Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/253

 SATRAPIES AND REVENUE. 23S t&ry 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indeed, by oppressive interference ~n the part of the satrap, whenever any of his passions prompted, but never entirely superseded. In the important towns and sta- tions, Persian garrisons were usually kept, and against the excesses of the military there was probably little or no protec- tion 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 indepen- dence prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dig- nity as tributaries to the court of Susa. 1 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, 2 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. 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 Baby- lonian, or larger talent, by the remaining nineteen. Herodotus computes the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1. From the nine- teen satrapies which paid in silver, there was levied annually 1 Herodot. iii, 15. ne. ; r, Geograph. Memoir of Persia, pp. 29, 43 47
 * Respecting the administration of the modern Persian empire, see Kin