there was probably little or no protection 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 independence prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dignity as tributaries to the court of Susa.[422] 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,[423] 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. [420] Herodot. iii, 89. What the Persian denomination was, which Herodotus or his informants translated κάπηλος, we do not know; but this latter word was used often by Greeks to signify a cheat, or deceiver generally: see Etymologic. Magn. p. 490, 11, and Suidas, v. Κάπελος. Ὁ δ᾽ Αἴσχυλος τὰ δόλια πáντα καλεῖ κάπηλα—“Κάπηλα προσφέρων τεχνήματα.” (Æschylus, Fragment. 328, ed. Dindorf: compare Euripid. Hippolyt. 953.) [421] Herodot. iii, 128. This division of power, and double appointment by the Great King, appears to have been retained until the close of the Persian empire: see Quintus Curtius, v, l, 17-20 (v, 3, 19-21, Zumpt). The present Turkish government nominates a Defterdar as finance administrator in each province, with authority derived directly from itself, and professedly independent of the Pacha. [422] Herodot. iii, 15. [423] Respecting the administration of the modern Persian empire, see Kinneir, Geograph. Memoir of Persia, pp. 29, 43, 47. 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 Babylonian, or larger talent, by the remaining nineteen. Herodotus computes the ratio of gold to silver as 13 : 1. From the nineteen satrapies which paid in silver, there was levied annually the sum of seven thousand seven hundred and forty Babylonian talents, equal to something about two million nine hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds sterling: from the Indians, who alone paid in gold, there was received a sum equal (at the rate of 1 : 13) to four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents of silver, or to about one million two hundred and ninety thousand pounds sterling.[424]