approaching to a uniform system of government established for revenue purposes, though Phoenicia could not be excused from contributing to the taxation of the empire, yet the burden laid upon her seems to have been exceptionally light.  United in a satrapy—­the fifth—­with Syria, Cyprus, and Palestine, and taxed according to her population rather than according to her wealth, she paid a share—­probably not more than a third or a fourth—­of 350 talents,[14268] or an annual contribution to the needs of the empire amounting to no less than 30,000l.  Persia, moreover, encouraged Phoenicia to establish an internal organisation of her own, and, under her suzerainty, Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus were united by federal bonds, and had a common council, which met at Tripolis, probably of three hundred members.[14269] This council debated matters in which Phoenicia generally was interested, and, in times of disturbance, decided questions of peace and war.

The reign of Darius Hystaspis (B.C. 521-486), the successor of Cambyses upon the Persian throne, introduced several changes into the Persian governmental system which were of advantage to the Phoenicians.  Darius united the most distant parts of his empire by postal routes, along which at moderate intervals were maintained post-houses, with relays of horses,[14270] primarily for the use of the government, but at the service of the traveller or private trader when not needed for business of state.  Phoenician commerce must have been much helped by these arrangements, which facilitated rapid communication, gave security to lines of route which had been previously infested with robbers, and provided resting-places for the companies of merchants and traders, not unlike the caravanserai of modern Turkey and Persia.

Darius also established throughout his vast empire a uniform coinage, based apparently on that which had previously prevailed in Lydia.  His “darics,” as they were called by the Greeks, were, in the first instance, gold coins of a rude type, a little heavier than our sovereigns, weighing between 123 and 124 grains troy.[14271] They bore the figure of an archer on the obverse, and on the reverse a very rough and primitive quadratum incusum.  Darius must have coined them in vast abundance, since early in the reign of his successor a single individual of no great eminence had accumulated as many as 3,993,000 of them.[14272] Subsequently to the introduction of the gold darics, a silver coinage was issued, originally (we are told) in Egypt by a Persian satrap called Aryandes,[14273] but afterwards by the central government.  The name of “daric” was extended to these coins also, which, however, were much larger and heavier than the gold coins, weighing as much as 235 grains, and corresponding to the Greek tetradrachm, and (nearly) to the Hebrew shekel.  The establishment of this excellent circulating medium, and the wide extension which it almost immediately attained, must have given an enormous stimulus to trade, and have been found of the greatest convenience by the Phoenician merchants, who had no longer to carry with them the precious metal in bars or ingots, and to weigh their gold and silver in the balance in connection with every purchase that they made, but could effect both sales and purchases in the simple and commodious manner still in use among all civilised nations at the present day.