That this vast dominion should be loosely compacted was of the nature of things. The twenty or more provinces into which it was divided enjoyed a large measure of self-government, and had preserved, for the most part, their native laws and customs unaltered. Each of these divisions was ruled by a satrap who, like a Chinese viceroy, was allowed to maintain armies and even fleets of his own. But a check, imperfect no doubt but still existent, was exercised over his proceedings by the presence of a Royal Secretary in each satrapy, whose business it was to supervise the accounts, and to send up regular reports to the capital of the doings, of his coadjutor[31], while the troops were under the command of a general appointed directly by the Crown. From time to time, also, a Royal Commissioner called the King’s Eye visited the province with a strong guard to hear complaints and to see that all was in order[32]. The satrap, too, only held his post during his master’s pleasure, and was liable at any moment to be removed to another province, degraded, or put to death, on the strength of a simple letter bearing the Royal Seal; and the tribute which each satrapy had to pay to the Great King being settled at a fixed and known amount, there was less chance than under some similar systems of devolution that the satrap might squeeze out of his subjects a sum far greater than that which he transmitted to the Treasury[33]. Above all, the Persians were of Aryan stock, and early showed signs of the talent for governing older races which seems to have stuck to the Aryans throughout their history. They made excellent roads, and established swift running posts that did much to make communication easy between the most important parts of their empire; while, as the satraps’ standing armies were composed either of native Persians or hired mercenaries, the subject populations had an opportunity, rare enough in the ancient world, of peacefully developing their internal resources without constant fear of disturbance by foreign enemies, or forced participation in wars of aggression[34]. It was only when the word went forth from Babylon or Susa, Ecbatana or Persepolis, for the calling-out of the Ban of the whole Empire that the other than Persian subject of Artaxerxes or Darius had to join the levy of his satrapy, and, on orders given to him through an interpreter, to assist the Great King in crushing some rebellious satrap or repelling foreign invasion. At other times, he must have known him only as a kind of divinity, having power to throw down and to set up, to whom he might cry, not always in vain, against the oppression of his own immediate ruler. Those writers are no doubt justified who say that the government of the Persian Empire was to the humbler classes of Asiatics a great improvement upon any that had preceded it[35], and that the rule of the Great King never awoke the fierce resentment in its subjects aroused by