Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C.; History, Ancient
88. So Dareios the son of Hystaspes had been declared king; and in Asia
all except the Arabians were his subjects, having been subdued by
Cyrus and again afterwards by Cambyses. The Arabians however were never
obedient to the Persians under conditions of subjection, but had become
guest-friends when they let Cambyses pass by to Egypt: for against the
will of the Arabians the Persians would not be able to invade Egypt.
Moreover Dareios made the most noble marriages possible in the
estimation of the Persians; for he married two daughters of Cyrus,
Atossa and Artystone, of whom the one, Arossa, had before been the
wife of Cambyses her brother and then afterwards of the Magian, while
Artystone was a virgin; and besides them he married the daughter of
Smerdis the son of Cyrus, whose name was Parmys; and he also took to
wife the daughter of Otanes, he who had discovered the Magian; and all
things became filled with his power. And first he caused to be a carving
in stone, and set it up; and in it there was the figure of a man on
horseback, and he wrote upon it writing to this effect: "Dareios son of
Hystaspes by the excellence of his horse," mentioning the name of it,
"and of his horse-keeper Oibares obtained the kingdom of the Persians."
89. Having so done in Persia, he established twenty provinces, which the
Persians themselves call satrapies; and having established the provinces
and set over them rulers, he appointed tribute to come to him from them
according to races, joining also to the chief races those who dwelt on
their borders, or passing beyond the immediate neighbours and assigning
to various races those which lay more distant. He divided the provinces
and the yearly payment of tribute as follows: and those of them
who brought in silver were commanded to pay by the standard of the
Babylonian talent, but those who brought in gold by the Euboïc talent;
now the Babylonian talent is equal to eight-and-seventy Euboïc pounds.
74 For in the reign of Cyrus, and again of Cambyses, nothing was fixed
about tribute, but they used to bring gifts: and on account of this
appointing of tribute and other things like this, the Persians say that
Dareios was a shopkeeper, Cambyses a master, and Cyrus a father; the
one because he dealt with all his affairs like a shopkeeper, the second
because he was harsh and had little regard for any one, and the other
because he was gentle and contrived for them all things good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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