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Darius' kingdom was so large that it was quite impossible for one person to govern it without help. He therefore divided it into satrapies, or provinces, each of which was under the care of a satrap, or governor. These men received their orders from the king, saw that they were obeyed in all the territory under their care, and kept Darius informed of all that was going on.
Then Darius divided the Persian empire into twenty satrapies, whereof each one paid its own tribute, save Persia itself, and he was lord of all Asia, and Egypt also. In the days of Cambyses, Polycrates was despot of Samos, being the first who ever thought to make himself a ruler of the seas. And he had prospered marvellously.
"Hard is it, O Persian, when the choice is actually before him, for a man to renounce his country. There have been hours within this very day when my desires swept afar from Sparta, from all Hellas, and rested on the tranquil pomp of Oriental Satrapies.
Antiochus the Great, the natural ally of Philip, had, after the decisive victory of the Egyptians at Raphia in 537, to deem himself fortunate in obtaining peace from the indolent Philopator on the basis of the -status quo ante-. The rivalry of the Lagidae and the constant apprehension of a renewed outbreak of the war on the one hand, and insurrections of pretenders in the interior and enterprises of all sorts in Asia Minor, Bactria, and the eastern satrapies on the other, prevented him from joining that great anti-Roman alliance which Hannibal had in view.
A definite money payment, varying, in ordinary satrapies, from 170 to 1000 Babylonian silver talents,330 or from L42,000. to L250,000. of our money, and amounting, in the exceptional case of the Indian satrapy, to above a million sterling, was required annually by the sovereign, and had to be remitted by the satrap to the capital.
The various kingdoms which composed this empire, once independent, yielded to the conquerors who reigned at Babylon, or Nineveh, or Persepolis, and formed satrapies paying tribute to the great king.
And, son of Hur, while the vision was passing, and after it was gone, I kept asking myself, 'What shall he not have who served the King earliest and best?" Again Ben-Hur recoiled. The question was the very question which had been with him all day. Presently he fancied he had the clew he wanted. "So," he said, "I have you now. The satrapies and crowns are the things to which you would help me.
Asia The second of the great states, Asia, was nothing but Persia superficially remodelled and Hellenized the empire of "the king of kings," as its master was wont to call himself in a style characteristic at once of his arrogance and of his weakness with the same pretensions to rule from the Hellespont to the Punjab, and with the same disjointed organization; an aggregate of dependent states in various degrees of dependence, of insubordinate satrapies, and of half-free Greek cities.
Such a supply, furnished yearly, enabled the king soon to have a very large troop of white horses; and as the horses were beautifully caparisoned, and the riders magnificently armed, the body of cavalry thus formed was one of the most splendid in the world. The satrapies were numbered from the west toward the east.
A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive.
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