o collect the tribute.

Of course, the governors of such provinces, as we have already said,
were, in a great measure, independent of the king. He had, ordinarily,
no officers of justice whose jurisdiction could control, peacefully,
such powerful vassals. The only remedy in most cases, when they were
disobedient and rebellious, was to raise an army and go forth to make
war upon them, as in the case of any foreign state. This was attended
with great expense, and trouble, and hazard. The governors, when
ambitious and aspiring, sometimes managed their resources with so much
energy and military skill as to get the victory over their sovereign
in the contests in which they engaged with them, and then they would
gain vast accessions to the privileges and powers which they exercised
in their own departments; and they would sometimes overthrow their
discomfited sovereign entirely, and take possession of his throne
themselves in his stead.

Oretes was the name of one of these governors in the time of Darius.
He had been placed by Cyrus, some years before, in charge of one of
the provinces into which the kingdom of Lydia had been divided. The
seat of government was Sardis.[D] He was a capricious and cruel
tyrant, as, in fact, almost all such governors were. We will relate
an account of one of the deeds which he performed some time before
Darius ascended the throne, and which sufficiently illustrates his
character.

[Footnote D: For the position of Sardis, and of other places mentioned
in this chapter, see the map at the commencement of the volume, and
also that at the commencement of chapter xi.]

He was one day sitting at the gates of his palace in Sardis, in
conversation with the governor of a neighboring territory who had come
to visit him. The name of this guest was Mitrobates. As the two
friends were boasting to one another, as such warriors are accustomed
to do, of the deeds of valor and prowess which they had respectively
performed, Mitrobates said that Oretes could not make any great
pretensions to enterprise and bravery so long as he allowed the Greek
island of Samos, which was situate at a short distance from the Lydian
coast, to remain independent, when it would be so easy to annex it to
the Persian empire. "You are afraid of Polycrates, I suppose," said
he. Polycrates was the king of Samos.

Oretes was stung by this taunt, but, instead of revenging himself on
Mitrobates, the author of it, he resolved on destroyi