Quick questions on Persian government, satrapies and administration under Darius and Xerxes: HSC Ancient History

Darius I seized the throne in 522 BC, an event he justified at length on the trilingual Behistun (Bisitun) Inscription as the defeat of a usurper, Gaumata, who had impersonated the dead king's brother. Darius then spent roughly two years suppressing revolts across the empire before turning to administrative reform.

A satrap was usually a Persian noble, very often a member of the royal family, appointed directly by the king and answerable to him alone. Ruling from a grand provincial capital, such as Sardis, Babylon, Dascylium or Memphis, the satrap combined several roles: civil administration and the keeping of local order; justice, generally allowing subject peoples to keep their own laws and customs alongside the king's law; tribute collection, forwarding the province's fixed assessment to the crown along with provisions for the king's court and army when they passed through; and a military role, raising local levies and often keeping a personal guard.

The hazarapatis (Old Persian for "commander of a thousand," rendered chiliarch in Greek) commanded the king's elite corps of 1,000 royal spear-bearers, part of the larger standing corps of infantry Herodotus (Histories 7.83) calls the "Immortals," always kept at a strength of 10,000. Beyond this military command, the hazarapatis controlled personal access to the king, functioning almost as a royal chamberlain: nobody reached the Great King without passing the hazarapatis first.

Xenophon (Cyropaedia 8.2.10-12) describes "the King's Eyes and Ears," royal agents, often relatives of the king or trusted officials, sent out to tour the satrapies and report directly back to the crown on a satrap's conduct, bypassing the ordinary chain of command entirely. The idea was familiar enough in Greece that Aristophanes could mock it on the comic stage: in Acharnians (425 BC), a Persian envoy is introduced as "the King's Eye."

Persian rule generally allowed subject peoples to keep their own law, language and religion, administered through local elites working beneath the satrap. In Egypt, Darius had himself depicted in pharaonic style, commissioned temple building at the Hibis temple in the Kharga Oasis, and codified rather than replaced Egyptian law. In Babylon, Babylonian administrative practice and priesthoods continued under a Persian satrap. In Egypt's Jewish military garrison at Elephantine, the Aramaic papyri show a community running its own affairs, including its own temple, while a Persian-appointed satrap (Arsames) and his officials oversaw estates, taxation and the granting of official permissions.