of its subject peoples as have mattered most in the later story of
mankind. It should be remarked that the new universal power is not only
non-Semitic for the first time in well-certified history, but controlled
by a very pure Aryan stock, much nearer kin to the peoples of the West
than any Oriental folk with which they have had intimate relations
hitherto. The Persians appeared from the Back of Beyond, uncontaminated
by Alarodian savagery and unhampered by the theocratic prepossessions
and nomadic traditions of Semites. They were highlanders of unimpaired
vigour, frugal habit, settled agricultural life, long-established social
cohesion and spiritual religious conceptions. Possibly, too, before they
issued from the vast Iranian plateau, they were not wholly unversed in
the administration of wide territories. In any case, their quick
intelligence enabled them to profit by models of imperial organization
which persisted in the lands they now acquired; for relics of the
Assyrian system had survived under the New Babylonian rule, and perhaps
also under the Median. Thereafter the experience gained by Cambyses in
Egypt must have gone for something in the imperial education of his
successor Darius, to whom historians ascribe the final organization of
Persian territorial rule. From the latter's reign onward we find a
regular provincial system linked to the centre as well as might be by a
postal service passing over state roads. The royal power is delegated to
several officials, not always of the ruling race, but independent of
each other and directly responsible to Susa: these live upon their
provinces but must see to it first and foremost that the centre receives
a fixed quota of money and a fixed quota of fighting men when required.
The Great King maintains royal residences in various cities of the
empire, and not infrequently visits them; but in general his viceroys
are left singularly free to keep the peace of their own governorates and
even to deal with foreign neighbours at their proper discretion.