The Reign of Darius the Great

From conqueror to administrator

Cyrus took the empire. Cambyses added Egypt. Neither of them had to answer the question **how do you actually run this**, day after day, from one end to the other. Darius did. His reign is remembered less for what he conquered than for the machinery he built: provinces with fixed obligations, roads to move messages, a coinage everyone would accept, and officials watching each other. It is the least dramatic part of this period and the most examinable.

What Darius built

Five pieces of administration, each solving a specific problem.

Match each reform to the problem it solved

Why hand power to governors at all?

Darius had just taken the throne in a crisis. Why would he give provincial governors real power rather than keeping it himself?

• Because the empire was too large to govern from one place, so somebody had to decide locally, and the real question was how to keep those people loyal
• Because he had no interest in administration
• Because he was too weak to refuse the nobles
• Because the Greeks insisted on local self-government

Watching the men who watch the provinces

A governor far from the capital, with soldiers and tax income, is a rebellion waiting to happen. Darius built the answer into the system. A satrap did not control everything in his own province: a **royal secretary** and the commander of the **garrison** reported to the king separately, so no one person held all three of money, records and troops. On top of that, Herodotus and later writers describe **travelling royal inspectors**, sometimes called the King's Eye, arriving to check on a province without warning. The Royal Road matters here too: an inspector who can arrive quickly is a far more frightening prospect than one who takes three months.

What the Royal Road did

Select the TWO statements about the Royal Road that an answer could defend.

• Staging posts with fresh horses meant a royal message travelled far faster than any single rider could manage
• Faster communication tightened royal control, because news of trouble and the response to it both moved quickly
• It was built purely for merchants and had no military or administrative purpose
• It ran from Persia all the way into mainland Greece

How many provinces?

Herodotus gives a specific number of satrapies into which Darius divided the empire. How many? Give the number only.

Two ways to hold an empire

Both worked. They are different answers to the same problem, and comparing them is a standard question on this period.

The reforms in a paragraph

Darius divided the empire into provinces called _____, each governed by a _____ who owed a fixed annual _____. To stop those governors becoming too powerful, the royal secretary and the garrison commander reported to the king _____. The Royal Road ran from Sardis to _____, with staging posts that let a royal message travel in days.

The Ionian Revolt, in order

The Greek cities of Ionia were under Persian rule. Put the revolt into sequence.

• Aristagoras of Miletus raises the Ionian cities against Persian rule (499 BC)
• Athens sends twenty ships and Eretria five to support them
• The rebels march inland and Sardis is burned (498 BC)
• The Persian fleet defeats the Ionians at Lade and Miletus is destroyed (494 BC)
• The revolt is finished and Persian control is restored (493 BC)

Why did twenty ships matter?

Athens sent only twenty ships, and withdrew early. Why is that small contribution so important to what happens next?

• Because it brought Athens to Persian attention as a state that had attacked the empire, which gave Darius a reason to act against mainland Greece
• Because those twenty ships were what allowed the revolt to last four years
• Because it forced Sparta to join the war
• It did not matter; the 490 expedition was planned long before

From a revolt to an invasion

**"Explain why Darius sent an expedition against Greece in 490 BC. (10 marks)"** "The immediate cause was the Ionian Revolt. Athens and Eretria had sent ships to support rebels inside the empire, and Sardis, a Persian provincial capital, was burned. From Darius's side that was not a foreign policy dispute but an attack on his own territory by outsiders, and leaving it unanswered would have invited the next province to try. There was also a longer-term motive: the Greek cities of the Aegean sat on the empire's western edge, and a Persia that controlled them would have a secure frontier rather than a hostile one. Herodotus adds a personal element, telling how Darius had a servant remind him daily to remember the Athenians, though that detail belongs to his storytelling as much as to his evidence." Immediate cause, longer-term cause, and a source used with a health warning attached.

Which claims need a health warning?

A student's notes on Marathon. Tap the TWO claims that rest on figures a historian would not state as fact.

• The battle was fought in 490 BC, and
• the Athenians and Plataeans defeated the Persian force
• .
• Exactly 6,400 Persians were killed against 192 Athenians
• , and
• the empire they came from was divided into precisely twenty satrapies
• .
• Darius died four years later, in 486 BC

Quote a figure safely

Build a sentence that uses Herodotus's casualty figures the way a historian would.

What happened in 490 BC

The expedition sailed under Datis and Artaphernes. Work through what it achieved and what it did not.

• The fleet crossed the Aegean, took Eretria, and landed at Marathon. What was the aim?
• The Athenians, with the Plataeans, won the battle. How much did that settle?
• A student writes that Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory. What should you tell them?

Your turn: what did Darius change?

Assess Darius as a ruler of the Persian Empire, using both his reforms and his dealings with the Greeks.

• Explain two of his administrative reforms and the problem each one solved
• Compare his approach to holding the empire with Cyrus's
• Explain how the Ionian Revolt led to the expedition of 490 BC
• Say what a historian should do with the figures Herodotus gives for this period