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Conservation Biology
Box 6.1 Success Story Ecosystem Markets and Payments for Ecosystem
How New York City Keeps Its Drinking Services 177
Water Clean 159
8 Extinction 215
Global Patterns of Endangerment
The IUCN Red List 216
216 Local Changes in Biodiversity
Species-area relationships 230
230
10 Overexploitation 293
History of Overexploitation 294
Psychology of Overexploitation 297
Subsistence overexploitation 314
Recreational overexploitation 317
Types of Overexploitation 299 Box 10.3 Success Story
Commercial exploitation 299 The Taimen Conservation Project 322
Glossary G-1
References R-1
Index I-1
Earth is home to a spectacular variety of life. Humans share the planet with more
than a million described species, and there are probably another 8 million multicellular
companions that are unknown to science, and as many as 1 trillion types of unicellular
prokaryotic organisms we have yet to discover. This amazing biodiversity is the most
striking feature of our planet, and the only thing that makes Earth unique.
But the variety of life on our planet is in trouble. Humans now dominate every eco-
system on Earth, and we have co-opted the vast majority of limited resources for our-
selves. As this book goes to press, an inferno is destroying the Amazon rainforest at an
alarming rate as illegal clearing and burning makes way for cattle ranching. So it is no
surprise that biodiversity is being lost at rates that are unprecedented in human history.
We are at a crossroads. We have just a few generations to learn how to be good stew-
ards of our natural resources, and to live sustainably alongside the other nonhuman
species that share our planet. If we do not succeed, much of the biodiversity on Earth,
perhaps the majority of it, will be lost for good.
engineering and architecture to help plan, design, and construct practical solutions
to problems. Modern conservation also relies on disciplines from the humanities that
compose law and policy, and that communicate effectively through literature, art, and
photography. Interdisciplinary approaches to conservation are integrated throughout
the text, and form the foundation for several individual chapters.
Acknowledgments
We want to thank the large number of individuals who provided us with data, figures,
and tables that are used throughout this textbook. The next generation of practitioners
will stand atop your work. We extend our sincere gratitude to the many individuals who
graciously reviewed various chapters to help us improve this book. This includes several
anonymous reviewers, as well as the following outstanding individuals:
Bradley J. Cardinale
Richard B. Primack
James D. Murdoch
August 2019
Conservation Biology
oup.com/he/cardinale1e
For the Student For the Instructor
The Companion Website for Conservation Biology, (Instructor resources are available to adopting
First Edition, provides students with study and instructors online. Registration is required. Please
review tools to help them master the material contact your Oxford University Press representative
presented in the textbook, all free of charge and to request access.)
requiring no access code.
The Instructor Resources for Conservation Biology,
The site includes the following resources: First Edition, include a variety of tools to help
instructors incorporate visual resources into their
Videos and Audio – Engaging media clips
lectures and course materials and enhance student
provide information and inspiration on a range
learning. The site includes:
of conservation biology topics.
Suggested Exercises– Students can learn Figure JPGs– Includes all of the figures and
essential skills and practice analyzing real data tables from the textbook, formatted for optimal
with these thoughtful exercises. legibility when projected. Complex images are
provided in both whole and split versions.
Web Links– Connect with the many
organizations and institutions discussed in the Figure PowerPoint Slides– Features all the
text with helpful web links. figures and tables from each chapter, with titles
on each slide, and complete captions in the
Chapter Outlines– Useful study aids summarize
“notes” field.
each chapter’s key concepts.
Suggested Exercise Resources– For many of
Flashcards– Students can gain mastery over each
the Suggested Exercises, instructors have access
chapter’s key vocabulary and concepts with this
to helpful materials, such as preformatted
helpful flashcard set.
spreadsheets for data-analysis exercises and
answers to exercise assessments.
© Katesalin Pagkaihang/Shutterstock.com
B
y many if not most measures, humans are the most
remarkably successful species to ever inhabit planet
Earth. We have evolved one of the largest brains per
body size that exists in the animal kingdom, which has given
us an unparalleled intellectual capacity and ability to reason.
Our species is one of the more social organisms on the planet
(particularly among mammals), which has led to cooperation,
advanced learning, and a division of labor that has fostered
our success. Our mastery of tools and our technological
advances are unparalleled among other life-forms. These, and
other qualities, have allowed our species population to grow
rapidly and to conquer and dominate more of the planet than
almost any previous organism.
But there is one measure that humans do not yet excel
in, compared with other species—longevity. Homo sapiens
have existed on this planet for a mere 200,000 years, which is
but a fraction of the time that most species survive on Earth.
Will humans be able to sustain themselves for another million
years and achieve the longevity that is typical for one of Earth’s
species? Many of the very qualities that have allowed us to
be so remarkably successful thus far are eroding the natural
infrastructure of the planet—the collection of genes, spe-
Orangutans are presently found only in the rain
cies, and biological communities that compose the natural and forests of Borneo and Sumatra, where they are
managed ecosystems on which people depend. threatened with extinction by deforestation.
growth of the human population to convey with graphs or words (Video 1.1). No large vertebrate animal in the
over time. history of the planet has ever grown as quickly, and with as much success, as
oup-arc.com/e/cardinale-v1.1 Homo sapiens, and that is a testament to our unique intellect, innovation, and
technological advances as a species.
The human population recently passed an inflection point called the demo-
graphic transition, where global growth has now shifted from unconstrained,
0
1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 2050
Year
Years (in billions)
Hadean Archean Proterozoic Phanerozoic
BKK/Shutterstock.com
forms evidence (Apex oxygen nucleus animals
for life Chert)
Evidence
for oceans
© Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com
1000
in the value of children’s work.1 Eco-
logical triggers include limitation by
Maximum population (billions)
ranges from 7.7 to 12 billion,4 which closely matches projections from the United
Nations. Given that the human population is already at the lower bound of these
estimates, and given that the world’s current growth rate of 1.14% has a potential
doubling time of 61 years, those reading this book will likely be the first people in
history to know what Earth’s carrying capacity actually is for humans.
Given the staggering growth of the human population, it is perhaps surprising
that the “average” person born in the modern era will live a longer, healthier, and
more prosperous life than the average person born in any other period of human
history. Mortality rates in premodern countries for children under the age of five
were routinely 300 to 500 deaths per 1000 live births.5 But during the twentieth
century, modern medicine, central heating, improved hygiene, cleaner water, and
access to more food have all helped reduce infant mortality to historically low
rates (Figure 1.3A).6 Those born in the premodern world had life expectancies of
a mere 30 years.5 Since 1900 the global average life expectancy has more than
doubled, exceeding 76 years at the start of the twenty-first century. The average
person in the modern era will also have a better standard of living compared with
his or her ancestors. Since the 1800s, the global gross domestic product (GDP)
per capita has increased more than tenfold (Figure 1.3B).7 Modern technology and
the green revolution have led to nearly a doubling of per capita caloric intake
in modernized countries,8 and the per capita calorie supply has been increasing
steadily in nearly all regions of the globe since the 1960s.9
While conditions have improved for the “average” person on the planet, the
benefits of economic development have been unequally distributed across the
globe, leading to vast inequalities among countries and among those living in
individual countries (Video 1.2). For example, although Americans constitute
Video 1.2 Consider the just 5% of the world’s population, they consume 24% of the world’s energy.10,11
▲
argument for a more equitable If everyone on the planet consumed as much energy, food, water, minerals,
future for humanity. and space as the average U.S. citizen, we would need four Earths to sustain
oup-arc.com/e/cardinale-v1.2 them. There are also huge disparities among individuals. The wealthiest 10%
of the world’s population accounts for 59% of all consumption on the planet,
(B)
(A) 8000
2008
175 80 7000
Infant mortality ( per 1,000 births)
150 76 6000
World GDP per capita
60
125 5000
47 Life expectancy
100 4000 GDP has been
increases while infant
© iStock.com/Sezeryadigar
40 rising exponentially.
75 morality rates drop. 3000
Infant
50 2000
mortality 20
25 1000
7
0 0 0
1900 1950 2000 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000
Year Year
Figure 1.3 The average child born in the modern era will have 1900–1970, U.S. Public Health Service, Vital Statistics of the
(A) a greater chance of survival and a higher life expectancy United States, Vols. 1 and 2; 1971–1997, U.S. National Center for
and (B) greater per capita wealth than any generation in human Health Statistics, Vital Statistics of the United States; National Vital
history. The resulting population growth and consumption, Statistics Report [NVSR] [formerly Monthly Vital Statistics Report];
particularly in fully developed countries, will be a major challenge and unpublished data; B, data from A. Maddison. 2009. Statistics
for conservation efforts. (A, data from U.S. Census Bureau, on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1–2008 AD.
Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1999. Compiled from © Angus Maddison/University of Groningen.)
whereas 1.3 billion people continue to live in absolute poverty, surviving on less
than US$1.25 per day (Figure 1.4).12 Still another billion people live in sufficient
poverty that they are malnourished, with food shortages disproportionately
represented in less-developed countries of the world. While the number of poor
and malnourished people is lower than recorded a few decades ago (suggest-
ing that some progress has been made), the need to alleviate the suffering of
those living in extreme poverty is still considered to be the greatest challenge
to achieving a sustainable human population on the planet.
Land
More than 50% of the inhabitable land surface of the planet has now been
transformed in some way to support the growing human population.13 To date,
5 billion hectares (50 million km 2 ) of natural habitat have been converted to
croplands and pastures,14 and an additional 350 million hectares (3.5 million
km2 ) of the world’s land surface have been converted into urban environments.15
H. i. 77.
With these two states Crœsus entered into
negotiations, which resulted in the formation of a
grand alliance, having for its object the suppression of the power
which was so rapidly developing in the East.
The negotiations of Crœsus were not confined to the great
powers. He sought and obtained allies in European Greece. The
Lydian kings had had a long experience of the value of the Greek
heavy-armed infantryman. Greek hoplites had fought many a time
both with and against them. The addition of a
LYDIA AND SPARTA.
contingent of them to the grand army which the
king was now gathering together would be of inestimable value.
There was evidently a difficulty about his obtaining such a force from
the Greek cities of Asia; nor can there be any reasonable doubt as to
where that difficulty lay. These cities had within the last few years
been robbed of much of that measure of autonomy which they had
up to that time enjoyed, and upon which they had set a value out of
proportion, doubtless, to its real worth. The vivid discontent which
such a loss must have aroused in Greek minds, a discontent the
depth of which the experience of ages would enable the Lydian to
gauge, would inevitably render them dangerous elements in a Lydian
army. The cities did, indeed, with one exception, remain proof
against Cyrus’ attempts to tamper with their loyalty; but their attitude
at the time was probably as much due to caution as to fidelity. Their
geographical position would not allow them to accept risks against
Lydia.
It was, therefore, to Greece itself that Crœsus turned. The
relations which he had so assiduously cultivated with Delphi enabled
H. i. 69.
him to obtain its assistance in the negotiations. The
outcome was, so Herodotus says, that Sparta, partly
persuaded by the oracle, partly flattered by the Lydian embassy,
consented to give aid in the war. Moreover, the way to this alliance
had been previously paved with Lydian gold.
It is true that this contingent never reached Lydia. Ere it had
actually started, Sardes had fallen and Crœsus was either dead or a
prisoner. Whether the delay in despatching it was intentional or not,
the satisfactorily attested fact of such an alliance having been made
is evidence that the Lydia of that day exercised a very real influence
in Greece. Of the danger to which Hellenic civilization was exposed
by Lydian friendship, enough has been already said.
That friendship was genuine and unaffected on the side, at any
rate, of the Greeks. The relations of Crœsus with Delphi must have
been largely instrumental in forming it; but what happened in relation
to this very war showed clearly that the feeling of Greece towards
Crœsus was built upon wider foundations. The Greeks had come to
regard him as a distinguished convert to that Hellenism they so
much loved. The impression may have been false, but it was
powerful. “He loveth our nation” is an article in a national creed
whose possibilities can be hardly exaggerated. That the feeling had
become independent of the relations with Delphi is conspicuously
shown in the present instance by the fact that it was Delphi which
administered to it a shock which the Greek world took long to forget.
The remembrance of it was evidently vivid a hundred years later in
the time of Herodotus.
It came about as follows. Anxious as to the issue of the great
venture upon which he was entering, Crœsus sought to fortify or
defeat his own resolution by inquiring of the oracles as to what the
future had in store for him.
H. i. 53.
Two of the oracles consulted, of which Delphi was
one, answered that “if he warred with the Persians he
would overthrow a mighty empire.” The response was capable of two
interpretations, of which Crœsus seized upon the most obvious; and
was thus, so the Greeks thought, led to his undoing. Despite the
pious faith with which Herodotus regards the utterances of the
Delphic oracle, he is unable to conceal the tremendous shock which
this apparent deception caused to Hellenic sentiment all the world
over. To the Greek it appeared as though the oracle had betrayed its
best friend and his also. Even in the cities of Asia, chafing though
they were under recent subjugation, this feeling must have found
some echo, whose resonance lasted till Herodotus’ own time. It is
unlikely that he would ever have disclosed its existence had not the
feeling been very widespread in the Hellenic world he loved. The
H. i. 90.
legendary story which he relates of the conversation
between Crœsus and Cyrus, expresses evidently a
feeling entertained by many besides Crœsus himself; and in the
chapter which follows upon this tale, he shows that the Delphic
oracle was forced by public opinion to attempt to explain away the
apparent deception it had practised. The true
FALL OF THE
LYDIAN KINGDOM.
explanation, which would have relieved it of a
large part of the burden of the moral guilt, was
one it dare not give in view of the prophetic character which it had to
maintain before the eyes of the world. Prophecy founded upon
intimate knowledge of Greek affairs was very far from being the
mere guesswork, wrapped in enigma, of its utterances relative to
matters deep in Asia, of which it can have had no real ken.
The account of the campaign given by Herodotus is full of
inconsistencies; but by comparison of his story with other incidental
references to it in various sources, it is possible to arrive at an
understanding of the main outlines of what took place.
The great coalition might have taken Cyrus by surprise, had not
the plans of Crœsus been divulged to him by an Ephesian traitor, if a
tale preserved by Diodorus is to be believed. The mere fact that he
was able to anticipate the designs of Crœsus renders it probable that
some disclosure of the kind did take place.
Forewarned and forearmed, Cyrus executed a rapid and
adventurous march through the northern territories of the Babylonian
kingdom, and must have been already near the Taurus before
Crœsus received from his ally Nabonidus news of the coming attack.
He was but half-prepared; but the danger was so imminent that he
had to take the field with the force he had with him, while he sent
urgent messages to his allies to come with all speed to help him. He
H. i. 75.
crossed the Halys into the district of Pteria, which he
laid waste as a defensive measure. The historians,
Herodotus and Polyænus, are hopelessly at variance as to what
happened in the actual fighting that ensued. A great battle did take
place: that is certain. It is also certain that after the battle Crœsus
retired through Phrygia to Sardes; but whether he did so because he
had been defeated, or because he had inflicted a severe check on
Cyrus, and expected that a diversion on the part of the Babylonians
would make it impossible for him to advance towards Sardes in the
winter, is unknown. In any case, Nabonidus did not move, and Cyrus
surprised Crœsus in Lydia. Crœsus, caught unprepared, made a
desperate defence with such forces as he could collect; but he was
shut up in Sardes. Of the real history of the siege the Greeks seem
to have known little or nothing; their chroniclers give the most
contradictory accounts of it. But the town fell within a short time—
taken, it would seem, by escalade. What became of Crœsus is not
Bakchylides
known. It is probable that he immolated himself upon
III. 23 ff. a burning pyre. The tale was too shocking for Greek
ears, and was softened down by a legendary addition
to the effect that he was saved from the flames by divine
intervention.
The sudden collapse of Lydia is one of the most remarkable
incidents in history.
It fell in a moment, as it were, never to rise again; and it fell, not in
the decadence of age, but at the very height of its young and
vigorous life. To the Greek the spectacle was bewildering: nor is it
strange that a catastrophe so sudden and complete, unparalleled,
indeed, in the history of the world, should have so dazed the senses
of those who were spectators of it, that they were never able to give
a rational account of how it came to pass.
CHAPTER II.
PERSIAN AND GREEK IN ASIA. THE SCYTHIAN
EXPEDITION.
Despite the great catastrophe which had just taken place before
their eyes, the Greek cities had no mind to make an unconditional
surrender to the power which had vanquished their old master. It was
unfortunate that, after coming to such a decision, they did not
combine in a common resistance. The inherent weakness of their
strategical position, together with the incompleteness of the
sympathy between Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greek, made such
united action difficult. There is a terrible sameness in the drama of
history as played upon this coast of the Ægean. The scenery
admitted of but one plot, of which the leading motive was disunion. In
the present, as in other instances, the Dorian states of the Carian
coast went their own way. They threw in their lot with their Carian
neighbours. The Æolians and Ionians were not altogether blameless
in the matter. They did not at first show a bold front to the Persian,
but offered to submit to him on the terms on which they had
submitted to Crœsus.
Save in the case of Miletus, the largest and most formidable of
the towns, Cyrus would not hear of terms; and so the cities prepared
to fight for their liberty.
It was the beginning of the winter; and, as the Persians did not
possess the means for assaulting the cities from the side of the sea,
the latter had a few months’ respite wherein to make preparations.
They appealed to Sparta for help. That cautious government, which
was probably congratulating itself on having escaped from involving
its citizens in the Lydian débâcle, refused active assistance, but sent
an embassy to Cyrus to warn him against interference. Cyrus, whose
notions as to the geography of this part of the world may well have
been vague, asked who the ambassadors were, and whence they
H. i. 153.
came. On being told, he warned them that, all well, he
would give them cause to talk about their own woes
and not those of the Ionians. This rough humour must have seemed
in great contrast to the politeness with which Crœsus had addressed
the foremost race in Greece.
Cyrus was obliged to entrust the completion of the conquest of
the Lydian kingdom to one of his lieutenants. The news of the fall of
Sardes had scared Babylon into inactivity; but the Baktrians and
Sakæ on the extreme eastern borders of his dominion had seized
the opportunity afforded by the western campaign to rise in revolt.
He had not proceeded far on his homeward march before news
reached him of a rising in Lydia. Paktyas, a renegade Lydian who
had embraced his cause, and to whom the conqueror had entrusted
the care of the transport of the spoils, had intrigued with the Ionian
Greeks; and, having ample funds at his disposal, had hired
mercenaries from them. Tabalos, the Persian lieutenant whom Cyrus
had left behind him, was besieged in the citadel of Sardes; and there
was every prospect that, if the place fell, all the work of the late
campaign would have to be done again. There was no time to be
lost: nor was Cyrus the man to lose time. He despatched an army
under Mazares the Mede to rescue the besieged, and Sardes was
saved. Paktyas fled to Kyme, and thence to the islands. He neither
deserved nor received sympathy, and, after various adventures, was
handed over by the Chians to the Median commander.
With the flight of Paktyas the insurrection in Lydia came to an end;
in fact, in so far as extant records go, the Lydians themselves played
but little part in it. The passive and entire submission of this people,
their acceptance, once and for all, of the yoke laid upon them, is one
of the most extraordinary features of this extraordinary time. It might
well have been expected that a nation with a
CONQUEST OF
IONIA BY PERSIA.
past so recent and so glorious would have
seized the first and every opportunity of
attempting to regain the freedom, if not the dominion they had lost.
But nothing of the kind took place; and even the great effort of the
Ionian revolt failed to rouse them from the apathy of defeat.
The circumstances of Paktyas’ rebellion showed Mazares that the
Greek cities of the coast could no longer be left in a position to be
the instruments of trouble in the newly-won territory. To them,
accordingly, he immediately turned his attention. He first attacked
Priene and sacked it; but, before he had completed the reduction of
Magnesia on the Mæander, he died, and Harpagos, who succeeded
him as governor, took up the task of reduction. Phokæa and Teos
were besieged. Ere they fell, the mass of their inhabitants went into
voluntary exile—the Phokæans to Corsica in the farthest west, the
Teans to the near coast of Thrace.
There can be little doubt that the departure of these peoples was
a disaster of the first magnitude to the Greek towns of Asia. It is
hardly possible to realize at the present day the strength of
resolution which prompted the Phokæans to undertake their long
and perilous journey. They are the New Englanders of the sixth
century before Christ. Their presence fifty years later, at the time of
the revolt, might have given the Ionian resistance that “stiffening”
which it seems to have lacked; indeed, a member of the remnant
they left behind them, that dare-devil old pirate Dionysius, is the one
prominent person on the Greek side in that distressful time whom
later historians consented to praise. One by one the other Ionian and
Æolian cities fell into Persian power. There does not appear to have
been any real combined resistance. Nature had made them units
without unity. The islanders of Samos alone escaped subjection.
Caria was next attacked. It yielded practically without a blow, and
the Dorian colonies fell with it into Persian hands—a fate in their
case not wholly undeserved. Lycia fought for its liberty, but in vain;
and with its subjection the establishment of Persian rule on the
continent of West Asia was complete.
The rest of the career of Cyrus, important though it is, has little
influence on Greek history. His campaign in the East was a
prolonged one. He seems to have extended the borders of his
empire to the Thian-Shan and Suleiman ranges, if not into the plains
of India itself. His aim can hardly have been the mere acquisition of
these enormous areas of comparatively unproductive territory. The
reason lying behind his policy was, in all probability, the fact that the
races of this region were near akin to his own, and that he wished to
advance against the Semitic peoples at the head of a forced coalition
of the Iranian races.
The turn of Babylon for attack was soon to come. Nabonidus’
antiquarian researches absorbed more and more of his time, and the
real conduct of the government seems to have passed into the
hands of his son Bel-sharuzar, the Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel.
In the final struggle, indeed, Nabonidus seems to have come to the
front again.
By 538 Cyrus was ready. He made great preparations for the
invasion, probably in anticipation of a much harder task than it
actually proved. The collapse seems to have been rapid, so that
within a short time Babylon was taken, Nabonidus a prisoner, and
the brief revival of the Chaldæan empire at an end. The whole of the
Babylonian dominions submitted to the conqueror, and the empire of
Cyrus now stretched unbroken from the Ægean and Mediterranean
on the west to the borders of India on the east.
Of the three rival kingdoms, Egypt alone survived. Doubtless
Cyrus had designs upon it; but after the fall of Babylon in 538, he
seems to have wisely devoted himself to the task of consolidating
the empire he had won so rapidly in the previous fourteen years.
Before his plans were ripe for an expedition beyond the Isthmus of
Suez, disturbances in the far east called him thither. There he died,
probably in a great battle about the year 529. The halo of legend
which rapidly formed about his great personality concealed not
merely the real man, but even his real history.
THE PERSIAN
Four versions of the story of his death, each
CIVILIZATION.
differing wholly from the other, were known to
the Greeks. But whatever fate he met, his body was brought to his
home-land, where the remains of his tomb may be seen at the
present day. “I am Cyrus, the king, the Achæmenian,” is the only part
of his epitaph which survives. It would be too little for a lesser man. It
is sufficient for him even now that he has been twenty-five centuries
dead.
The new Orientalism with which the Asian Greek was brought into
contact by the conquest of Lydia was, in many respects, of a
different character to that which had preceded it in Western Asia. As
years rolled on, and the specially Persian characteristics of it
became more and more merged in the general Oriental type, the
difference tended to disappear; but even until quite late times the
hardy races from the mountains of Iran had many national customs
which were in strong contrast to the typical civilization of the
Euphrates plain. Though far from ideal, there were certain grand
elements in it which struck the imagination of some of the finer minds
of Greece, and which, through them, must have influenced Greek
life, though in ways which it is not possible now to trace. Had the
Greek come much under its influence, that influence, though it would
have been disastrous in many respects, would not have tended
wholly for evil.
The civilization was indeed essentially of an Eastern type. It is
unnecessary to point out the significance of such a general
characteristic. The Mede and Persian had been for centuries next-
door neighbours of the population of the great plains, and it was
inevitable that they should have borrowed from their brilliant life. Yet,
despite their nearness, there was a triple gulf between the two,
which the intercourse even of centuries could not bridge. Difference
of race, difference of habitat, and, above all, difference of religion
sundered them. The Iranian and Semite regarded the world and life
in it from different points of view. The struggle for existence
presented itself in wholly different aspects to the mountaineer and
the man of the plain. The monotheist could have but little sympathy
with a polytheistic creed.
The Medo-Persian was a strange product for an Asiatic soil. He
was an Asian apart. His religious belief was alone calculated to
make him remarkable among his contemporaries. The Asiatic of this
time had a natural tendency towards polytheism. The monotheism of
even the Israelites was spasmodic. But with the Persian monotheism
was the set religion of the race. It had a legendary origin in the
teachings of Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, as he appears in Western
history. Ahura-mazda was the one god. There were, indeed, other
objects of worship,—the stars, the sun, the moon, and fire, beautiful
and incomprehensible works of Ahura-mazda; but he was god alone.
Other spiritual beings there were too, represented as deified virtues
and blessings—Good Thought, Perfect Holiness, Good Government,
Meek Piety, Health, and Immortality; and these stood nearest to
Ahura-mazda’s throne.
The national religion had not, indeed, wholly escaped the
contamination of the less spiritual cults of the neighbouring peoples.
The animalism of the worship of the Babylonian goddess Mylitta had
been introduced into the land under the guise of the adoration of the
nymph Anahita.
Nevertheless, with the Persian the deification of the various forms
of nature took a special form. The deities themselves were treated
as demi-gods, rather than gods; creations of the great spirit of Ahura-
mazda. One power alone, the power of evil, seemed to contest his
supremacy. In opposition, therefore, to the god of that light which he
looked upon as the visible embodiment of the Good, the Persian
conceived the existence of a god of darkness, a god of evil, a god of
the under-world, a god of death. This god, Angro-mainyus,
possessed, indeed, the attributes both of Satan and of Pluto. There
was no hope for the complete triumph of good over evil in this life.
“Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,”—in that lay the whole
alternative, the ultimate possibility for good or evil, in so far as the
world of the present was concerned. Only in an after-life could the
final triumph of the good be looked for,—in a life after that
resurrection of the dead which the prophets, the sons of Zoroaster,
awaking from their long sleep, should bring to pass.
It seems at first strange that the Persian
POLYKRATES OF
SAMOS.
creed never captured the imagination of the
Greek. It may, indeed, be doubted whether it
was ever presented to him in its highest and purest form. The ideal
was, perhaps, too elevated for the ordinary devotee, and its full
appreciation confined to the initiated few. The Greek learnt indeed in
after times to admire certain of the virtues which the Persian
displayed; but never grasped, apparently, the spiritual and
intellectual basis which underlay them. It was long, too, ere the bitter
hostility to the barbarian allowed the Greek to view him and his ways
with unprejudiced eyes; and in that lapse of time the barbarian had
deteriorated, and his life had become more and more tainted with the
baser side of Oriental civilization, which could only excite contempt
in the Hellenic mind.
Of the history of the Asiatic Greeks during the later years of Cyrus
and the brief reign of his successor, Cambyses, but little is known.
Samos alone, as has been said, retained its independence. During
the last years of Cyrus, somewhere about 533, a certain Polykrates
made himself tyrant of the island, and under his rule the Samians
enjoyed a short period of prosperity, so great that it remained
proverbial in after-history. Polykrates used to the full the opportunity
afforded him by Cyrus’ detention in the East. Separated as he was
by only a few miles of sea from the great empire, he could not but
recognize the danger of his position, a danger which was rendered
far greater by the fact that the acquisition of Phœnicia had given the
Persians that arm they had up to that time lacked, a fleet. The great
prosperity of the island, due, no doubt, in a great measure to its
being the only Greek trading community on the Asiatic side which
was not under the Persian dominion, enabled him to raise and
maintain a large body of mercenaries as well as a fleet of a hundred
fifty-oared war-ships. He furthermore entered into negotiations with
Egypt, with a view to mutual defence.
At home in the Ægean, he played a many-sided part. Piracy,
trade, engineering, and territorial acquisition were all included in the
field of his manifold activity. The piracy was probably carried on at
the expense of those traders who did not use Samos as an entrepôt
between East and West. It involved him in many a quarrel with the
Asiatic Greek towns, whose anomalous position at the time is shown
by the recorded fact that Polykrates actually took possession of parts
of their territory on the mainland, although they were under the
Persian dominion. This somewhat wild career was interrupted, if not
positively checked, by events which were preparing on the far side of
the Levant.
Cambyses had made up his mind to complete by the conquest of
Egypt the work which his father had done. With a view to so doing,
he was collecting a great armament, in which a powerful fleet was to
play a part. This method of invasion, thus adopted for the first time,
served as a precedent for all the great Persian expeditions of after
years. The fact that it was Cambyses who conceived the design is
sufficient to stamp the picture which Herodotus draws of him as a
copy of a somewhat clumsy Egyptian caricature, even if other
evidence did not tend the same way.
Ships were levied from Phœnicia, and the Greeks of Cyprus had
H. iii. 19.
also to contribute to the fleet. The latter, after the fall of
Assyria, to which they had been in a position of
nominal subordination, had enjoyed a short period of absolute liberty.
Amasis of Egypt had reduced them to subjection; but, on the
establishment of the Persian power in the Syrian region, they had
thrown off their allegiance to Egypt and tendered their submission to
the new empire.
Polykrates began to reconsider his position. A Greek legend,
which Herodotus has preserved, represents him as having been
thrown over by Amasis out of superstitious apprehension. His
hitherto unvarying success, so thought the Egyptian king, must end
in some terrible disaster proportionate in greatness. Herodotus could
not resist a tale which so entirely harmonized with his views of life.
In actual fact, the reverse seems to have been the case.
Polykrates broke off the alliance with Amasis;
SAMOS ANNEXED
and not merely did so, but actually despatched
BY PERSIA.
forty ships to aid the Persian expedition. He
tried, indeed, to kill two birds with one stone, and missed both; for he
manned these vessels with Samian suspects, who had no mind to
lend their bodies for this experiment in diplomacy, and forthwith
turned Polykrates’ own weapons against himself by sailing back with
the fleet and making an attack on Samos. Failing in that, they sailed
away to Laconia, with a view to getting help of Sparta. Polykrates’
great bid for Persian favour had miscarried.
What followed is peculiarly interesting as being the first example
of the way in which Corinth could, and did, force the hand of the
Lacedæmonians in matters of policy.
The Lacedæmonians had indeed grievances against the
Samians; but it is unlikely that they would have undertaken the
expedition, had they not been urged thereto by Corinth. The
grievance on the side of Corinth was of a kind that was fated to
reappear on many momentous occasions in the course of the next
century. Corinthian trade had been interfered with by the Samians.
The piratical enterprise of Polykrates was sure to be directed against
the trade of a state which had broken off its old commercial relations
with Samos and transferred its connection to Miletus.
The expedition took place about 524. It failed. After a fruitless
siege of forty days the Lacedæmonians returned to Peloponnese.
Soon afterwards Polykrates met his end. He was enticed to
Magnesia on the Mæander by Orœtes, Satrap of Sardes, and there
put to death.
His secretary, Mæandrios, carried on the tyranny for some years;
but about the year 516 a Persian force invaded the island, and
H. iii. 139–
established Syloson, a brother of Polykrates who had
149. won the favour of Darius, as tyrant in the Persian
interest. A brother of Mæandrios made one vigorous
but vain attempt to win the island back. The acquisition of Samos
completed the Persian conquest of the Asian coast.
It is significant that Sparta, when appealed to by Mæandrios for
help, not merely refused it, but dismissed him from the Peloponnese,
lest he should bring about political complications. Sparta’s policy on
this occasion, and her attitude at the time of the Ionian revolt, show
that the fear of experience had taken the place with her of that
courage of ignorance which she had shown in her alliance with
Lydia.
Cambyses’ short reign came to an end in 522. He had added to
his dominions Egypt and the Libyan coast as far as the Greater
Syrtis, and had even made an expedition up the Nile into Ethiopia.
The Greeks in Egypt had been involved in the disaster which fell
upon their adopted home.
On the other hand, Persian enterprise in the West was for the
time being at a standstill; and the Asiatic Greeks, with the exception
of the Samians, seem to have passed seven uneventful years of
submission to their new ruler.
The last few months of Cambyses’ life had been troubled by the
plots of a Magian named Gaumata, who is said to have borne a
remarkable resemblance to Smerdis, a brother whom Cambyses had
caused to be murdered. The rising was no doubt encouraged by the
state of Cambyses’ health. He had certainly suffered from serious
illness in Egypt; there is, indeed, reason to suspect that he was an
epileptic.
The story of this false Smerdis is one of the unsolved mysteries of
the period. But few reliable details of it survive, and these are for the
most part contained in the great inscription of Darius on the rocks at
Behistun.
The usurpation was certainly popular in the home provinces of the
empire, if the rapid spread of the insurrection be any criterion. On his
way home from Egypt to suppress it, Cambyses died,—a violent
death, it seems certain, though historians are not in agreement as to
its exact form.
For some years the pseudo-Smerdis concealed his identity, and
maintained his power; but at last the suspected deception was
discovered by some of the great Persian nobles, among whom was
Darius, who claimed descent from the Achæmenid family. Of the
events that followed, nothing is known for
DARIUS.
certain, save that these nobles assassinated
the pretender, and Darius succeeded to the supreme power.
He seems to have been at first a king without a kingdom; for the
great satraps of the provinces, whose position placed at their
disposal large resources of men and money, revolted with well-nigh
one consent. The province in Asia Minor was one of the few which
H. iii. 126,
did not join in the rising. If a tale preserved in
128. Herodotus be true, its governor Orœtes meditated
insurrection; but before he could carry his plans into
action, he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, in obedience to
written orders sent by Darius.
The whole of the work of Cyrus seemed undone. The conquest of
the great Empire had to be carried out again, as it were, from the
beginning. How Darius carried it out is no real part of the present
story. Suffice it to say that he did the work, and that he seems to
have done it thoroughly.
This formidable upheaval showed Darius the necessity of giving
the empire a new organization, under which its recurrence would be
difficult or impossible. The time of Cyrus had been fully taken up with
the military acquisition and maintenance of the great realm.
Cambyses had been similarly occupied during his short reign;
though it may also be doubted whether he possessed the capacity
required for carrying out so huge a scheme. Under these two rulers
the old Assyrian method, or want of method, of administration had
largely prevailed, a system which seems to have been admirably
designed for goading the subject populations into rebellion, but
which provided no machinery by which insurrection could be
rendered difficult or be nipped in the bud. The central power was
ever kept on the strain by repeated revolts in the provinces, if the
term “province” can be applied to regions which were not in any real
sense “areas of administration,” but were merely regarded as lands
to be exploited for the benefit of the conquerors.
There are two important reasons why, in dealing with the history
of the relations between Greek and Persian, prominence should be
given to this organization of the empire under Darius. It was, in the
first place, destined to be the permanent political system of the
Persian dominion for all the ages during which that empire continued
to be the neighbour of the Greek of Europe and of Asia. In the
second place, it is impossible to realize the ability of the Persian race
at its highest point of development, and the enlightened character of
some, at least, of its rulers, without fully appreciating the main details
of the great scheme of imperial and provincial government which
Darius promulgated. In certain respects, indeed, its methods may
seem rude when compared with those of later ages; but in judging of
them it must be borne in mind that it was designed for the
government of peoples most of whom recognized no law save that of
the strong hand, and furthermore, that its creators were creators in a
very literal sense of the term, in that their work was so far in advance
of anything on the same scale which had preceded it, that its
originality is beyond question. The decay of the empire for whose
government it was formed was not due to faults in the scheme itself,
but to the rapid deterioration of those who administered it. It erred
perhaps on the side of centralization; but then the East does not
understand, and never has understood, anything but centralization in
government. Still, this feature was, owing to special circumstances,
destined to prove fatal to it; for it was at the centre of the empire, in
the reigning family itself, that the decay set in which corrupted the
whole.
The first danger to be provided against by the new scheme was
caused by the isolation and comparative independence of the
provincial governors, especially in the remoter provinces of the
empire. It is a form of danger common to all great empires at all ages
of the world, one against which the central government must ever
make provision. Darius’ solution of the difficulty was conceived on
much the same lines as were followed in later days by the Cæsars in
dealing with the Cæsarean provinces of the Roman empire. Not
merely was the area of administration of the
ORGANIZATION OF
THE PERSIAN
governor limited within the province, but also
EMPIRE. his actions were placed under immediate
observation by the appointment of high
officials, with special departments of their own, who were not under
his control, but were directly responsible to the head of the empire.
The plan had its disadvantages from the point of view of the
governed; and there were doubtless many instances in which the
subjects of the Great King, like the Roman provincial of later days,
Tac Agric. 15.
complained that “discord and harmony between those
set over them were alike disastrous to those they
ruled.” For the end for which it was devised, however, the method
seems to have been effective.
The empire was divided into satrapies, whose number varied from
3
twenty to twenty-eight at different periods of Darius’ reign. Persia
proper was alone excluded, receiving special treatment as the home
of the ruling race.
The civil and military powers in these satrapies or provinces were
divided. Three independent officials, with separate departments of
administration, were appointed to each. In the case of important
provinces the satraps were generally drawn from great families
connected with the Achæmenids; but in the case of the others the
field of choice seems to have been practically unlimited, and
governors were selected from among the comparatively poor as well
as from the wealthy, from the subject races as well as from the
Persians. The instances in which persons not of Persian or Medic
extraction were appointed to these important posts seem, however,
to have been rare and exceptional. There was no set period for the
tenure of the office. The duration of the governor’s administration
depended on the pleasure of the Great King.
In all civil matters the governor had absolute authority. He
controlled the administration of the taxes and the dispensation of
justice; he possessed the power of life and death. As viceroy,
representing the king, he was allowed to maintain a court and
bodyguard, with other minor attributes of regal power. Under ordinary
circumstances he neither commanded nor even controlled the
military forces in his province; in fact, a common policy of the central
government seems to have been to place a personal enemy of the
governor in command of the troops, whose relations with the king
were, of course, direct. It may be that under exceptional
circumstances,—as, for instance, when Artaphernes was satrap of
Sardes at the time of the Ionian revolt,—the supreme direction of
military operations was entrusted to a governor of peculiarly high
distinction.
The secretary of state within the province was a third official who
had immediate relations to the king. Though nominally the chief
assistant of the governor, he was in reality appointed to watch his
conduct, and to report irregularities or suspicious circumstances to
the central government at Susa.