Espionage In The Achaemenid Empire

In the 6th century BC, the area we now call Iran, was referred to as the Median Empire led by Astyages.

Shortly, in the middle of the century, the Median Empire was overthrown by a subjugated kingdom called the Persian Empire led by Cyrus the Great

Background: Total Solar Eclipse

We are told that Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages on his mother’s side, but that did not stop him wanting to shake off the Median yoke.

By 552 BC, he had formed the Persian tribes into a federation and begun a series of uprisings.

The Persian Warriors also known as the Persian Immortals or Persian Warriors was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavily-armed infantry queued unit of 10,000 soldiers in the great army of the Achaemenid Empire, also called the first Persian Empire.

This force performed the dual roles of both Imperial Guard and standing army.

The force consisted mainly of Persians, but also included Medes and Elamites. Essential questions regarding the unit remain unanswered, because authentic sources are missing.

Herodotus describes the ‘Immortals’ as being led by Hydarnes; whch provided the professional corps of the Persian armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men.

He stated that the unit’s name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength.

There is also evidence of the existence of a permanent corps from Persian sources, which provided a backbone for the tribal levies who made up the bulk of the Achaemenid armies.

When the inevitable showdown with his grandfather came in 550 BC, the Medes mutinied and joined Cyrus to march on Ecbatana.

(A lot of weird things went down between the leaders which you can read about here)

(The people of this time did not call themselves as Persian, they referred to themselves as Aryan). It was the Greeks who referred to them as Persians.

He is also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire.

Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Western Asia and much of Central Asia.

From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen.

Under his successors, the empire eventually stretched at its maximum extent from parts of the Balkans .

(Bulgaria-Paeoniaand Thrace-Macedonia) and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east.

Cyrus’ regal titles in full were The Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World.

The Nabonidus Chronicle notes the change in his title from simply “King of Anshan”, a city, to “King of Persia”.

Assyriologist François Vallat wrote that “When Astyages marched against Cyrus, Cyrus is called ‘King of Anshan’, but when Cyrus crosses the Tigris on his way to Lydia, he is ‘King of Persia’. The coup therefore took place between these two events.”The Persian Empire.

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir.

The reign of Cyrus the Great lasted 30 yrs. Cyrus built his empire by first conquering the Median Empire, then the Lydian Empire, and eventually the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Cyrus took the title ‘Shah [‘King’] of Persia’ and built a capital on the site of his victory, which he called Pasargadae, after his tribe.

Winning the Medes over had landed Cyrus with a vague, sprawling empire of countless different peoples, however. He faced cultural diversity, suspicion, and outright hostility.

Lydia and Chaldean Babylon had agreements with the Medes; neither felt comfortable about a Persian takeover.

Lydia was won because Cyrus did not play by the rules.

After an indecisive battle near the Halys river one autumn, King Croesus (c. 560–c. 546 BC) returned to Sardis, expecting to resume fighting in the spring according to custom.

But Cyrus followed him home and captured Sardis itself, Lydia’s capital and richest of the Ionian cities.

A century earlier, Lydia had minted the first coins, making Ionia a hub of commerce. Now all this fell to Cyrus.

As for Croesus himself, it seems Cyrus may have spared his life, again against all precedent. Cyrus developed a reputation for sparing conquered rulers so he could ask their advice on how best to govern their lands.

How much of this reputation was warranted is hard to know, but before Cyrus no one would have wanted it anyway; it would have been a sign of weakness.

Cyrus, by contrast, saw cooperation as a strength, particularly when it came to securing the main prize: Babylon.

Rather than trying to take the world’s greatest city by force, Cyrus fought a propaganda campaign to exploit the unpopularity of its king, Nabonidus. Babylon’s traditions would be safer with Cyrus, was the message.

The gates were opened and palm fronds were laid before him as he entered the city.

Cyrus the Great was relatively liberal. While he himself ruled according to Zoroastrian beliefs, he made no attempt to impose Zoroastrianism on the people of his subject territories.

Once in Babylon, Cyrus performed the religious ceremonies Nabonidus had neglected and returned confiscated icons to their temples around the country. These acts enabled Cyrus to claim legitimate rule in Babylon; rule sanctioned by the Babylonian gods.

He then explained what place this would take in his empire: his would be an empire based, in effect, on a kind of contract between himself and the various peoples in his care. They would pay their tribute and he would ensure all were free to worship their own gods and live according to their customs.

This is an important moment in many other religions as well. From a Biblical context because when Cyrus takes Babylon he frees the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity and resettles them in Jerusalem.

The Jews most famously benefited from this; Cyrus permitted them to return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, and rebuild the city.

He also works with them to rebuild Soloman’s temple, which today is known as the Second Temple on the Temple Mount.

This act of kindness made a huge impact on Judaism. Zoroastrian philosophy powerfully influenced post-Exilic Judaism.

The Second Temple Mount Model

He then led an expedition into Central Asia, which resulted in major campaigns that were described as having brought “into subjection every nation without exception”.

Cyrus had highway guards on the royal road for King’s Highway which stretched for 2609 kilometers that’s 1607.7 miles from the capital of Susa to Sardis in western Turkey.

This complex system of roads was incredibly advanced with patrols against bandits, stop sations with fresh horses, and underground cisterns of water.

Cyrus did not venture into Egypt, and was believed to have died in battle, fighting the Massagetae along the Syr Darya in December 530 BC.

He was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II, who managed to conquer Egypt, Nubia, and Cyrenaica during his short rule. This is a big deal at the time, because this would end a 1,000 yrs of Native Pharaoh rule.

The Battle of Pelusium was the first major battle between the Achaemenid Empire and Egypt.

This decisive battle transferred the throne of the Pharaohs to Cambyses II of Persia.

From this point on Foreign rulers now call themselves Pharaohs and Egypt becomes part of Persia, which will later be devastating because it leaves a power vacuum in the center of the Empire.

Initially this vacuum had been guarded against by appointed satraps.

The title of satrap was also used to designate certain Śaka chiefs who ruled over parts of northern and western India during the first half of the 1st millennium BC.

When Egypt was defeated and added to the Achaemenid empire, it was also necessary to keep the navy to control the new region.

Many men and lots of silver and gold were necessary for the upkeep, and the result was the monetarization of the tribute -although it was still possible to pay in kind, payments in cash were preferred.

Although the first large-scale use of Satrapies, or provinces, originates from the inception of the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, beginning at around 530 BC, provincial organization actually originated during the Median era from at least 648 BC.

Up to the time of the conquest of Media by Cyrus the Great, emperors ruled the lands they conquered through client kings and governors.

The main difference was that in Persian culture the concept of kingship was indivisible from divinity: divine authority validated the divine right of kings.

The 26 satraps established by Cyrus were viceroys ruling in the king’s name, although in political reality many took advantage of any opportunity to carve themselves an independent power base.

Still the Empire is vast, and he needs to make sure none of their designs for a power base, eclipses his, so he creates, the Spasaka a type of inspector in the Achaemenid empire. They quickly become called “eyes and ears” of the King. In other words an overseer.

This is the first time this official, which is better known from the Achaemenid empire, is mentioned. It is not impossible that the Persians copied the office from the Medes.

The Persian Eyes were appointed by the king to inform him of what was going on in the empire. They supervised the payment of tribute, oversaw how rebellions were suppressed, and reported evils to the king.

Inside their well-defined regions, they had more powers than the satraps.

(According to Xenophon, the Eyes also commanded armies to check satraps)

Even when the monarch was not present, people knew that he would be informed of their actions and anxieties.

But the main factor is the tribute system. After the Greeks had defeated the Persians, the Athenians took over the Persian fiscal organization of the Greek towns in Asia.

After the Ionian revolt, the satrap of Lydia and Ionia, Artaphernes, had established the tribute that the Greek towns had to pay, and the Athenians did not change his system.

Every 4 yrs, the Athenians and their subjects revised the tariff.

At least in theory, the subject towns could negotiate about the amount they owed to their masters, and it is tempting to link this fact to the remark by Herodotus that the Persians regarded king Darius as a merchant (kapelos) because he negotiated about everything (Histories 3.89).

This is really remarkable, because a king was not supposed to make deals with his subjects about the prize of his reign.

Famously, or infamously once a law had passed in the Empires of both the Medes and Persia, even the King would not be able to repeal it.

The negotiations between the ruler -whether Persian or Athenian- suggest a voluntariness and an equality which probably did not really exist. But the illusion was kept intact in both empires.

Their name may be similar as well. The real Persian title of the Eye is not known, but may have been Spasaka (“seer”).

The similarities are remarkable. The “eye” and the Episcopus are responsible only to the highest authorities, they are supervisors of the local rulers, are responsible for the taxation, and are -in case of troubles- the direct link to the central government.

The functions of the Episcopus have already been described: every town in the Athenian empire, whatever its status, was supervised by an Athenian Episcopus or overseer.

If so, Episkopos (which also has an association with “to see”) is a translation that remains close to the sound of the original. However, this hypothetical.

It should be stressed that every ruler uses officials like the Eyes to know what is happening. The names of these inspectors may be different, but there are some primitive tasks that have to be executed anyway.

The Athenian government needed to send out inspectors, like all rulers had to do. Nevertheless, because the job responsibilities of the Eye and the Episcopus are so very similar, we must seriously entertain the possibility that the Athenians copied a Persian function.

Episkopos, also had a wide range of meanings in Homer, from “spy” to “overseer”; in later times the latter meaning eclipsed the former, and the term eventually acquired the primary meaning of “bishop.”

In the 6th century BC, the area we now call Iran, was referred to as the Median Empire led by Astyages.

Shortly, in the middle of the century, the Median Empire was overthrown by a subjugated kingdom called the Persian Empire led by Cyrus the Great

We are told that Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages on his mother’s side, but that did not stop him wanting to shake off the Median yoke.

By 552 BC, he had formed the Persian tribes into a federation and begun a series of uprisings.

The Persian Warriors also known as the Persian Immortals or Persian Warriors was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavily-armed infantry queued unit of 10,000 soldiers in the great army of the Achaemenid Empire, also called the first Persian Empire.

This force performed the dual roles of both Imperial Guard and standing army.

The force consisted mainly of Persians, but also included Medes and Elamites. Essential questions regarding the unit remain unanswered, because authentic sources are missing.

Herodotus describes the ‘Immortals’ as being led by Hydarnes; whch provided the professional corps of the Persian armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men.

He stated that the unit’s name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength.

There is also evidence of the existence of a permanent corps from Persian sources, which provided a backbone for the tribal levies who made up the bulk of the Achaemenid armies.

When the inevitable showdown with his grandfather came in 550 BC, the Medes mutinied and joined Cyrus to march on Ecbatana.

(A lot of weird things went down between the leaders which you can read about here)

(The people of this time did not call themselves as Persian, they referred to themselves as Aryan). It was the Greeks who referred to them as Persians.

He is also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire.

Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Western Asia and much of Central Asia.

From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen.

Under his successors, the empire eventually stretched at its maximum extent from parts of the Balkans .

(Bulgaria-Paeoniaand Thrace-Macedonia) and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east.

Cyrus’ regal titles in full were The Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World.

The Nabonidus Chronicle notes the change in his title from simply “King of Anshan”, a city, to “King of Persia”.

Assyriologist François Vallat wrote that “When Astyages marched against Cyrus, Cyrus is called ‘King of Anshan’, but when Cyrus crosses the Tigris on his way to Lydia, he is ‘King of Persia’. The coup therefore took place between these two events.”The Persian Empire.

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir.

The reign of Cyrus the Great lasted 30 yrs. Cyrus built his empire by first conquering the Median Empire, then the Lydian Empire, and eventually the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Cyrus took the title ‘Shah [‘King’] of Persia’ and built a capital on the site of his victory, which he called Pasargadae, after his tribe.

Winning the Medes over had landed Cyrus with a vague, sprawling empire of countless different peoples, however. He faced cultural diversity, suspicion, and outright hostility.

Lydia and Chaldean Babylon had agreements with the Medes; neither felt comfortable about a Persian takeover.

Lydia was won because Cyrus did not play by the rules.

After an indecisive battle near the Halys river one autumn, King Croesus (c. 560–c. 546 BC) returned to Sardis, expecting to resume fighting in the spring according to custom.

But Cyrus followed him home and captured Sardis itself, Lydia’s capital and richest of the Ionian cities.

A century earlier, Lydia had minted the first coins, making Ionia a hub of commerce. Now all this fell to Cyrus.

As for Croesus himself, it seems Cyrus may have spared his life, again against all precedent. Cyrus developed a reputation for sparing conquered rulers so he could ask their advice on how best to govern their lands.

How much of this reputation was warranted is hard to know, but before Cyrus no one would have wanted it anyway; it would have been a sign of weakness.

Cyrus, by contrast, saw cooperation as a strength, particularly when it came to securing the main prize: Babylon.

Rather than trying to take the world’s greatest city by force, Cyrus fought a propaganda campaign to exploit the unpopularity of its king, Nabonidus. Babylon’s traditions would be safer with Cyrus, was the message.

The gates were opened and palm fronds were laid before him as he entered the city.

Cyrus the Great was relatively liberal. While he himself ruled according to Zoroastrian beliefs, he made no attempt to impose Zoroastrianism on the people of his subject territories.

Once in Babylon, Cyrus performed the religious ceremonies Nabonidus had neglected and returned confiscated icons to their temples around the country. These acts enabled Cyrus to claim legitimate rule in Babylon; rule sanctioned by the Babylonian gods.

This is an important moment in many other religions as well. From a Biblical context because when Cyrus takes Babylon he frees the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity and resettles them in Jerusalem.

The Jews most famously benefited from this; Cyrus permitted them to return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, and rebuild the city.

He also works with them to rebuild Soloman’s temple, which today is known as the Second Temple on the Temple Mount.

This act of kindness made a huge impact on Judaism. Zoroastrian philosophy powerfully influenced post-Exilic Judaism.

He then led an expedition into Central Asia, which resulted in major campaigns that were described as having brought “into subjection every nation without exception”.

Cyrus had highway guards on the royal road for King’s Highway which stretched for 2609 kilometers that’s 1607.7 miles from the capital of Susa to Sardis in western Turkey.

This complex system of roads was incredibly advanced with patrols against bandits, stop sations with fresh horses, and underground cisterns of water.

Cyrus did not venture into Egypt, and was believed to have died in battle, fighting the Massagetae along the Syr Darya in December 530 BC.

He was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II, who managed to conquer Egypt, Nubia, and Cyrenaica during his short rule. This is a big deal at the time, because this would end a 1,000 yrs of Native Pharaoh rule.

The Battle of Pelusium was the first major battle between the Achaemenid Empire and Egypt.

This decisive battle transferred the throne of the Pharaohs to Cambyses II of Persia.

From this point on Foreign rulers now call themselves Pharaohs and Egypt becomes part of Persia, which will later be devastating because it leaves a power vacuum in the center of the Empire.

Initially this vacuum had been guarded against by appointed satraps.

The title of satrap was also used to designate certain Śaka chiefs who ruled over parts of northern and western India during the first half of the 1st millennium BC.

When Egypt was defeated and added to the Achaemenid empire, it was also necessary to keep the navy to control the new region.

Many men and lots of silver and gold were necessary for the upkeep, and the result was the monetarization of the tribute -although it was still possible to pay in kind, payments in cash were preferred.

Although the first large-scale use of Satrapies, or provinces, originates from the inception of the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, beginning at around 530 BC, provincial organization actually originated during the Median era from at least 648 BC.

Up to the time of the conquest of Media by Cyrus the Great, emperors ruled the lands they conquered through client kings and governors.

The main difference was that in Persian culture the concept of kingship was indivisible from divinity: divine authority validated the divine right of kings.

The 26 satraps established by Cyrus were viceroys ruling in the king’s name, although in political reality many took advantage of any opportunity to carve themselves an independent power base.

Still the Empire is vast, and he needs to make sure none of their designs for a power base, eclipses his, so he creates, the Spasaka a type of inspector in the Achaemenid empire. They quickly become called “eyes and ears” of the King. In other words an overseer.

This is the first time this official, which is better known from the Achaemenid empire, is mentioned. It is not impossible that the Persians copied the office from the Medes.

The Persian Eyes were appointed by the king to inform him of what was going on in the empire. They supervised the payment of tribute, oversaw how rebellions were suppressed, and reported evils to the king.

Inside their well-defined regions, they had more powers than the satraps.

(According to Xenophon, the Eyes also commanded armies to check satraps)

Even when the monarch was not present, people knew that he would be informed of their actions and anxieties.

But the main factor is the tribute system. After the Greeks had defeated the Persians, the Athenians took over the Persian fiscal organization of the Greek towns in Asia.

After the Ionian revolt, the satrap of Lydia and Ionia, Artaphernes, had established the tribute that the Greek towns had to pay, and the Athenians did not change his system.

Every 4 yrs, the Athenians and their subjects revised the tariff.

At least in theory, the subject towns could negotiate about the amount they owed to their masters, and it is tempting to link this fact to the remark by Herodotus that the Persians regarded king Darius as a merchant (kapelos) because he negotiated about everything (Histories 3.89).

This is really remarkable, because a king was not supposed to make deals with his subjects about the prize of his reign.

Famously, or infamously once a law had passed in the Empires of both the Medes and Persia, even the King would not be able to repeal it.

The negotiations between the ruler -whether Persian or Athenian- suggest a voluntariness and an equality which probably did not really exist. But the illusion was kept intact in both empires.

Their name may be similar as well. The real Persian title of the Eye is not known, but may have been Spasaka (“seer”).

The similarities are remarkable. The “eye” and the Episcopus are responsible only to the highest authorities, they are supervisors of the local rulers, are responsible for the taxation, and are -in case of troubles- the direct link to the central government.

The functions of the Episcopus have already been described: every town in the Athenian empire, whatever its status, was supervised by an Athenian Episcopus or overseer.

If so, Episkopos (which also has an association with “to see”) is a translation that remains close to the sound of the original. However, this hypothetical.

It should be stressed that every ruler uses officials like the Eyes to know what is happening. The names of these inspectors may be different, but there are some primitive tasks that have to be executed anyway.

The Athenian government needed to send out inspectors, like all rulers had to do. Nevertheless, because the job responsibilities of the Eye and the Episcopus are so very similar, we must seriously entertain the possibility that the Athenians copied a Persian function.

Episkopos, also had a wide range of meanings in Homer, from “spy” to “overseer”; in later times the latter meaning eclipsed the former, and the term eventually acquired the primary meaning of “bishop.”

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