n was required to furnish its satrap daily with an _ardeb_ of
silver; Egypt, India, Media, and Syria each provided a no less generous
allowance for its governor, and the poorest provinces were not less
heavily burdened. The satraps required almost as much to satisfy their
requirements as did the king; but for the most part they fairly earned
their income, and saved more to their subjects than they extorted
from them. They repressed brigandage, piracy, competition between the
various cities, and local wars; while quarrels, which formerly would
have been settled by an appeal to arms, were now composed before their
judgment-seats, and in case of need the rival factions were forcibly
compelled to submit to their decisions. They kept up the roads,
and afforded complete security to travellers by night and day; they
protected industries and agriculture, and, in accordance with the
precepts of their religious code, they accounted it an honourable task
to break up waste land or replant deserted sites. Darius himself did
not disdain to send congratulations to a satrap who had planted trees
in Asia Minor, and laid out one of those wooded parks in which the king
delighted to refresh himself after the fatigues of government, by the
exercise of walking or in the pleasures of the chase. In spite of its
defects, the system of government inaugurated by Darius secured real
prosperity to his subjects, and to himself a power far greater than that
enjoyed by any of his predecessors. It rendered revolts on the part of
the provincial governors extremely difficult, and enabled the court to
draw up a regular budget and provide for its expenses without any undue
pressure on its subjects; in one point only was it defective, but that
point was a cardinal one, namely, in the military organisation. Darius
himself maintained, for his personal protection, a bodyguard recruited
from the Persians and the Medes. It was divided into three corps,
consisting respectively of 2000 cavalry, 2000 infantry of noble birth,
armed with lances whose shafts were ornamented below with apples of gold
or silver--whence their name of _melophori_--and under them the 10,000
"immortals," in ten battalions, the first of which had its lances
ornamented with golden pomegranates. This guard formed the nucleus of
the standing army, which could be reinforced by the first and second
grades of Persian and Median feudal nobility at the first summons.
Forces of varying strength garriso