Darius, Gadatas, and the Apollo of Aulai
Between Otanes’ conquest of Samos (ca. 520-519) and Darius’s stops at Sardis on the way to and from his European expedtion, we have not one factual word about Persian policy in Asia Minor, This is why there is so mueh interest in a document traditionally called the Letter of Darius to Gadatas, which we present and discuss at this point, whatever the doubts surrounding its actual date. It reads:
The king of kings, Darius, son of Hystaspes, to his servant (doulos) Gadatas speaks as follows:
I understand that you do not obey every point of my instructions. Without doubt you exercise care in cultivating the land that belongs to me, since you transplant into the regions of Lower Asia trees that grow on the other side of the Euphrates: on this point, I praise your intent, and, for that, there will be great recognition in the king’s house. But, on the other hand, since you choose to disregard iny desires as regards the gods, I shall cause you to experience, if you do not change, my wrath excited by an injury. The sacred gardeners (phytourgoi hie-roi) of Apollo have been subjected by you to tribute [plioros] and required to work profane land [kliom behelos)-, that is to disregard the sentinrents of my ancestors toward the god who said to the Persians---[lacuna]---. (ML 12)
Tire authenticity of the document is no longer really challenged. It might appear surprising to find a Greek version of a royal letter, especially since the inscription is engraved according to standards that date it to the Roman imperial period. It is actually the reengraving of a document whose original does go back to the reign of Darius, since the characteristics of the epistolary composition are close to the style of the Achaemenid chancellery. At the time of the Roman conquest, the cities and temples had to produce proof of preexisting privileges and immunities that they wished to renew. Of course, the editor-translators Hellenized some words for which they had no equivalent. It is quite likely, for example, that the modifier doulos, by which Darius addresses Gadatas, represents Old Persian bandaka, which in turn designates the king's Faithful. There is similarly no doubt that the name Gadatas is the imperfect transcription of a Persian name (Bagadata?). One uncertainty remains: the date within the reign of Darius. We have no benchmark that would allow us to place it either before or after the Ionian revolt (500492) or before or after Darius’s traversal of Asia Minor in 513-512. It is tempting simply to suppose that the royal statement was recorded in a series of measures decided during his stay in Sardis on his return from Europe. Herodotus shows the king sitting on the throne (proasteion) of Sardis while receiving delegations (V12). It is possible that the directors of the sanctuary of Apollo came to him at this time to ask him to take a position on the matter that was troubling them.
The letter itself is in two parts, both distinct and linked. First the king makes known his satisfaction with Gadatas for the horticultural work he has conducted so well. Gada-tas’s job is not indicated. It has sometimes been supposed that he held the position of satrap of Sardis after the death (undocumented) of Artaphernes around 493-492, It is true that in Magnesia on the Meander there was a residence used by the satrap of Sardis, under Oroetes (Herodotus III.122, 125) around 525 and again by Tissaphernes more than a century later (Thucydides VIII.50.3). According to the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, it IS also true that the governors’ job was to keep the land under cultivation and increase the yield of the soil —otherwise “the garrisons are not maintained and the tribute cannot be paid” (IVl l-o). Nonetheless, the letter concerns a specific territory, where Gadatas is praised for acclimatizing “exotic” plants from peran tes Euphratou (‘across the Euphrates’, or Trans-Euphrates)—a Greek phrase rendering (in its way) the Akkadian word Ebir-Nari. It is difficult not to see this as a reference to the famous Persian paradises that included, among other components, a botanical garden dedicated to experiments with rare species. Given these circumstances, Gadatas was most likely the steward of the royal/satrapal paradise close to Magnesia on the Meander—comparable to “Asaph, keeper of the king’s park” [pardes lammelek) in Syria, in the time of Artaxerxes I (Neh ZrS-o-). The grounds of this paradise are what Darius refers to in the second part as “profane land,” corresponding to another phrase at the beginning of the text, “the land that belongs to me” (chap. 10/7). The curious expression “profane land” is justified by the fact that obviously it adjoins the territory belonging to a Greek sanctuary, the sanctuary of Apollo. This is the Apollo of Aulai, near Magnesia on the Meander. Darius scolds Gadatas for commandeering “sacred gardeners,” whose privileges can now be reconstructed; the sanctuary enjoyed fiscal immunity, because the “sacred gardeners” did not pay tribute and were not subject to satrapal requisitions under the corvee system.
Darius, Tattenai, and Gadatas
Darius’s letters to Tattenai and Gadatas testify first of all to the limits placed on satrapal whim. When the king granted privileges to a community, royal letters were sent to the local representatives of the administration. When, some time later, Nehemiah was sent to Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I, he bore letters for the governors of Trans-Euphrates; he also had a letter addressed to Asaph, steward of the royal paradise (who had to furnish wood for construction; Neh 2:7-8). The royal and/or satrapal officers had to conduct an inquiry before making any decision whatsoever. Tattenai did not neglect to do so; he came to question the Elders of Jerusalem, asking them who had authorized the work of rebuilding the temple. Apparently neither the Jews nor the provincial government offices had a written copy of Gyrus’s order, and thus Tattenai sent a letter to Darius to ask him to have a seareh made in the central archives. In the case of Darius’s letter to Gadatas, tlie recognized privileges of the sanctuary of Apollo of Aulai were very old, since Darius attributed them to his “ancestors.” It is possible that during the conquest of Asia Minor Gyrus had established good relations with the priests, and they in return had received fiscal immunity. Darius’s letter was thus probably sent to Gadatas after the sanctuary administrators had appealed to the Great King to reverse the decision of the steward of the paradise. The royal letter thus was the confirmation of recognized privileges, which Gadatas could no longer ignore under pain of extremely severe sanctions, however laudable his efforts in the horticultural realm may otherwise have been.
The royal missives also show the continuity of the policy of the Great Kings from Cyrus to Darius, which we have every reason to believe held for relations with the Babylonian temples as well. The Gadatas letter provides a rare, explicit example of fiscal immunity bestowed on a sanctuary. The only comparable example is the immunity later granted to the personnel of the temple in Jerusalem: “It is forbidden to impose tribute, customs or tolls” on them (Ezra 7;24<-: phoros in the Septuagint). Darius’s letter to Gadatas thereby testifies both to an overall ideological strategy and to the specificity of its local applications. If Cyrus granted the sanctuary at Aulai such a privilege, perhaps it was because it had originally been granted by the Lydian kings. The probably limited extent of the lands associated with the sanctuary meant that the loss to the royal treasury was small; as for political risk, it was negligible in comparison to the ideological benefits the crown could draw from this privileged alliance with a respected sanctuary located near an Achaemenid administrative residence.
The sacred gardeners (hieroi phytourgoi) of the Apollo of Aulai could easily be compared with the thousands of sacred slaves {hierodouloi) who worked the lands of the great sanctuaries of Anatolia. Strabo, speaking of the hierodules of Comana in Pontus (XII.3.34), states that the master of the sanctuary had full rights over them, except for the right to sell them (kyrios plen ton pipraskein). It was certainly with reference to such implicit precedents or parallels that Antiochus of Commagene, when he founded the dynastic sanctuary at Nemrud Dagh, specified;
It shall not be permitted to anyone—king, dynast, priest, magistrate—to reduce these hierodules to slavery {katadouleisthai) ... whether their children or their descendants, who belong to this class forevermore, nor may they alienate them (apallotriosai) in any way, nor maltreat them (kakosai) to any extent, nor extort eorvee from them (leitourgia), but the priests and the magistrates shall take charge of them and the kings, the magistrates, and every private individual shall protect them. (OG/S 383, lines 171-85)
The villages where the hierodules lived, which the king granted to the sanctuary as dorea (cf. IGLS VII, no. 4028), were similarly protected. Looting and war certainly figured among the possible causes for enslavement or mistreatment that the king and his administration had in mind (which could endanger the regularity of revenue from the affected villages at the shrines and the sanctuary). We should also recall at this juncture what Strabo wrote about the hierodules of the sanctuary of Zeleia (dedicated to Anaitis): as a result of all sorts of misdeeds, their number had diminished (XII.3.37).
Did every Anatolian sanctuary—some of which were Persianized (e. g., Anaitis)—also enjoy privileges such as those conferred on the Apollo of Aulai? The existing evidence does not provide an answer to this question. We must simply emphasize that the consecration of a few sanctuaries is evident during the Persian period (cf. Plutarch, Art. 27.4; Strabo XI. 14.16). Another document (also late) may provide a parallel: a Greek inscription from Cappadocia reveals the existence of a sanctuary dedicated to an Iranian goddess, Anaitis Barzochara, to whom hierodules were consecrated. It states that they were to be exempt “from molestations on the part of anyone, with their descendants forever.” Such customs and regulations forcefully recall the facts of Darius's letter to Gadatas, as well as clarify them. But, unfortunately, nothing can be said about the fiscal status of these Anatolian sanctuaries at the time of Achaemenid rule. The looting that was organized by Datames in some of them and that may well be an illustration of his rebellion against the Great King (Ps.-Arist. [Oecon.] II.24a; Polyaenus VII.21.1)—which remains to be proved—does not imply that the sanctuaries were normally exempt from any obligation to the imperial power.
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