The Achaemenid Persian Empire's Most Famous Kings: The Lives and Reigns of Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, and Xerxes I by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2019-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.’s picture of a daric featuring Darius

Due to the growth of such trade, Persia needed a travel system that could support it, so Darius commissioned the reorganization and reconstruction of the Royal Road, a total distance of 2,699 kilometers. The road spanned from Asian Minor in Lydia, through the Cicilian Gates to Nineveh and Babylon, there splitting into two tributaries, one of which led to Ecbatana, while the other took travelers to Susa and finally ended in Persepolis. Darius’s Royal Road was such a grand construction and made with such quality that it remained in use until Roman times, and a bridge that was part of the road is still standing in Turkey.[101] It even worked its way into cultural lore, for a story says that when King Ptolemy of Egypt asked the mathematician Euclid if there was an easier way to learn math, Euclid responded that “there is no Royal Road to geometry.” [102]

Along with this road came the establishment of an organized, governmental postal institution of impressive ability, called the Angarium. The journey from Sardis to Susa took 90 days by foot, but the postal couriers traveled this distance in nine days, using outposts strategically placed with fresh messengers and fresh horses, thereby creating a flow of news and information unlike anything the ancient world had previously seen. Herodotus praised the messengers extensively in his Histories, one line of which was even pulled as the unofficial motto of the modern United States Postal Service: “Now there is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skillfully has this been invented by the Persians: for they say that according to the number of days of which the entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day's journey. These neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. The first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among the Hellenes, which they perform for Hephaestus. This kind of running of their horses the Persians call Angarium.”[103]

The expansion of Persia’s wealth brought a corresponding expansion of its grandeur, and in that vein, Darius implemented several building projects throughout his reign, some practical and some symbolic. One of the most impressive of these for the era in which it was created was the completion of a canal that linked the Red Sea to the Nile River, allowing shipping to reach the Mediterranean. Herodotus claimed that this was first opened during the rule of Darius in 497 BCE.[104] Alongside this, he built and expanded several roads in Egypt to further improve trade.

Many of his other projects involved aggrandizing the key cities of Persia, including Pasargadae, Susa, Babylon and Persepolis.

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