ental mind distinctly implied a claim of independent sovereignty.
Darius taxed him with a design to revolt, and put him to death on the
charge, apparently without exciting any disturbance.

Still, however, the Empire was not wholly tranquillized. A revolt in
Susiana, suppressed by the conspirator Gobryas, and another among the
Sacse of the Tigris, quelled by Darius in person, are recorded on the
rock of Behistun, in a supplementary portion of the Inscription. We
cannot date, unless it be by approximation, these various troubles; but
there is reason to believe that they were almost all contained within
a space not exceeding five or six years. The date of the Behistun
Inscription is fixed by internal evidence to about B.C. 516-515--in
other words, to the fifth or sixth year of the reign of Darius. Its
erection seems to mark the termination of the first period of the reign,
or that of disturbance, and the commencement of the second period, or
that of tranquillity, internal progress, and patronage of the fine arts
by the monarch.

It was natural that Darius, having with so much effort and difficulty
reduced the revolted provinces to obedience, should proceed to consider
within himself how the recurrence of such a time of trouble might be
prevented. His experience had shown him how weak were the ties which had
hitherto been thought sufficient to hold the Empire together, and how
slight an obstacle they opposed to the tendency, which all great empires
have, to disruption. But, however natural it might be to desire a remedy
for the evils which afflicted the State, it was not easy to devise one.
Great empires had existed in Western Asia for above seven hundred years,
and had all suffered more or less from the same inherent weakness; but
no one had as yet invented a cure, or even (so far as appears) conceived
the idea of improving on the rude system of imperial sway which the
first conqueror had instituted. It remained for Darius, not only to
desire, but to design--not only to design, but to bring into action--an
entirely new form and type of government. He has been well called "the
true founder of the Persian state." He found the Empire a crude and
heterogeneous mass of ill-assorted elements, hanging loosely together by
the single tie of subjection to a common head; he left it a compact
and regularly organized body, united on a single well-ordered system,
permanently established everywhere.

On the nature and details of this