Moreover, a creature of Artaxerxes III., by the name of Bagoses, became Satrap of Syria, and presumed to appoint as the high-priest at Jerusalem Joshua, another son of Jehoiada, and severely taxed the Jews, and even forced his way into the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary of the Temple,a sacrilege hard to be endured.

"You mean this great noble of the steppe is no longer right, mentally?" "He is one of the keenest satraps in Asia, Monsieur.

That most brilliant of ages, the age of Pericles, could never have come to pass under the dominion of Persia; and the Greeks of Europe, when ruled by satraps from Susa, would have been of as little weight in the ancient world as, under that kind of rule, were the Greeks of Ionia.

Resolved to avert stalemate by the only possible means, he had applied in the course of 1823 to Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt, a more formidable, though more distant, satrap than Ali of Yannina himself.

The career of Ali marked that phase in the decline of an Oriental empire when the task of strong government becomes too difficult for the central authority and is carried on by independent satraps with greater efficiency in their more limited sphere.