Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/100

82 across the Hellespont. Three great battles—that of the Granicus, that of Issus, and that of Arbela—decided the fate of the Persian Empire. Darius III., the last of the Persian kings, fled from the field of Arbela, on the plains of Assyria, only to be treacherously assassinated by one of his own generals.

The succeeding movements of Alexander, and the establishment by him of the short-lived Macedonian monarchy upon the ruins of the Persian state, are matters that properly belong to Grecian history, and will be related in a following chapter.

The Government.—Before the reign of Darius I., the government of the Persian Empire was like that of all the great monarchies that had preceded it; that is, it consisted of a great number of subject states, which were allowed to retain their own kings and manage their own affairs, only paying tribute and homage, and furnishing contingents in time of war, to the Great King.

We have seen how weak was this rude and primitive type of government. Darius I., who possessed rare ability as an organizer, remodelled the system of his predecessors, and actually realized for the Persian monarchy what Tiglath-Pileser II. had long before attempted, but only with partial and temporary success, to accomplish for the Assyrian.

The system of government which Darius I. thus first made a real fact in the world, is known as the satrapal, a form represented to-day by the government of the Turkish Sultan. The entire kingdom was divided into twenty or more provinces, over each of which was placed a governor, called a satrap, appointed by the king. These officials held their position at the pleasure of the sovereign, and were thus rendered his subservient creatures. Each province contributed to the income of the king a stated revenue.

There were provisions in the system by which the king might be apprised of the disloyalty of his satraps. Thus the whole dominion was firmly cemented together, and the facility with