organizers of all times and countries. That his feeble successors were
able to keep this Asiatic Colossus of different countries together for
two hundred years after his death, was entirely owing to Darius. He was
liberal of his own, but sparing of his subjects' treasures, and made
truly royal gifts without demanding more than was his due. He introduced
a regular system of taxation, in place of the arbitrary exactions
practised under Cyrus and Cambyses, and never allowed himself to be led
astray in the carrying out of what seemed to him right, either by
difficulties or by the ridicule of the Achaemenidae, who nicknamed him
the "shopkeeper," on account of what seemed, to their exclusively
military tastes, his petty financial measures. It is by no means one of
his smallest merits, that he introduced one system of coinage through his
entire empire, and consequently through half the then known world.

Darius respected the religions and customs of other nations. When the
writing of Cyrus, of the existence of which Cambyses had known nothing,
was found in the archives of Ecbatana, he allowed the Jews to carry on
the building of their temple to Jehovah; he also left the Ionian cities
free to govern their own communities independently. Indeed, he would
hardly have sent his army against Greece, if the Athenians had not
insulted him.

In Egypt he had learnt much; among other things, the art of managing the
exchequer of his kingdom wisely; for this reason he held the Egyptians in
high esteem, and granted them many privileges, amongst others a canal to
connect the Nile with the Red Sea, which was greatly to the advantage of
their commerce.

[Traces of this canal can be found as early as the days of Setos I;
his son Rameses II. caused the works to be continued. Under Necho