Empire those large and numerous garrisons on
whose presence depended the maintenance of the Persian dominion in every
province that had been conquered. According to Herodotus, the single
country of Egypt contained, in his day, a standing army of 120,000
Persians; and, although this was no doubt an exceptional case, Egypt
being more prone to revolt than any other satrapy, yet there is abundant
evidence that elsewhere, in almost every part of the Empire, large
bodies of troops were regularly maintained; troops which are always
characterized as "Persians." We may suspect that under the name were
included the kindred nation of the Medes, and perhaps some other Arian
races, as the Hyrcanians, and the Bactrians, for it is difficult to
conceive that such a country as Persia Proper could alone have kept up
the military force which the Empire required for its preservation;
but to whatever extent the standing army was supplemented from these
sources, Persia must still have furnished the bulk of it; and the
demands of this service must have absorbed, at the very least, one third
if not one half of the adult male population.

For trade and commerce the Persians were wont to express extreme
contempt. The richer classes made it their boast that they neither
bought nor sold, being supplied (we must suppose) from their estates,
and by their slaves and dependents, with all that they needed for the
common purposes of life. Persians of the middle rank would condescend to
buy, but considered it beneath them to sell; while only the very lowest
and poorest were actual artisans and traders. Shops were banished
from the more public parts of the towns; and thus such commercial
transactions as took place were veiled in what was regarded as a decent
obscurity. The reason assigned for this low estimation of trade was that
shopping and bargaining involved the necessity of falsehood.

According to Quintus Curtius, the Persian ladies had the same objection
to soil their hands with work that the men had to dirty theirs with
commerce. The labors of the loom, which no Grecian princess regarded
as unbecoming her rank, were despised by all Persian women except the
lowest; and we may conclude that the same idle and frivolous gossip
which resounds all day in the harems of modern Iran formed the main
occupation of the Persian ladies in the time of the Empire.

With the general advance of luxury under Xerxes and his successors, of
which something has been a