Darius the Great

Oretes murders Polycrates.

His daughter felt a presentiment, it seems, that some calamity was impending. She earnestly entreated her father not to go. She had had a dream, she said, about him, which had frightened her excessively, and which she was convinced portended some terrible danger. Polycrates paid no attention to his daughter's warnings. She urged them more and more earnestly, until, at last, she made her father angry, and then she desisted. Polycrates then embarked on board his splendid galley, and sailed away. As soon as he landed in the dominions of Oretes, the monster seized him and put him to death, and then ordered his body to be nailed to a cross, for exhibition to all passers by, as a public spectacle. The train of attendants and servants that accompanied Polycrates on this expedition were all made slaves, except a few persons of distinction, who were sent home in a shameful and disgraceful manner. Among the attendants who were detained in captivity by Oretes was a celebrated family physician, named Democedes, whose remarkable and romantic adventures will be the subject of the next chapter.

He commits other murders.

Oretes committed several other murders and assassinations in this treacherous manner, without any just ground for provocation. In these deeds of violence and cruelty, he seems to have acted purely under the influence of that wanton and capricious malignity which the possession of absolute and irresponsible power so often engenders in the minds of bad men. It is doubtful, however, whether these cruelties and crimes would have particularly attracted the attention of Darius, so long as he was not himself directly affected by them. The central government, in these ancient empires, generally interested itself very little in the contentions and quarrels of the governors of the provinces, provided that the tribute was efficiently collected and regularly paid.

Oretes destroys Darius's messenger.

A case, however, soon occurred, in Oretes's treacherous and bloody career, which arrested the attention of Darius and aroused his ire. Darius had sent a messenger to Oretes, with certain orders, which, it seems, Oretes did not like to obey. After delivering his dispatches the bearer set out on his return, and was never afterward heard of. Darius ascertained, to his own satisfaction at least, that Oretes had caused his messenger to be waylaid and killed, and that the bodies both of horse and rider had been buried, secretly, in the solitudes of the mountains, in order to conceal the evidences of the deed.

Darius is incensed.

Plan of Darius for punishing Oretes.

Darius determined on punishing this crime. Some consideration was, however, required, in order to determine in what way his object could best be effected. The province of Oretes was at a great distance from Susa, and Oretes was strongly established there, at the head of a great force. His guards were bound, it is true, to obey the orders of Darius, but it was questionable whether they would do so. To raise an army and march against the rebellious governor would be an expensive and hazardous undertaking, and perhaps, too, it would prove that such a measure was not necessary. All things considered, Darius determined to try the experiment of acting, by his own direct orders, upon the troops and guards in Oretes's capital, with the intention of resorting subsequently to an armed force of his own, if that should be at last required.

He accordingly called together a number of his officers and nobles, selecting those on whose resolution and fidelity he could most confidently rely, and made the following address to them:

His proposal.

"I have an enterprise which I wish to commit to the charge of some one of your number who is willing to undertake it, which requires no military force, and no violent measures of any kind, but only wisdom, sagacity, and courage. I wish to have Oretes, the governor of Sardis, brought to me, dead or alive. He has perpetrated innumerable crimes, and now, in addition to all his other deeds of treacherous violence, he has had the intolerable insolence to put to death one of my messengers. Which of you will volunteer to bring him, dead or alive, to me?"

Commission of Bagæus.

This proposal awakened a great enthusiasm among the nobles to whom it was addressed. Nearly thirty of them volunteered their services to execute the order. Darius concluded to decide between these competitors by lot. The lot fell upon a certain man named Bagæus, and he immediately began to form his plans and make his arrangements for the expedition.

His plan.

Oretes beheaded.

He caused a number of different orders to be prepared, beginning with directions of little moment, and proceeding to commands of more and more weighty importance, all addressed to the officers of Oretes's army and to his guards. These orders were all drawn up in writing with great formality, and were signed by the name of Darius, and sealed with his seal; they, moreover, named Bagæus as the officer selected by the king to superintend the execution of them. Provided with these documents, Bagæus proceeded to Sardis, and presented himself at the court of Oretes. He presented his own personal credentials, and with them some of his most insignificant orders. Neither Oretes nor his guards felt any disposition to disobey them. Bagæus, being thus received and recognized as the envoy of the king, continued to present new decrees and edicts, from time to time, as occasions occurred in which he thought the guards would be ready to obey them, until he found the habit, on their part, of looking to him as the representative of the supreme power sufficiently established; for their disposition to obey him was not merely tested, it was strengthened by every new act of obedience. When he found, at length, that his hold upon the guards was sufficiently strong, he produced his two final decrees, one ordering the guards to depose Oretes from his power, and the other to behead him. Both the commands were obeyed.

The events and incidents which have been described in this chapter were of no great importance in themselves, but they illustrate, more forcibly than any general description would do the nature and the operation of the government exercised by Darius throughout the vast empire over which he found himself presiding.

Divisions of Darius's empire.

Tribute of the satrapies.

The white horses.

Such personal and individual contests and transactions were not all that occupied his attention. He devoted a great deal of thought and of time to the work of arranging, in a distinct and systematic manner, the division of his dominions into provinces, and to regulating precisely the amount of tribute to be required of each, and the modes of collecting it. He divided his empire into twenty great districts, each of which was governed by a ruler called a satrap. He fixed the amount of tribute which each of these districts was to pay, making it greater or less as the soil and the productions of the country varied in fertility and abundance. In some cases this tribute was to be paid in gold, in others in silver, and in others in peculiar commodities, natural to the country of which they were required. For example, one satrapy, which comprised a country famous for its horses, was obliged to furnish one white horse for every day in the year. This made three hundred and sixty annually, that being the number of days in the Persian year. 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. The western portion of Asia Minor constituted the first, and the East Indian nations the twelfth and last. The East Indians had to pay their tribute in ingots of gold. Their country produced gold.

The gold of India.

As it is now forever too late to separate the facts from the fiction of ancient history, and determine what is to be rejected as false and what received as true, our only resource is to tell the whole story just as it comes down to us, leaving it to each reader to decide for himself what he will believe. In this view of the subject, we will conclude this chapter by relating the manner in which it was said in ancient times that these Indian nations obtained their gold.

Mode of gathering it.

The wonderful ants.

Their prodigious size.

The gold country was situated in remote and dreary deserts, inhabited only by wild beasts and vermin, among which last there was, it seems, a species of ants, which were of enormous size, and wonderful fierceness and voracity, and which could run faster than the fleetest horse or camel. These ants, in making their excavations, would bring up from beneath the surface of the ground all the particles of gold which came in their way, and throw them out around their hills. The Indians then would penetrate into these deserts, mounted on the fleetest camels that they could procure, and leading other camels, not so fleet, by their sides. They were provided, also, with bags for containing the golden sands. When they arrived at the ant hills, they would dismount, and, gathering up the gold which the ants had discarded, would fill their bags with the utmost possible dispatch, and then mount their camels and ride away. The ants, in the mean time, would take the alarm, and begin to assemble to attack them; but as their instinct prompted them to wait until considerable numbers were collected before they commenced their attack, the Indians had time to fill their bags and begin their flight before their enemies were ready. Then commenced the chase, the camels running at their full speed, and the swarms of ants following, and gradually drawing nearer and nearer. At length, when nearly overtaken, the Indians would abandon the camels that they were leading, and fly on, more swiftly, upon those which they rode. While the ants were busy in devouring the victims thus given up to them, the authors of all the mischief would make good their escape, and thus carry off their gold to a place of safety. These famous ants were bigger than foxes!

Chapter VI.

The Reconnoitering of Greece

B.C. 519

The reconnoitering party.

The great event in the history of Darius – the one, in fact, on account of which it was, mainly, that his name and his career have been so widely celebrated among mankind, was an attempt which he made, on a very magnificent scale, for the invasion and conquest of Greece. Before commencing active operations in this grand undertaking, he sent a reconnoitering party to examine and explore the ground. This reconnoitering party met with a variety of extraordinary adventures in the course of its progress, and the history of it will accordingly form the subject of this chapter.

The physician Democedes.

Story of Democedes.

His boyhood.

The guide to this celebrated reconnoitering party was a certain Greek physician named Democedes. Though Democedes was called a Greek, he was, really, an Italian by birth. His native town was Crotona, which may be found exactly at the ball of the foot on the map of Italy. It was by a very singular series of adventures that he passed from this remote village in the west, over thousands of miles by land and sea, to Susa, Darius's capital. He began by running away from his father while he was still a boy. He said that he was driven to this step by the intolerable strictness and cruelty of his father's government. This, however, is always the pretext of turbulent and ungovernable young men, who abandon their parents and their homes when the favors and the protection necessary during their long and helpless infancy have been all received, and the time is beginning to arrive for making some return.

Democedes at Ægina.

Democedes was ingenious and cunning, and fond of roving adventure. In running away from home, he embarked on board a ship, as such characters generally do at the present day, and went to sea. After meeting with various adventures, he established himself in the island of Ægina, in the Ægean sea, where he began to practice as a physician, though he had had no regular education in that art. In his practice he evinced so much medical skill, or, at least, exercised so much adroitness in leading people to believe that he possessed it, as to give him very soon a wide and exalted reputation. The people of Ægina appointed him their physician, and assigned him a large salary for his services in attending upon the sick throughout the island. This was the usual practice in those days. A town, or an island, or any circumscribed district of country, would appoint a physician as a public officer, who was to devote his attention, at a fixed annual salary, to any cases of sickness which might arise in the community, wherever his services were needed, precisely as physicians serve in hospitals and public institutions in modern times.

At Athens.

Democedes remained at Ægina two years, during which time his celebrity increased and extended more and more, until, at length, he received an appointment from the city of Athens, with the offer of a greatly increased salary. He accepted the appointment, and remained in Athens one year, when he received still more advantageous offers from Polycrates, the king of Samos, whose history was given so fully in the last chapter.

At the court of Polycrates.

Democedes a captive.

Democedes remained for some time in the court of Polycrates, where he was raised to the highest distinction, and loaded with many honors. He was a member of the household of the king, enjoyed his confidence in a high degree, and attended him, personally, on all his expeditions. At last, when Polycrates went to Sardis, as is related in the last chapter, to receive the treasures of Oretes, and concert with him the plans for their proposed campaigns, Democedes accompanied him as usual; and when Polycrates was slain, and his attendants and followers were made captive by Oretes, the unfortunate physician was among the number. By this reverse, he found that he had suddenly fallen from affluence, ease, and honor, to the condition of a neglected and wretched captive in the hands of a malignant and merciless tyrant.

He is sent to Darius.

Democedes is cast into prison.

Democedes pined in this confinement for a long time; when, at length, Oretes himself was killed by the order of Darius, it might have been expected that the hour of his deliverance had arrived. But it was not so; his condition was, in fact, made worse, and not better by it; for Bagæus, the commissioner of Darius, instead of inquiring into the circumstances relating to the various members of Oretes's family, and redressing the wrongs which any of them might be suffering, simply seized the whole company, and brought them all to Darius in Susa, as trophies of his triumph, and tokens of the faithfulness and efficiency with which he had executed the work that Darius had committed to his charge. Thus Democedes was borne away, in hopeless bondage, thousands of miles farther from his native land than before, and with very little prospect of being ever able to return. He arrived at Susa, destitute, squalid, and miserable. His language was foreign, his rank and his professional skill unknown, and all the marks which might indicate the refinement and delicacy of the modes of life to which he had been accustomed were wholly disguised by his present destitution and wretchedness. He was sent with the other captives to the prisons, where he was secured, like them, with fetters and chains, and was soon almost entirely forgotten.

His wretched condition.

He might have taken some measures for making his character, and his past celebrity and fame as a physician known; but he did not dare to do this, for fear that Darius might learn to value his medical skill, and so detain him as a slave for the sake of his services. He thought that the chance was greater that some turn of fortune, or some accidental change in the arrangements of government might take place, by which he might be set at liberty, as an insignificant and worthless captive, whom there was no particular motive for detaining, than if he were transferred to the king's household as a slave, and his value as an artisan – for medical practice was, in those days, simply an art – were once known. He made no effort, therefore, to bring his true character to light, but pined silently in his dungeon, in rags and wretchedness, and in a mental despondency which was gradually sinking into despair.