ad sent into exile in Elam the chief
priest of Sais--that Uza-harrisniti who had initiated him into the
sacred rites; Darius gave permission to this important personage to
return to his native land, and commissioned him to repair the damage
inflicted by the madness of the son of Cyrus. Uzaharrisniti, escorted
back with honour to his native city, re-established there the colleges
of sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of Nit the lands and
revenues which had been confiscated. Greek tradition soon improved upon
the national account of this episode, and asserted that Darius took an
interest in the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacred
books, and that on his arrival at Memphis in 517 B.C., immediately after
the death of an Apis, he took part publicly in the general mourning,
and promised a reward of a hundred talents of gold to whosoever should
discover the successor of the bull. According to a popular story still
current when Herodotus travelled in Egypt, the king visited the temple
of Pthah before leaving Memphis, and ordered his statue to be erected
there beside that of Sesostris. The priests refused to obey this
command, for, said they, "Darius has not equalled the deeds of
Sesostris: he has not conquered the Scythians, whom Sesostris overcame."
Darius replied that "he hoped to accomplish as much as Sesostris
had done, if he lived as long as Sesostris," and so conciliated
the patriotic pride of the priests. The Egyptians, grateful for his
moderation, numbered him among the legislators whose memory they
revered, by the side of Menes, Asykhis, Bocchoris, and Sabaco.

The whole empire was now obedient to the will of one man, but the ordeal
from which it had recently escaped showed how loosely the elements of it
were bound together, and with what facility they could be disintegrated.
The system of government in force hitherto was that introduced
into Assyria by Tiglath-pileser III., which had proved so eminently
successful in the time of Sargon and his descendants; Babylon and
Ecbatana had inherited it from Nineveh, and Persepolis had in turn
adopted it from Ecbatana and Babylon. It had always been open to
objections, of which by no means the least was the great amount of power
and independence accorded by it to the provincial governors; but this
inconvenience had been little felt when the empire was of moderate
dimensions, and when no province permanently annexed to the empire lay
at any very great d