The purpose of this important book is to examine just nine satraps from the perspective of their Houses (collective human and material assets), thereby illuminating Achaemenid imperialism and fostering global empire studies and pre-modern governance system-analysis. For four satraps (Cyrus, Tissaphernes, Pharnabazus, Mania) we depend on Greek historians.[1] Knowledge of the rest (Aršāma, Bēlšunu, Parnakka, Bakabaduš, Axvamazdā) is (almost) entirely determined by non-Greek texts.[2] Nonetheless Greek and non-Greek data cohere rather well and the resonance between the author’s vision of satraps as miniature kings (117, 216) and Cyropaedia 8.6.1-15 deserves to be stressed, especially as Xenophon is so prominent a source on the Anatolian satraps.
The book argues an interconnection between the empire’s longevity and its non-territorial, House-related governance. The (trans-territorial) Houses of satraps, not territorial “satrapies”, were the important building-blocks of the empire, and the overlapping and partly autonomous relationship between Houses (including the King’s House) represents a distinctive form of governance, which provided stability thanks to (i) efficient long-distance communications (maintained by the Houses),[3] (ii) a simplified infrastructure for control and extraction (provided by the Houses), and (iii) the harnessing of the appetitive and competitive urges of satraps and their subordinates to the pursuit of imperial goals. In effect, the king outsourced policing and exploitation to business enterprises that maximised the wealth of their CEOs (satraps) in return for their taking primary financial responsibility for guaranteeing imperial interests in their jurisdictions and transmitting appropriate profits to the CEO-in-chief (the king).
This is a beguiling picture. It is presented self-confidently and straightforwardly (though not without much interesting detail), is beautifully simple, offers a neat quasi-tax-farming account of the tax-and-tribute system, highlights neglected topics (e.g. satrapal trading interests), and suggests explanations for the king’s poor funding of war in Anatolia or the nature of satrapal “revolts”. But, of course, there are questions.[4]
Rhyne King wants to jettison satrapies (geographical provinces) — a Greek perspective — and understand that the Achaemenids ruled peoples, not places, through trans- and non-territorial satrapal Houses: “the nature of satrapal houses challenges assumptions about empires’ territoriality and centrality” (24). But Greeks talked about peoples rather than places too and were not thereby expressing an anti-territorial view: the Athenian Tribute Lists listed peoples but in geographical areas. The same goes for Persians. Those actually running a huge geographically interconnected system (and King insists he is interested in practicalities, not ideology) did not have the luxury of thinking entirely non-territorially. Territoriality was not an accidental consequence of Achaemenid imperialism (211) but a presupposition, since pre-Persian historical geography dictated the important imperial nodes: King’s deliberate neglect of Cyrus and Cambyses — odd in a book subtitled The Making of the Ancient Persian Empire — elides this fact. The kingdom / kingship satraps protected was of the “king in all the earth”, Aršāma was formally “in Egypt”, not “among the Egyptians”, and a world of satraps in places is as territorial as one of satraps of places.
Of course, Aršāma’s House was trans-territorial, but calling it satrapal is misleading. His jurisdiction was Egypt. He had great power there and could authorise travel to and from Egypt, but he did not exercise satrapal power in Babylon or authorise travel from Sardis to Susa. Trans-territorial satrapal Houses do not decouple satraps from particular territories. Normally King accepts this without comment. There is one apparent exception: “For most of his tenure as satrap, the Greek historians place [Pharnabazus] in Dascylium or Hellespontine Phrygia at large, but the numismatic record demonstrates that he minted a trove of coinage in Cilicia” (91). So Pharnabazus was still satrap in Dascylium when he had left to marry Artaxerxes’ daughter and Ariobarzanes had prima facie been satrap since at least 387/6 (Xen. Hell. 5.1.28)? Some have seen Ariobarzanes as merely regent, but King is agnostic about that (236). Pharnabazus’ trans-territorial House may have partly funded the Egyptian campaign whose preparation was Pharnabazus’ task. But, if King really thinks Pharnabazus remained satrap in Dascylium while performing this task, he should make it an explicit major exhibit for genuine satrapal non-territoriality. He does not — and the phenomena do not require this explanation.
King stresses the personal nature of satrapal exercise of power. This is no surprise in a monarchic-aristocratic system. Is it a distinctive consequence of the House system? King writes as though it is and, by juxtaposing “on a social level, satrapal houses were maintained by cultivated personal relationships among family, friends, and subordinates” (62) with a discussion of personal relations between satraps and Greeks, implicitly sketches an argument for the proposition. But, although making the satrap’s House the vector of his authority highlights the personal nature of his power, we do not need this to account for the phenomena: personal recommendations for Bēlšunu (142–143), the status of Aršāma’s slave Šiṭa (132) or the Spithridates episode (80–85) make sense anyway.[5] Satrapal competition may be different. High achievers are usually competitive, but the profit-oriented House could exacerbate this. That said, while we see competition between Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes when pursuing a royal policy-goal, its systematic occurrence is less clear. King links it with fluidity in the satrapal hierarchy (9, 74). But that fluidity needs demonstration[6] and Anabasis 1.1.8 — arguably indirect evidence for the expectation of competition — is discussed only in relation to fiscal norms.
The empire’s politico-economic structure replicated itself in the form of Houses from king to satraps to minor satraps like Mania and further down (18). But, although one House can be entirely nested in another (Urāš-Nāṣir’s position within Bēlšunu’s House is a “vivid example”: 139), this is not systematically so: the empire is not a single all-embracing royal House, but a series of partially overlapping ones (215). Yet things are not straightforward. Even Aršāma’s House is both nested in the King’s House (139) and separate from it (215), depending on whether one stresses that he is a Son of the House.[7] Nesting and overlapping are not mutually exclusive and, even if it is not technically true that the King’s House embraced the whole empire, it is hard to believe nobody ever thought like that. In a world preoccupied with Houses, it was surely quite likely — and there may be indirect evidence in Philochorus F149 and in the local resource-storage centres known as the “King’s House”. But does it really matter? For King, the pay-off from overlapping satrapal Houses is an understanding that “all lines of communication did not first go through the king” and imperial goals intersected with local responses at the level of the satrapal House (216–217). But that is simply a benefit of having satraps. It would be equally true if they were ordinary provincial governors appointed to head a state-supplied administration. King’s exposition does underline the complexity and autonomy of what satraps did, but, so far as royal non-involvement goes, the House model brings nothing categorically new. And autonomy had limits. On any view, a huge amount happened that was of no concern to the king. But in politically sensitive circumstances, satraps displayed — even flaunted — lack of autonomy (Thuc. 8.29, Xen. Hell. 3.2.20, Diod. 15.41). And even a land-grant to Aršāma’s estate-manager is due to satrap and king — a detail that King misses (96–97).
A salient feature of King’s thesis is that satrapal Houses relieved the king of the necessity to create much infrastructure for control and extraction: the Houses already had the material and human resources to service communications, military and labour requirements, and tax-extraction. How watertight is this? It is true that residential estates sometimes functioned as supply-stations for travellers. But that establishes nothing about the general link between supply-stations and satrapal Houses. The supply-stations in Pārsa operated within an institutional economy supervised by Parnakka, but how did that economy relate to Parnakka’s House? King never addresses this question, but the partial integration of Queens’ Houses into it suggests the two were not identical — and King never says that they were. The institutional economy was extremely complicated, involving numerous locations, functionaries and kurtaš-labourers. The only (anonymous) human resources King explicitly ascribes to Parnakka are 300 scribes and an entourage that accompanied his travels round Pārsa: the hundreds of named functionaries (from his deputy Ziššawiš down to humble supply-officials) are left unlocated and, though satraps might personally have kurtaš-labourers (grd’ in Aramaic texts), can one really imagine that all those in Pārsa related to Parnakka’s Houses as Aršāma’s attested grd’ did to his?[8] Similar problems apply in the documentary data about Aršāma and Axvamazdā. King puts road-guards or manufacturers of food for travel-stations within the satrapal House but in a revealing moment of uncertainty writes “perhaps within the House of Axvamazdā or perhaps outside it [my italics] administrators recorded the goods moving across Bactria in the form of customs accounts (C6 and C7)” (202). Similar uncertainty can arise (but is barely acknowledged) wherever documentary evidence exists for local legal, fiscal and military administration. How many of those involved in the Elephantine boat-repair document or numerous less celebrated texts were part of Aršāma’s House and how did those that were not have agency? They certainly worked within Aršāma’s jurisdiction but, unless almost all functionaries were part of his House, King’s model is an incomplete account of imperial governance. Public and private can seem to merge in satrapal letters to estate managers but this does not prove there was no such distinction. To put the issue differently: when a new satrap arrived, which personnel were in place and which did he bring with him? King’s model invites maximisation of the latter group, but he never addresses the question explicitly.
So: perhaps the trans-territorial satrapal House was not trans-territorial, is not always required to explain features King associates with it and does not supply a complete account of Achaemenid administration. Or perhaps I am critiquing a stronger version of the thesis than he means to advance and have been barking up some wrong trees. Either way I can only reiterate that this is an important book. It contains thought-provoking discussions of many individual texts and elegant analyses of documentary datasets, and it offers a model for thinking about the empire that everyone engaged in that task must address. I have found doing so very stimulating and am sure others will too. Whether the model is accepted, rejected or modified, the author’s impact on imperial discourse is going to be every bit as substantial as his surname would suggest.
Notes
[1] Mania was a satrap, despite King’s momentary doubts (16, 222).
[2] Xenophon’s indication that Belšunu left office in 401 (relevant to the satrapal succession) is ignored. Demotic texts about Aršāma are unmentioned.
[3] Strangely King produces an argument for Tissaphernes initially arriving in Anatolia with royal money (35–36) that turns on the difficulty of long-distance communication.
[4] Incidental remarks. The statements that Dercylidas took property from Meidias (17) and that Aristarchus was both navarch and harmost (69–70) are incorrect. The translation of Xen. Hell. 2.1.14 (9) could be queried, as could the assertion (202) that flocks of sheep cannot be herded over long distances: see NN 2349. The idea that satrapal office was a price Belšunu had to pay to get into Crown-Grant management (143) seems back-to-front. The presence of Bessus (the future regicide) in a Bactrian document explains the scale of resources listed therein but is unremarked. The index is patchy.
[5] King’s conviction (83, 236) that Agesilaus had sex with Megabates as part of the deal between Spithridates and Otys — Otys marries Spithridates’ daughter, Agesilaus gets Spithridates’ son extramaritally because the son will later “be expected to formalize a separate relationship through marriage” — strains credulity.
[6] Bakabaduš’s relation to satraps further east might be mentioned: King reads his travel-authorisations as asserting superiority (207), but a round-trip authorisation across Bakabaduš’s jurisdiction by the Hinduš satrap (NN 0465) challenges this.
[7] King refuses to sideline the House perspective by translating this “Prince”. A fair point that could be underlined by noting Babylonian applications of the term to privileged associates of socio-economically powerful individuals who were neither royal nor necessarily Iranian.
[8] King postulates a link between grd’ and Median self-enslavement practices (112) without noting a Neo-Elamite antecedent suggested by Mark Tamerus.