Note 263 — Chapter XI · ALONG THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE NEAR EAST
Reading edition
For a helpful map, indicating the course of the Royal Road, the reader is referred to the third volume of Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies (New York, 1881). Much light is also thrown on this interesting subject by Rennell’s valuable work, The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, Sec. 13 (London, 1830).
It is well, in reference to this subject, to recollect that the ordinary policy of the Asiatic monarchies was not that of holding immense continuous areas of territory, but the comparatively simpler one of safeguarding the great highways of communication. “It is important to remember this in connection with rapid conquest like that of Alexander. To conquer the Achæmenian empire did not mean the effective occupation of all the area within its extreme frontiers—that would have been a task exceeding one man’s lifetime—but the conquest of its cultivated districts and the holding of the roads which connected them.” Cf. The House of Seleucus, Vol. I, p. 22 (by E. R. Bevan, London, 1902).