Why Did Darius Organise the Empire into Satrapies?
Because the system of personal kingdoms that Cyrus and Cambyses had used had just failed. In the year 522–521 BCE, the Achaemenid state faced a wave of revolts across the empire — in Bactria, in Media, in Elam, in Babylonia, in Egypt, in Parthia, in the Zagros, in regions the Greek sources name but cannot locate. Darius describes the revolts in detail in the Behistun Inscription, naming nine rebel leaders and nineteen battles, and the picture he gives is of a state in which a local king who decided to rebel could rely on the loyalty of his own people, and the central government was hard-pressed to respond. Darius’ response was to replace the system of personal kingdoms with a system of impersonal provinces, each governed by a satrap appointed by, and responsible to, the King of Kings. The reform was not a programme. It was the response of a particular king to a particular crisis. The reform turned out to be the most durable institution of the Achaemenid state. The standard modern treatment is Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander (2002), chapter 9, with Stolper on the administrative texts and Tuplin on the system.
The problem of the personal kingdom
The Achaemenid state, before Darius, had been governed as a federation of personal kingdoms. Cyrus the Great had ruled the Medes through the Median king, the Lydians through the Lydian king, the Babylonians through the Babylonian king, and the various subject peoples through their own local rulers. The system worked well enough for a state in which the king was personally able to govern, but it was vulnerable to revolt. A local king who decided to rebel could rely on the loyalty of his own people, and a centralised response from the imperial centre was slow in coming.
The early years of the reign of Darius, in 522–521 BCE, were marked by a series of revolts across the empire. The revolts demonstrated the vulnerability of the system of personal kingdoms: a local ruler who revolted could count on the loyalty of his own people, and the central government was hard-pressed to respond quickly. Darius’ response to the revolts was to replace the system of personal kingdoms with a system of impersonal provinces, in which the loyalty of the local ruler was replaced by the impersonal authority of the imperial centre.
The administrative rationale
The administrative rationale for the satrapy system was the need to govern a large and diverse empire with a relatively small imperial administration. The Achaemenid state, at its height, contained perhaps 50 million people, distributed across three continents and dozens of different peoples, languages, and religions. To govern such an empire by means of a central bureaucracy alone would have been impossible in the ancient world, and the satrapy system allowed the Achaemenid kings to delegate the day-to-day administration of the empire to the satraps, while retaining the strategic direction in their own hands.
The satrapy system was, in effect, a delegation of authority. The satrap was given wide powers of government in his province, including the power to administer justice, to collect tribute, to maintain order, and to command the local military. He was, however, subject to a layered system of imperial control: a royal secretary, a garrison commander, and a network of imperial inspectors all reported directly to the King of Kings, and the satrap’s tenure was at the pleasure of the central government. The combination of delegated authority and imperial control allowed the Achaemenid state to combine centralised strategic direction with local autonomy.
The fiscal rationale
The fiscal rationale was the need to extract a reliable revenue from the empire. The system of personal kingdoms, in which the local king was responsible for the tribute, was vulnerable to the local king’s own interests: a local king who decided to withhold tribute could rely on the loyalty of his own people, and the central government was hard-pressed to enforce its claims. The satrapy system replaced the personal responsibility of the local king with the impersonal responsibility of the imperial government, and it allowed the central government to extract a reliable revenue.
The tribute system that Darius established was, in effect, a fixed annual payment, calibrated to the productive capacity of each satrapy, in gold, silver, or kind. The tribute was collected by royal financial officers, not by the satrap, and it was stored in regional treasuries that could be drawn on by the King of Kings. The system allowed the central government to know, in advance, the revenue it could expect from the empire, and it allowed the empire as a whole to participate in a common economic system. The total tribute, according to Herodotus, was about 14,560 Babylonian talents of silver per year, plus an additional amount in gold and kind.
The military rationale
The military rationale was the need to raise a large and effective army from a multi-ethnic empire. The system of personal kingdoms, in which each subject people raised its own troops under its own king, was vulnerable to the local king’s own interests. The satrapy system replaced the personal responsibility of the local king with the impersonal responsibility of the imperial government, and it allowed the central government to raise a reliable army from the empire.
The military obligations of the satrapies were a parallel system to the tribute system. Each satrapy was required to supply a contingent to the imperial army, drawn from its own population and led by its own officers. The size and composition of the contingent was calibrated to the population and military traditions of the satrapy: the wealthy satrapies of Babylonia, Egypt, and Lydia supplied large infantry contingents, the eastern satrapies of Bactria, Sogdiana, and the Indus Valley supplied cavalry, the mountain tribes of the Zagros and the Caucasus supplied light infantry, and the maritime satrapies of the Aegean and the Persian Gulf supplied ships. The system allowed the central government to know, in advance, the military forces it could expect from the empire.
The political rationale
The political rationale was the need to balance the central authority of the King of Kings with the local autonomy of the subject peoples. The Achaemenid kings, like most successful imperial rulers, understood that a heavily centralised empire would be brittle and prone to revolt, while a heavily decentralised empire would be vulnerable to fragmentation. The satrapy system, with its combination of centralised strategic direction and local autonomy, was designed to balance these competing pressures.
The political genius of the satrapy system lay in the way it combined centralised and decentralised elements. The satrap was given wide powers of government in his province, but his tenure was at the pleasure of the King of Kings, and he was subject to a layered system of imperial control. The subject peoples were allowed to maintain their own local traditions, languages, and religions, but they were required to pay tribute and to supply troops to the imperial army. The combination of centralised and decentralised elements allowed the Achaemenid state to govern a large and diverse empire for more than two centuries.
What we don’t know
The satrapy system has had a long afterlife in the political and administrative traditions of the ancient and modern world. The Hellenistic kingdoms, the Roman Empire, the Sasanian state, the caliphs of Islam, the Byzantine Empire, and the modern Iranian state all inherited elements of the Achaemenid administrative model, often through the mediation of the Seleucid and Parthian successor states. The word “satrap” passed into Greek and from Greek into European languages, where it now generally means “a provincial governor.” The system of provincial governors answerable to a central government, the system of layered imperial control, the system of fixed tribute calibrated to provincial productivity, and the system of royal inspection are all features of the Achaemenid satrapy system that have shaped the history of imperial governance in Eurasia.
What we do not know, in any detail, is how the satrapy system actually worked in the eastern satrapies — Bactria, Sogdiana, Gandhara, the Indus Valley — for which we have almost no administrative documents. The picture that can be drawn for Persia, Babylonia, and Egypt is good. The picture that can be drawn for Bactria and the Indus is largely inference from Greek sources, from archaeology, and from the Behistun Inscription. The next round of work on the eastern satrapies, including the recent publications from the Bactria archives, will, I expect, change some of the picture in the years to come.
Reading
- Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (2002), chapter 9
- Wiesehöfer, Josef. Ancient Persia (1996), pp. 90–105
- Stolper, Matthew. Entrepreneurs and Empire (1985), and his continuing work on the Persepolis archives
- Tuplin, Christopher. “The Administrative Organisation of the Achaemenid Empire” in Xenophon and his World (2004)
- Brosius, Maria. The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (2020)