The wife of Intaphernes did not decide in favor of either of these. She gave the preference, on the other hand, to a brother. Darius was very much surprised at this result, and sent a messenger to her to inquire how it happened that she could pass over and abandon to their fate her husband and her son, in order to save the life of her brother, who was certainly to be presumed less near and dear to her. To which she gave this extraordinary reply, that the loss of her husband and her son might perhaps be repaired, since it was not impossible that she might be married again, and that she might have another son; but that, inasmuch as both her father and mother were dead, she could never have another brother. The death of her present brother would, therefore, be an irreparable loss.
The king was so much pleased with the novelty and unexpectedness of this turn of thought, that he gave her the life of her son in addition to that of her brother. All the rest of the family circle of relatives and friends, together with Intaphernes himself, he ordered to be slain.
Darius had occasion to be so much displeased, too, shortly after his accession to the throne, with the governor of one of his provinces, that he was induced to order him to be put to death. The circumstances connected with this governor's crime, and the manner of his execution, illustrate very forcibly the kind of government which was administered by these military despots in ancient times. It must be premised that great empires, like that over which Darius had been called to rule, were generally divided into provinces. The inhabitants of these provinces, each community within its own borders, went on, from year to year, in their various pursuits of peaceful industry, governed mainly, in their relations to each other, by the natural sense of justice instinctive in man, and by those thousand local institutions and usages which are always springing up in all human communities under the influence of this principle. There were governors stationed over these provinces, whose main duty it was to collect and remit to the king the tribute which the province was required to furnish him. These governors were, of course, also to suppress any domestic outbreak of violence, and to repel any foreign invasion which might occur. A sufficient military force was placed at their disposal to enable them to fulfill these functions. They paid these troops, of course, from sums which they collected in their provinces under the same system by which they collected the tribute. This made them, in a great measure, independent of the king in the maintenance of their armies. They thus intrenched themselves in their various capitals at the head of these troops, and reigned over their respective dominions almost as if they were kings themselves. They had, in fact, very little connection with the supreme monarch, except to send him the annual tribute which they had collected from their people, and to furnish, also, their quota of troops in case of a national war. In the time of our Savior, Pilate was such a governor, intrusted by the Romans with the charge of Judea, and Matthew was one of the tax gatherers employed to 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 destroying Polycrates, though he had no reason other than this for any feeling of enmity toward him.
Polycrates, although the seat of his dominion was a small island in the Ægean Sea, was a very wealthy, and powerful, and prosperous prince. All his plans and enterprises had been remarkably successful. He had built and equipped a powerful fleet, and had conquered many islands in the neighborhood of his own. He was projecting still wider schemes of conquests, and hoped, in fact, to make himself the master of all the seas.
A very curious incident is related of Polycrates, which illustrates very strikingly the childish superstition which governed the minds of men in those ancient days. It seems that in the midst of his prosperity, his friend and ally, the King of Egypt-for these events, though narrated here, occurred before the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses-sent to him a letter, of which the following is the purport.
"Amasis, king of Egypt, to Polycrates.
"It always gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to hear
of the prosperity of a friend and ally, unless it is too
absolutely continuous and uninterrupted. Something like an
alternation of good and ill fortune is best for man; I have
never known an instance of a very long-continued course of
unmingled and uninterrupted success that did not end, at
last, in overwhelming and terrible calamity. I am anxious,
therefore, for you, and my anxiety will greatly increase if
this extraordinary and unbroken prosperity should continue
much longer. I counsel you, therefore, to break the current
yourself, if fortune will not break it. Bring upon yourself
some calamity, or loss, or suffering, as a means of averting
the heavier evils which will otherwise inevitably befall
you. It is a general and substantial welfare only that can
be permanent and final."
Polycrates seemed to think there was good sense in this suggestion. He began to look around him to see in what way he could bring upon himself some moderate calamity or loss, and at length decided on the destruction of a very valuable signet ring which he kept among his treasures. The ring was made with very costly jewels set in gold, and was much celebrated both for its exquisite workmanship and also for its intrinsic value. The loss of this ring would be, he thought, a sufficient calamity to break the evil charm of an excessive and unvaried current of good fortune. Polycrates, therefore, ordered one of the largest vessels in his navy, a fifty-oared galley, to be equipped and manned, and, embarking in it with a large company of attendants, he put to sea. When he was at some distance from the island, he took the ring, and in the presence of all his attendants, he threw it forth into the water, and saw it sink, to rise, as he supposed, no more.