Gale - Science and Its Times Vol 01 (2000 BC to AD 699).pdf

Indeed the Persians, like the Medes and
Babylonians before them, literally paved the way
for their successors, and in part this occurred
because Persia and Greece became embroiled in
a long, bitter struggle that left the Greeks eager
for retribution. Though Cyrus had been first to
prosecute this conflict, it fell to Darius to fan the
flames. In 516 B.C. he marched against the
Scythians to stop them from supplying the
Greeks with grain, and was prepared to attack
Greece itself. As it turned out, the affairs of ruling
his empire kept Darius busy for many years,
but in 499 B.C. the Ionian city-states forced the
issue by revolting against Persian rule. Soon the
Athenians, Spartans, and others on the mainland
joined their neighbors in Ionia against him, and
the conflict came to a head in 490 B.C. with the
Battle of Marathon, which ended in a Greek victory.
Darius retreated, hoping to attack Greece
again, but he died four years later without
achieving his goal.
During his long reign, however, Darius had
done much to transform the life of Persia. Unlike
Cyrus, who does not seem to have held a
strong religious belief, Darius accepted and
sought to propagate the belief system taught by
the prophet Zoroaster, sometimes called
Zarathustra (c. 628-c. 551). Zoroastrianism proclaimed
that the god Ahura-Mazda was supreme
above all others, and it depicted his opponent
Ahriman as the embodiment of evil: in other
words, the Devil. This idea would have an enormous
impact on the Israelites, many of whom
had stayed in Persia, and all of whom remained
under Persian rule in any case. Old Testament
passages written prior to the Captivity certainly
discussed the nature of evil; but only in the
Book of Isaiah and other later works did the figure
of Satan (a name derived from the Persian
Shaitan) appear in the Jewish scriptures.
Nonetheless, the idea of a Devil never fully
took hold in Judaism, a faith that generally depicts
God as the father of all things, both good
and evil. But as Christianity emerged from Judaism
many centuries later, the concept of Satan
as a distinct being became fixed. So too was the
idea of the struggle between good and evil,
which (with its implication that the struggle
would eventually come to a head at the world’s
end), fueled Christians with a sense of mission.
This in turn influenced the Christian zeal for
hard work and productivity, attitudes that would
ultimately propel the societies of Western Europe
to unparalleled successes in the period after
c. 1450 A.D. (Symbolic of the connection between
Zoroastrianism and Christianity was the
Xerxes, king of Persia.
appearance, as recorded in the Gospels, of three
Magi or Zoroastrian priests who followed a star
to find the baby Jesus.)
As Ahura-Mazda provided a heavenly order,
Darius sought to ensure the earthly order
through what was by far the most efficiently organized
empire up to its time. He set out to establish
a system of justice that would be uniform
throughout the empire, yet would also take into
account local customs. Under his legal reforms,
the provinces had two types of courts: one to administer
law under the Persian legal code and
one to deal with local matters according to the
local system. A system of some 20 satrapies, or
provinces, also allowed a measure of local rule.
The satrap, who was usually a member of the
royal family, had a free hand in ruling his local
area, but of course he was expected to remain
loyal to the emperor in Susa, the Persian capital.
In fact the Persians had three capitals. Susa,
the winter capital reserved for reception of foreign
visitors, lay at the end of the “Royal Road,”
which ran for 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers)
from the former Lydian capital at Sardis; but
Darius built his palace and many other great
structures at Persepolis, a springtime capital hidden
away to the southeast. In summertime he
used Hamadan or Ecbatana in Media. As for the
Royal Road, at the time of its construction it was
one of the longest in the world, and even com-
Exploration
& Discovery
2000 B.C.
to A.D. 699
S C I E N C E A N D I T S T I M E S V O L U M E 1
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