While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the distinct types of civilization in western Asia,—not by elevating the worse, but by degrading the better,—upon the native Persians themselves they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike propensities. Not only did the territory of Persis proper pay no tribute to Susa or Ekbatana,—being the only district so exempted between the Jaxartês and the Mediterranean,—but the vast tributes received from the remaining empire were distributed to a great degree among its inhabitants. Empire to them meant,—for the great men, lucrative satrapies, or pachalics, with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of the Great King, and standing armies which they employed at their own discretion, sometimes against each other,[382]—for the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troop which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. And if the entire population of Persis proper did not migrate from their abodes to occupy some of those more inviting spots which the immensity of the imperial dominion furnished,—a dominion extending (to use the language of Cyrus the younger, before the battle of Kunaxa)[383] from the region of insupportable heat to that of insupportable cold,—this was only because the early kings discouraged such a movement, in order that the nation might maintain its military hardihood,[384] and be in a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers. [382] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 1, 8. [383] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 6; Cyropæd. viii, 6, 19. [384] Herodot. ix, 122.