Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/612

 584 PERSIA [GREEK 331-323. cases the old satraps were superseded on the first oppor tunity. Most new appointments, however, were given to Persians ; at first there were Macedonian satraps only in rebellious Arachosia, Gedrosia, and the three new Indian provinces. This policy helped the subjects to fall in with the new rule ; but on second appointments Mace donians generally took the place of Persians, and at Alexander s death there were Persians only in Media (from which Atropates, as the sequel proved, could not have been removed without a fight), in Parthia, and in the Paropanisus, which was held by Alexander s father-in-law. The power of the satraps was considerably reduced ; in Parthia, Aria, and the Paropanisus there seems to have always been a Macedonian resident (eTrur/coTros) beside the satrap, with the control of the military. Indeed in all the provinces the command of the forces seems to have been separated from the office of satrap, though it was not always entrusted to a single officer. The satraps also lost the right to engage mercenaries and to coin ; and in the western countries, of which we know most, a single officer always a Macedonian was sometimes charged with the tribute of several provinces. Perfect order and an exact definition of the functions of every officer could not be attained from the very first ; yet even in this period of transition the finances of the empire improved. At Alex ander s death 50,000 talents (11,288,515) lay in the treasury, and the annual tribute was 30,000 talents, or six and three-quarters millions sterling. What was of more consequence, the treasures of the East were no longer hoarded in the old Oriental fashion, but put in circulation and applied to a number of great and useful enterprises. Such were the exploration of the course and mouths of the Indus ; the voyage of Nearchus, which opened the sea- road between the Indus and the Euphrates; the restora tion of the trade of Babylon by removing the weirs which obstructed navigation, and by works on the canals and the Pallacopas; the attempt to discover a sea-way round Arabia, in which Hiero of Soli explored the east coast of the peninsula; and the commission given to Heraclides for exploration of the Caspian. Alexander sought to assure the permanence of the em pire by fusing Greeks and Persians into one mass. Thirty thousand Persians, the so-called eTrtyovoi, were armed and disciplined like Macedonians, and Persians were received on equal footing in the Macedonian corps and even, to the disgust of the Macedonian nobles, in the corps d elite of the cavalry, in which the latter served. Macedonia, in truth, was not populous enough to keep the cadres full. Alexander adopted the regal robes of Persia and the regal state. The court was served by eunuchs, and men kissed the ground before the great king. It was a strange sight for Hellenes when a poor wretch from Messene was ordered to execution because he had inadvertently sat on the kingly throne. 1 To the Greeks a union with a barbarian was no regular marriage ; but the Bactrian Roxana was Alexander s queen. His friends were urged to follow his example ; eighty of his courtiers married Persians on the occasion of the great wedding at Susa, and 10,000 soldiers who had chosen Asiatic wives received gifts on the occasion. Still more startling was the introduction of polygamy ; the king took a second wife, Statira, daughter of Darius, and a third, Parysatis, daughter of Ochus. All this was Persian fashion ; but when Alexander claimed divine honours as the son of Jupiter Ammon he asked both Persians and Macedonians to adopt from the Egyptians the most perfect model of devout submission to their sovereign. Could this compound of nationalities 1 trove more than a kingdom of iron and clay ? The answer ! Pint., Alex., 73. lay in the attitude of that part of its subjects which still retained a vigorous life. The western nations, long schooled to slavery, were passive under the change of rule. The Persians, too, and all western Iran acquiesced after the first conflict was decided. In the east it was not so. Here the northern province of Chorasmia had been independent of the later Acluemenians, and its kings had ruled the great plains as far as the north-east slopes of the Caucasus. 2 Bactria, Sogdiana, Aria, Arachosia, Drangiana, and the borderlands towards India had obeyed Persian satraps, but Bessus and his partisans did not forfeit their allegiance by the murder of Darius. These eastern Iranians, who had no close connexion with Persia, opposed the most obstinate resistance to the conqueror : the Arians rose again and again ; and an energetic chief like Spitamenes could always stir up a party in Sogdiana. These risings began in the castles of the numerous chieftains (vTrap^ot), but it was a national spirit that made them so obstinate and bloody ; the Iranians of Sogdiana and Bactria had acquired in their constant wars with the Turanians a sense of self-respect which the effeminate Medes and Persians wanted. Their situation, too, favoured their resistance ; for their ancient enemies in the desert had a common interest with them in opposing a strong central government, and were easily persuaded to lend them succour or shelter. Sacse and Dahse fought for Bessus, and Spitamenes found refuge with the Massageta? ; the wilderness offered a retreat where regular troops could not follow, and from which a petty warfare could always be renewed. In India the Brahmans had been the soul of a still more vigorous resistance ; they preached revolt to the rajahs of the lower Indus, and were the object of Alexander s special severity. Eastern Iran was the cradle and always remained the chief support of Zoro- astrianism, 3 and religion must have had its part in the patriotic resistance of Bactria and Sogdiana. Alexander forbade the practice of throwing the dying to the dogs (Onesicritus, ap. Strabo, xi. p. 517), which the Bactrians certainly took from the Avesta ; and this was just the kind of decree which drives an Oriental people to despera tion. The Macedonians did pay some attention to Iranian thought ; a magian Osthanes is said to have been in the train of Alexander, and Theopompus, a contemporary of the conqueror, shows the first traces of acquaintance with the Avesta. The Persian tradition that Alexander burned the twenty-one nosks of the original Avesta, and that only one part of the holy book was subsequently recovered from memory, is of course not historical, but it rests on a very true feeling that the new order of things was at irrecon cilable war with the old faith. 4 Alexander desired to fuse the Greeks and barbarians Alex- together, but the practical means directed to this ideal amler s aim were such as brought him into conflict with the natural failine - leaders of the new state. By asking the Greeks as well as the barbarians to worship him as divine he destroyed the whole effect of the theatrical arts in which he was a master, and by which he hoped to recommend his mission as an eminently Hellenic one to the masses ; even Callis- thenes, the enthusiastic herald of the new era, was bitterly undeceived, and, turning against Alexander, fell a victim to the despotism of the man who had been his idol. But, what was still more fatal, the net result of his efforts at a fusion of races was not to Hellenize the Persians but to teach the Macedonians to exchange their old virtues for the effeminacy and vices of the East. It is not fair to say that if the Macedonians had possessed a riper civilization they - So in the Middle Ages Kharezm and Kipchak stood under the same sovereign, and were not included in the realm of Jagatai. 3 Sisimithres s wife was his own mother, a union which the A vesta specially approves. 4 See Spiegel, Z. D. M. G., ix. 174.