Comparatively few Persian administrative documents have survived. One of the very few concerning Asia Minor is the following letter (Fornara, Nr. 35) written by King darius I to the official Gadatas whose exact rank is not known. the Persian Empire was divided up into satrapies which themselves were divided up into districts and subdistricts, and Gadatas, if not a satrap, could have been a district governor or the like. the authenticity of the letter has occasionally been doubted, but most nowadays accept its authenticity.
The King of Kings, Darius, son of Hystaspes, speaks to Gadatas his servant as follows: I learn that you are not obeying my orders in all respects. Now inasmuch as you are working my land, in that you plant the fruit trees from 'Beyond Euphrates' in the regions of coastal Asia, I praise your purpose and on account of these things a great favor is laid up for you in the King's house. But inasmuch as you disregard my intentions concerning the gods, I shall give to you, if you do not change, the proof of a wronged heart: for you have levied a tax on the sacred gardeners of Apollo and have given (them) orders to till profane soil, not knowing my fathers' purpose towards the god, who has told the Persians all exact and. . . (the end of the letter is not attested)
The letter reveals a surprising amount about the Persians and their administration. First, the letter is composed in Greek by a non-native speaker. When dealing with the Greeks, Persian administrators routinely used Greek; and since this letter concerned a Greek temple and was ultimately meant as a public document (it was eventually inscribed on stone and publicly displayed), a non-native speaker wrote it in passable if awkward Greek.
Second, Persian administrators among other duties were expected to cultivate plantations and orchards: Gadatas' planting of fruit trees from the satrapy of "Beyond Euphrates" (roughly Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine) in the land under his administration in Asia Minor is specifically entered on the credit side of the ledger before Darius proceeds to the debits. It was the peach, incidentally, which the Persians seem to have cultivated preferentially; the Romans called it the "Persian apple" - and as such it is known to this day: "peach" comes from French peche, from Late Latin persicum (pomum), i. e., "Persian (apple)."
Next, this careful recording of credits and debits - and weighing them up against each other before taking any action - was a quintessential part of the Persian national character. Herodotus - who knew the Persians well (see Box 9.3) - states that a Persian master, when wishing to punish a slave, first reckoned up the slave's good deeds and only punished if the slave's errors outweighed the former (Hdt. I 137). Likewise, Diodorus (XV 10-11) records a judicial case when Persian judges voted not to punish a man accused of treason: the accused proved that he had previously rendered services to the king. The first judge voted to acquit because the charges were disputed, but
The services agreed upon; and the second judge voted to acquit because even if the charges were true, the services still outweighed them. In the letter under discussion here, Darius reasons in just such a way - albeit in this case the good deed, though duly noted, is outweighed by the error.
Finally, in a dispute between a Persian administrator and a Greek temple, the Persian king intervenes on the side of the temple - because Gadatas has contravened established local custom in levying a tax on the gardeners who worked land owned by the temple and in impressing them for work on lands not belonging to the temple. In matters of religion, the Persian king was even more scrupulous than usual in seeing to it that local customs and traditions were respected.
Manner which had become customary. What the Persians could not know was that the tyrants were deeply unpopular in their own cities and, had the Persians not propped them up, would have fallen victim to popular revolutions (Hdt. IV 137) (see also chap. 7).
Before this background the next event in Athens’ relationship with Persia must be seen. Hippias attempted to enlist the Persians in restoring him to rule over Athens. When a second Athenian embassy visited Sardis (the old Lydian capital, now the seat of the satrap) to protest at Hippias’ machinations, the Persian satrap bluntly ordered the Athenians to receive Hippias back as their tyrant (Hdt. V 96). The satrap had every right to make the order - by Persian law, Athens was subject territory -, and his order accorded with Persian policy at the time.
World History
