taxes for the use of such crown property as fisheries and the like, but the amount to be paid to the imperial treasury was in all cases fixed. It was otherwise, however, with the exactions the satraps were allowed to make on their own account, and which must have pressed heavily on the people. The tribute enabled Darius to issue a coinage of extreme purity, and his gold darics were worth about 22s. of our money. An incised bar was the imperial stamp. The satrapies were connected with one another by high roads and posting-stations, at which relays of horses were
kept for the royal messengers.After building a palace at Susa, the new capital of the empire, and founding the Chehl Minar at Persepolis, Darius overran the Punjaub, and had the Indus navigated by a naval expedition under Scylax of Caryanda. Under the guidance of Democedes, a physician of Crotona, the Greek seas were also explored as far as Magna Grsecia, and the northern frontier was strengthened by a campaign against the Scythians. Ariamnes of Cappadocia first examined the northern shores of the Black Sea, after which Darius, with 600 ships and the aid of the Asiatic Greeks, crossed the Bosphorus by a bridge constructed by the Greek Mandrocles, conquered the Getse, and threw a bridge of boats across the Danube. Leaving the defence of the bridge to the Greeks, he pursued the Scythians as far as the 50th parallel, burning Gelonus (perhaps the modern Voronej), and recrossed the bridge in safety, thanks to the fidelity of Histiasus of Miletus. Megabazus, or Megabyzus, next reduced Thrace and made Amyntas of Macedon tributary (506). In the following year Otanes subjugated Byzantium, Chalcedon, Antandros, Lemnos, and Imbros.
In 500 B.C. the Ionic revolt broke out. The allies of the lonians from Athens and Eretria landed in Asia Minor and burnt Sardis, an event which led the Greeks of the Helles pont, as well as the Carians and the Cyprians, to join the insurrection. The revolt was crushed in 495 B.C. by the battle of Lade and the sack of Miletus ; and a terrible punishment was taken upon the Greek cities on the coasts and islands of the ^Egean. Miltiades, the tyrant of the Chersonese, escaped with difficulty to Athens, while Darius prepared to avenge the burning of Sardis. His son-in-law, Mardonius, was accordingly sent against Athens and Eretria with a powerful force. But after establishing democracies in the place of tyrants in various Greek cities, and capturing Thasos and its gold mines, Mardonius lost 300 ships and more than 20,000 men in a storm off Mount Athos, and, being further surprized by the Thracian Bryges, returned to Asia Minor. Two years afterwards (490 B.C.) Darius sent another expedition under Datis, which destroyed Eretria, but was ingloriously defeated at Marathon by the Athenians under Miltiades. Darius now made preparations for an attack upon a scale which the Greeks would have found it hardly possible to withstand while an able prince like Darius was at the head of the empire ; but in the fourth year of the preparations (487 B.C.), just before everything was ready, Egypt broke out into revolt. Before the revolt could be put down Darius died, 486 B.C., in the sixty-third year of his age according to Herodotus, or the seventy- second according to Ctesias, who, however, curtails his reign by three years. Darius had already nominated Xerxes, his son by Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, as his successor, his eldest son, Artobazanes, whose mother was a daughter of Gobryas, being set aside as born before his father was king.
Long before his death Darius had excavated a richly- ornamented tomb with four pillars and other sculptures out of the rocks of Naksh-i-Rustam, about four miles from Persepolis. In an inscription on the facade of the tomb he enumerates 28 different countries or satrapies, including India and " the Scythians beyond the sea," over which he bore sway. His name Daryavush is rendered " worker " or " organizer," by Herodotus ; but the true meaning of the word is rather " the maintainer," from darj (Sanskrit, dhri, " couservare ").
DARIUS II., called Ochus before his accession, and Nothos after it (on account of his being one of the 17 bastard sons of Artaxerxes Longimanus), was ninth king of the Persian empire. Hu was made satrap of Hyrcania, and married to Parysatis, the daughter of Xerxes I., by whom he had several children, amongst them two daughters, Amestris aud Artosta, as well as Arsaces or Arsicas, who succeeded him under the name of Artaxerxes (Mnemon), and Cyrus the younger. Sogdianus or Secydianus, the murderer of Xerxes II., was defeated in battle by Darius, through the desertion of the two satraps of Egypt and Armenia, and afterwards put to death, Darius assuming the diadem (424 B.C.). Darius was completely under the power of three eunuchs and his wife Parysatis, and his reign of 19 years was characterized by little except insur rections and revolts. The first of these was raised by his brother Arsites and Artyphius the son of Megabyzus, with the help of Greek mercenaries, and was only put down by a liberal employment of gold, the leaders of the insurrection being betrayed by their followers and burned alive. The next was raised by Pissuthnes, sartap of Lyclia (414 B.C.), but was also crushed by the bribes offered to his Athenian mercenaries by his antagonist Tissaphernes. Amorges, the son of Pissuthnes, however, continued to maintain himself as a kind of independent monarch in Caria for many years afterwards. Another plot was formed by the chief eunuch, Artoxares, but quickly suppressed. In 411 B.C. Egypt rebelled under Amyrtaeus, and Darius was compelled to recognize Pausiris the son of the latter as his successor in 401 B.C. Media, which revolted about the same time, according to Xenophon, was not so fortunate as Egypt in recovering its independence. With the revolt of Media may be connected the rebellion of Terituchmes, a son-in- law of the king. The latter part of the reign of Darius was occupied in supporting Sparta against Athens by means of Persian gold.
Persian monarchs, succeeded Artaxerxes III. (Ochus) 336 B.C., after a short interval during which Arses was nominally king. He was the son of Arsames, a nephew of Artaxerxes II. according to one account, and his wife Sisygambis was a daughter of the same monarch. His powers in the war against the Cadisii had been rewarded by Artaxerxes III. with the satrapy of Armenia. The eunuch Bagoas had poisoned Artaxerxes, and placed his creature Arses on the throne, in order that he might rule in his name, but after two years he deposed him and put Darius in his place. Darius, however, soon got rid of Bagoas, whom he suspected of conspiracy, by making him drink poison. The character of Darius was mild and amiable, and he was famed for his personal beauty, but he did not possess the qualities necessary for the struggle with Alexander of Macedoii which commenced shortly after his accession. In 343 B.C. Alexander crossed the Hellespont, and defeated the Persians, first at the river Granicus (now Ustvola), and then at Issus in Cilicia, where the mother and family of Darius fell into his hands. The death of the Rhodian Memnon, the best of the Persian generals, the conquest of Phoenicia, and the dissipation of the Persian fleet sealed the fate of Darius. He engaged in person, however, in the battle at Gangamela (or Arbela), October 331 B.C., but was defeated with immense slaughter, and fled to Ecbatana, while Babylon, Susa, and Persepolia opened their gates to the conqueror. In the following year Alexander marched into Media, where Darius had collected
a new force. He fled towards Bactria, however, at the
