The First Clash (11 page)

Within Persia, this massive transfer of wealth to the center did not represent the full tax burden on the peoples of the empire. As none of these tax receipts were typically transferred back to the provinces, the local satraps collected additional revenues to pay for their own upkeep, infrastructure projects, and defense. This last obligation likely amounted to a sizable sum, as many of the satrapies had hostile neighbors on their borders and were expected to see to their own defense against all but the strongest attacks. However, the tax burden did not end there. In addition to the satraps, there were a large number of subsatraps, regional governors, and other administrators who collected taxes to pay for their own maintenance, which was often extravagant. For instance, the subsatrap for Judah during this time fed 150 of his officers from his own table every day.
¹¹
But even this was not the end. All levels of the Persian government also collected taxes in kind, and tens of thousands of sheep, mules, and horses and tons of foodstuffs, incense, ebony, and ivory were taken by the tax collectors every year.

All of this constituted an enormous burden on the empire’s economy. It would not have been so bad if the government had spent the money or found some other way to keep these funds in circulation. However, it would be two thousand years before Britain discovered that it was better economically to keep its specie in circulation to grow the economy and still have it available through taxes and loans in an emergency. Prior to this, every good ruler tried to store as much bullion as possible in his treasury as insurance in the event of war or bad times. The Persians proved to be masters of the art of hoarding. This would be plainly demonstrated
after Alexander brought the empire crashing down: Reportedly, after the Macedonians captured the Persian royal treasuries, Alexander seized almost 200,000 talents in gold and silver. This must have seemed a fantastic sum for an adventurer who had begun his march of conquest with only 60 talents in his own treasury and owing 500 talents to creditors. It should be noted that this massive sum of Persian treasure was what remained after Darius III had already drawn down vast sums to pay for the war against Alexander and after he made off with 8,000 talents when he fled in the face of Alexander’s approach.

At the beginning of Darius’s reign, the tax burden was onerous and must have built up a degree of resentment, particularly as the pretend Smerdis had promised a three-year tax holiday. However, the historical record does not indicate any trouble or rebellion over the issue. To some degree, this was because after nearly two years of war, most recognized that Darius possessed a formidable military instrument and the will to employ it ruthlessly. A more important factor, though, was that at least at the start of his reign, Darius did not hoard his tax revenues. He clearly understood that the empire was broken and that it would take lavish spending to fix it. In the beginning, this massive spending on reconstruction rehabilitated an economy broken by war.

Darius’s first order of business was to start work on the great royal roads, which stitched his empire together. In scope, these roads were probably equal to the Roman road network at the height of that empire and were designed to serve the same purposes. Cyrus had begun the initial work on this immense construction project. To ease the workload, he directed that the roads follow already existing ancient caravan routes. However, Cyrus only began the project, and there remained much to do following his death. Cambyses made no progress in this area, and it was left to Darius to carry the work forward with a purpose.

Herodotus provides an excellent description of just a section of the Persian road network, from Sardis to Susa, which gives us some idea of the scope of the endeavor and its critical role in holding the empire together. According to Herodotus, it took ninety days for a man to cover the total distance of this section of the road on foot (at seventeen miles per day). At the end of each day’s journey, a traveler would find a government station with accommodations that the ancient historian rated as excellent. Along the way there were a series of guardhouses and toll posts, and at strategic locations (such as the crossing of the Halys River) there were strong fortresses garrisoned by Persian troops. In other historical sources there are
references to additional arms of the road linking Susa with Bactria, India, and the Median capital (Ecbatana).
¹²

For Darius, the royal road served two fundamental purposes. First and foremost, like the Roman road system, the extensive network greatly eased the job of moving the Persian army to any threatened frontier or to any satrapy that dared raise the banner of revolt. Its other purpose was to increase the span of royal control by reducing the communication time between various points of the empire. Herodotus even describes the equivalent of a Persian Pony Express, where way stations with fresh mounts were spaced a day’s ride apart, and messengers handed off their dispatches to the next rider at the end of each day. As Herodotus states, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dark of night keeps them from completing their appointed course as swiftly as possible.”
¹³
Through this post system, Darius was able to send messages from his capital to the governor of any satrapy in a week or less, a phenomenal speed for the time. As others throughout the empire began to use the roads to send messages, Darius instituted a reporting system along the network. Royal inspectors monitored road traffic and read every note being sent within the empire. Regular reports were then sent to Darius detailing the correspondence of every important person in the empire (unimportant people were predictably not allowed to use the post service).

Herodotus further relates a probably apocryphal story of how far some individuals would go to sneak a message past the inspectors. Histiaios, who will play a considerable role later in this book, shaved the head of a loyal slave and tattooed the order to start the Ionian revolt on the bald pate. Once the hair grew back enough to cover the instructions, the messenger was sent on his way.

Darius also lavished money on building a new ornamental capital at Persepolis, as well as on building and beautifying monumental structures throughout that city. He also underwrote monumental buildings in many of the empire’s other great cities and throughout the satrapies, including construction projects such as an early Suez Canal.
¹⁴
In an early proof of Keynesian economic theory, this government spending propelled the empire’s moribund economy into overdrive. Economic growth was further boosted by a renewed and flourishing trading regime, as merchants took advantage of the general peace, the construction of secure new roads, and investments in port facilities to move their wares where they could be sold at the greatest profit. In no small measure, Darius bought the stability of his empire through massive expenditures of government funds. By keeping
most of the empire’s specie in circulation and continually adding more from the royal mints, he made it possible for every region of the empire to enjoy a spell of unparalleled prosperity.

But Darius was the head of a warlike people who were proud of the fact that they had built and held an empire by force of arms. Darius was all too aware that his right to rule was linked directly to his determination and ability to lead the Persians to even greater glory. He could not long continue as a “shopkeeper” if he was to remain in power. Moreover, his experiences in the civil war were a strong reminder of the fact that the Persian army required active employment outside the empire’s frontiers or it would soon create intolerable mischief within. Darius was a warrior, and the call of the saddle and active campaigning was always tugging on him. Therefore as soon as Darius deemed his reorganization had gone far enough to ensure a modicum of stability, he ordered the mobilization of his army at Susa and prepared to march. The regions north of the Hellespont were to be added to the empire.

In doing so, Darius set in motion a series of events whose ramifications went far beyond the battlefield. Foremost among these was that he led the first expedition by an Eastern ruler into what is commonly delineated as “the West.”

Darius’s turn toward war had one immediate negative consequence: The virtuous economic policies of the first years of his reign came to an abrupt end. Renewed war called for new taxes, but now, instead of spending the revenues on infrastructure investments, they were to be wasted in war or hoarded in vast treasuries. This rapid removal of currency from circulation first slowed economic growth and then threw it into reverse. Particularly hard hit were the trading centers along the Ionian coast, which could no longer obtain sufficient currency to continue their economic expansion. Moreover, the impressment of the Ionian trading fleet to provide logistical support for the war opened the door for competitors to seize lucrative trading opportunities. Here was the root cause of the coming Ionian revolt, which soon plunged the empire into its greatest crisis since the end of the civil war, and for the first time pitted the Persian Empire directly against the armed might of the Greek mainland.

THE RISE OF GREECE

THE RISE OF ATHENS

F
or most of its early history, Attica was the rural backwater of Greece. Its only achievement worthy of note prior to the classical age was to unify itself into a single political structure with Athens at its center. Given the nature of Attica’s poor soil, which was barely sufficient for most of its farmers to produce a subsistence crop, one could be forgiven for thinking its prospects bleak at the dawn of the seventh century BC. That it did eventually become a Mediterranean superpower was a result of two major developments that revolutionized Athenian life and the effects of which continue to permeate Western civilization today. The first of these was to put at risk the certain but limited prospects of an agriculture-based economy for a perilous but potentially far more profitable one based on trade. This transition made Athens the richest city-state in Greece and gave it the economic might first to resist Persia and later to build an empire of its own. The second and no less significant act was Athens’s break from the traditions of Greek politics through its rejection of aristocracy and tyranny in favor of democracy.

Neither of these outcomes was ever certain. For democracy, in particular, the foundation was always shaky, and several times it appeared as though the challenges to creating a democratic society would prove insurmountable. Only after decades of discord was Athens at last able to temper the baser instincts of its noble families and to form a government that gave a voice in the city’s affairs to the mass of male citizens.

With respect to the Battle of Marathon, both of these developments were of great significance. From Herodotus we know that Athens put at least nine thousand of its own hoplites into the battle, and I argue it probably
had several thousand more hoplites in the immediate vicinity of Marathon. Considering that even a single trained, fully armed, and armored hoplite was an expensive proposition, the cost of fielding over ten thousand hoplites was far beyond anything Athens could have afforded if it had stuck to its agricultural roots. Only by vastly increasing its wealth through trade was it able to afford the mobilization and equipping of an army capable of matching the might of Persia.
¹
As for the effects of democracy, even the Greeks of the period felt it gave them a moral supremacy on the battlefield, and as Napoleon said, “even in war moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.” As Herodotus noted about Athens’s first decisive military victory as a democratic city: