rate, impalement of some sort, was in such cases the ordinary
punishment. Sometimes, before a rebel was executed, he was kept for a
while chained at the king's door, in order that there might be no doubt
of his capture.

Among the minor punishments of rebellion were branding, and removal of
the rebels _en masse_ from their own country, to some remote locality.
In this latter case, they were merely treated in the same way as
ordinary prisoners of war. In the former, they probably became royal
slaves attached to the household of the monarch.

Though the Persians were not themselves a nautical people, they were
quite aware of the great importance of a navy, and spared no pains to
provide themselves with an efficient one. The conquests of Phoenicia,
Cyprus, Egypt, and the Greek islands were undertaken, it is probable,
mainly with this object; and these parts of the Empire were always
valued chiefly as possessing skilled seamen, vessels, and dockyards,
from which the Great King could draw an almost inexhaustible supply of
war-ships and transports. Persia at times had the complete command of
the Mediterranean Sea, and bore undisputed sway in the Levant during
almost the whole period of her existence as an empire.

The war-ship preferred by the best naval powers during the whole period
of the Persian rule was the trireme, or decked galley impelled by rowers
sitting in three tiers, or banks, one above another. This vessel, the
invention of the Corinthians, had been generally adopted by the nations
bordering on the Mediterranean in the interval between B.C. 700 and B.C.
525, when by the reduction of Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt, the Persians
obtained the command of the sea. Notwithstanding the invention of
quadriremes by the Carthaginians before B.C. 400, and of quinqueremes by
Dionysius the Elder soon after, the trireme stood its ground, and from
first to last the Persian fleets were mainly composed of this class of
vessels.

The trireme was a vessel of a considerable size, and was capable of
accommodating two hundred and thirty persons. Of these, two hundred
constituted the crew, while the remaining thirty were men-at-arms,
corresponding to our own "marines." By far the greater number of the
crew consisted of the rowers, who probably formed at least nine-tenths
of the whole, or one hundred and eighty out of the two hundred. The
rowers sat, not on benches running right across the vessel, but on small
seats attached to its