with the island of Cyprus. Independent of this regular tribute, and the undefined sums extorted over and above it,[427] 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.[428] 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.

[426] Thucyd. i, 138.

[427] Herodot. iii, 117.

[428] Herodot. i, 192. Compare the description of the dinner and supper of the Great King, in Polyænus, iv, 3, 32; also Ktêsias and Deinôn ap Athenæum, ii, p. 67.

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 B. C. 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,[429] 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.[430] 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.[431] 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 Ekbatana 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 Euphratês, the Tigris, the Greater and Lesser Zab, the Gyndês, and the Choaspês. And we may see by this account that in his time it was kept in excellent order, with convenience for travellers.[432]

[429] Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695.

[430] Herodot. iv, 166; Plutarch, Kimon, 10.

The gold Daric, of the weight of two Attic drachmæ; (Stater Daricus), equivalent to twenty Attic silver drachmæ (Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 18), would be about 16_s._ 3_d._ English. But it seems doubtful whether that ratio between gold and silver (10 : 1) can be reckoned upon as the ordinary ratio in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. Mr. Hussey calculates the golden Daric as equal to £1, 1_s._ 3_d._ English (Hussey, Essay on the Ancient Weights and Money, Oxford, 1836, ch. iv, s. 8, p. 68; ch. vii, s. 3, p. 103).

I cannot think, with Mr. Hussey, that there is any reason for believing either the name or the coin _Daric_ to be older than Darius son of Hystaspês. Compare Boeckh, Metrologie, ix, 5, p. 129.

## Particular statements respecting the value of gold and silver,

as exchanged one against the other, are to be received with some reserve as the basis of any general estimate, since we have not the means of comparing a great many such statements together. For the process of coinage was imperfectly performed, and the different pieces, both of gold and silver, in circulation, differed materially in weight one with the other. Herodotus gives the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1.

[431] Herodot. iii, 96.

[432] Herodot. v, 52-53; viii, 98. “It appears to be a favorite idea with all barbarous princes, that the badness of the roads adds considerably to the natural strength of their dominions. The Turks and Persians are undoubtedly of this opinion: the public highways are, therefore, neglected, and particularly so towards the frontiers.” (Kinneir, Geog. Mem. of Pers. p. 43.)

The description of Herodotus contrasts favorably with the picture here given by Mr. Kinneir.

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 had 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 Polykratês. That ambitious Samian, about ten years after the conquest of Sardis by Cyrus (seemingly between 536-532 B. C.), contrived to seize by force or fraud the government of his native island, with the aid of his brothers Pantagnôtus and Sylosôn, and a small band of conspirators.[433] At first, the three brothers shared the supreme power; but presently Polykratês put to death Pantagnôtus, banished Sylosôn, 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 Milêtus; and signally defeated the Lesbian ships which came to assist Milêtus; 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 Ægean. 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.[434] He had been in intimate 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 Polykratês,—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 Polykratês, 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.[435] Pursuant to such counsel, Polykratês 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 Polykratês 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 Crœsus, and elsewhere.

[433] Herodot. iii, 120.

[434] Herodot. iii, 39; Thucyd. i, 13.

[435] Herodot. iii, 40-42. ... ἤν δὲ μὴ ἐναλλὰξ ἤδη τὠπὸ τούτου αἱ εὐτυχίαι τοι τοιαύταισι πάθαισι προσπίπτωσι, τρόπῳ τῷ ἐξ ἐμεῦ ὑποκειμένῳ ~ἀκέο~: compare vii, 203, and i, 32.

The facts mentioned by Herodotus rather lead us to believe that it was Polykratês, who, with characteristic faithlessness, broke off his friendship with Amasis;[436] finding it suitable to his policy to cultivate the alliance of Kambysês, when that prince was preparing for his invasion of Egypt. In that invasion, the Ionic subjects of Persia were called upon to serve, and Polykratês, deeming it a good opportunity to rid himself of some Samian malcontents, sent to the Persian king to tender auxiliaries from himself. Kambysês, having eagerly caught at the prospect of aid from the first naval potentate in the Ægean, 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 Polykratês at home, and were driven off by his superior force without making any impression. Whereupon they repaired to Sparta to entreat assistance.[437]

[436] Herodot. iii, 44.

[437] Herodot. iii, 44.

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 Crœsus 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 Peisistratidæ 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, saving: “Our wallet has no meal in it.” “Your wallet is superfluous,” (said the Spartans;) _i. e._ the words would have been sufficient without it.[438] The aid which they implored was granted.

[438] Herodot. iii, 46. τῷ θυλάκῳ περιείργασθαι.

We are told that both the Lacedæmonians and the Corinthians,—who joined them in the expedition now contemplated,—had separate grounds of quarrel with the Samians,[439] 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 Lacedæmonian interference against Polykratês 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 Lacedæmonians had credit, are, their proceedings against Polykratês and Hippias; there may have been other analogous cases, but we cannot specify them with certainty. However this may be, a joint Lacedæmonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles back to Samos, and assailed Polykratês 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 Lacedæmonians had acted like Archias and Lykôpas,”—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.[440] It is rarely that Herodotus thus specifies his informants: had he done so more frequently the value as well as the interest of his history would have been materially increased.

[439] Herodot. iii, 47, 48, 52.

[440] Herodot. iii, 54-56.

On the retirement of the Lacedæmonian 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 Ægean, 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.[441] 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 Hermionê, 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 Trœzenians, and repaired themselves to Krete, for the purpose of expelling the Zakynthian settlers at Kydônia. 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 Ægina, whereby the place was recovered, and the Samian intruders finally sold into slavery.[442]

[441] Herodot. iii, 57. νησιωτέων μάλιστα ἐπλούτεον.

[442] Herodot. iii, 58, 59.

Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polykratês: meanwhile, that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous than ever. Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hellenic or barbaric:[443]” and the great works admired by Herodotus in the island,[444]—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 vast temple of Hêrê, may probably have been enlarged and completed, if not begun, by him. Aristotle quotes the public works of Polykratês as instances of the profound policy of despots, to occupy as well as to impoverish their subjects.[445] The earliest of all Grecian thalassokrats, or sea-kings,—master of the greatest naval force in the Ægean, 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 Delian Apollo[446] the neighboring island of Rhêneia. 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;[447] 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 he had never wronged and never even seen. The Persian satrap Orœtês, 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 Polykratês, Orœtês sent to Samos a messenger, pretending that his life was menaced by Kambysês, and that he was anxious to make his escape with his abundant treasures. He proposed to Polykratês 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. Mæandrius, secretary of Polykratês, was sent over to Magnêsia on the Mæander, 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,[448]—tied up ready for departure. The cupidity of Polykratês was not proof against so rich a bait: he crossed over to Magnêsia with a considerable suite, and thus came into the power of Orœtês, 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.[449] The death of Orœtês 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 Polykratês.[450]

[443] Herodot. iii, 139. πολίων πασέων πρώτην Ἑλληνίδων καὶ βαρβάρων.

[444] Herodot. iii, 60.

[445] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 4. τῶν περὶ Σάμον ἔργα Πολυκράτεια· πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα δύναται ταὐτὸν, ἀσχολίαν καὶ πενίαν τῶν ἀρχομένων.

[446] Thucyd. i, 14; iii, 104.

[447] Herodot. iii, 120.

[448] Compare the trick of Hannibal at Gortyn in Krete,—Cornelius Nepos (Hannibal, c. 9).

[449] Herodot. iii, 124, 125.

[450] Herodot. iii, 126. Ὀροίτεα Πολυκράτεος τίσιες μετῆλθον.

At the departure of the latter from Samos, in anticipation of a speedy return, Mæandrius had been left as his lieutenant at Samos; and the unexpected catastrophe of Polykratês 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)[451] 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 Polykratês 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 Polykratês, and others like him, for seeking to rule over men as good as themselves. Now that Polykratês 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 Polykratês,—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.”

[451] Herodot. iii, 142. τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ ἀνδρῶν βουλομένῳ γενέσθαι, οὐκ ἐξεγένετο. Compare his remark on Kadmus, who voluntarily resigned the despotism at Kôs (vii, 164).

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.”[452]

[452] Herodot. iii, 142. Ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἄξιος εἶ σύ γε ἡμέων ἄρχειν, γεγονώς τε κακὸς, καὶ ἐὼν ὄλεθρος· ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅκως λόγον δώσεις τῶν ἐνεχείρισας χρημάτων.

Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind of Mæandrius. 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 Mæandrius remained in the acropolis, with his soldiers and his treasures, as the avowed successor of Polykratês. 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.”[453]

[453] Herodot. iii, 143. οὐ γὰρ δὴ, ὡς οἴκασι, ἐβουλέατο εἶναι ἐλεύθεροι.

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 efforts, forces very greatly superior. If we compare the reflections of Herodotus on the one case and on the other,[454] 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.

[454] Herodot. v, 78, and iii, 142, 143.

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

Sylosôn, the brother of Polykratês, 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 Polykratês, and until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, which followed about a year after the death of Polykratês. He happened to be at Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when Kambysês was there with his conquering army, and when Darius, then a Persian of little note, was serving among his guards. Sylosôn 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 Sylosôn to reply,[455] “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 good-nature.[456] But as events came round, Sylosôn 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 Sylosôn 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. Otanês, the originator of the conspiracy against Smerdis, was sent down to the coast of Ionia with an army, carried Sylosôn over to Samos, and landed him unexpectedly on the island.[457]

[455] Herodot. iii, 139. Ὁ δὲ Συλοσῶν, ὁρέων τὸν Δαρεῖον μεγάλως ἐπιθυμέοντα τῆς χλάνιδος, θείῃ τύχῃ χρεώμενος, λέγει, etc.

[456] Herodot. iii, 140. ἠπίστατό οἱ τοῦτο ἀπολωλέναι δι᾽ εὐηθίην.

[457] Herodot. iii, 141-144.

Mæandrius was in no condition to resist the invasion, nor were the Samians generally disposed to sustain him. He accordingly concluded a convention with Otanês, whereby he agreed to make way for Sylosôn, 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 Polykratês. Otanês willingly granted these conditions, and himself with his principal officers entered the town, the army being quartered around; while Sylosôn 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. Mæandrius 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.[458] 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.”[459]

[458] Herodot. iii, 146. τῶν Περσέων τοὺς διφροφορευμένους καὶ λόγου πλείστου ἀξίους.

[459] Herodot. iii, 145. Ἐμὲ μὲν, ὦ κάκιστε ἀνδρῶν, ἐόντα σεωϋτοῦ ἀδελφεὸν, καὶ ἀδικήσαντα οὐδὲν ἄξιον δεσμοῦ, δήσας γοργύρης ἠξίωσας· ὁρέων δὲ τοὺς Πέρσας ἐκβάλλοντάς τέ σε καὶ ἄνοικον ποιεῦντας, οὐ τολμᾷς τίσασθαι, οὕτω δή τι ἐόντας εὐπετέας χειρωθῆναι.

The highly dramatic manner of Herodotus cannot be melted down into smooth historical recital.

Mæandrius, 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 Polykratês, nor was he displeased to hand over to Sylosôn 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 Otanês collected his troops and drove the assailants back into the acropolis. While he immediately began the siege of that fortress, he also resolved, as Mæandrius had foreseen, to take a signal revenge for 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 Sylosôn, stripped of its male inhabitants.[460] Of Charilaus and the acropolis we hear no farther, perhaps he and his guards may have escaped by sea. Lykarêtus,[461] the other brother of Mæandrius, must have remained either in the service of Sylosôn or in that of the Persians; for we find him some years afterwards intrusted by the latter with an important command.

[460] Herodot. iii, 149. ἔρημον ἐοῦσαν ἀνδρῶν.

[461] Herodot. v, 27.

Sylosôn 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 Otanês, who was induced sometime afterwards, by a dream and by a painful disease, to take measures for repeopling the island.[462] 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.

[462] Herodot. iii, 148.

Mæandrius, following the example of the previous Samian exiles under Polykratês, went to Sparta and sought aid for the purpose of reëstablishing himself at Samos. But the Lacedæmonians had no disposition to repeat an attempt which had before turned out so unsuccessfully, nor could he seduce king Kleomenês 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 Mæandrius away.[463]

[463] Herodot. iii, 149.

Sylosôn 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 Æakês reigning in the island.[464] Strabo states that it was the harsh rule of Sylosôn 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 he has incorrectly remembered his authority.[465]

[464] Herodot. vi, 13.

[465] Strabo, xiv, p. 638. He gives a proverbial phrase about the depopulation of the island—

Ἕκητι Συλοσῶντος εὐρυχορίη,

which is perfectly consistent with the narrative of Herodotus.

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