Note 056 Assyria yielded to the Persian satrap an Artaba of silver each day. The well-known proportion of weights and measures (see Bishop Hooper's elaborate Inquiry), the specific gravity of water and silver, and the value of that metal, will afford, after a short process, the annual revenue which I have stated. Yet the Great King received no more than l000 Euboic, or Tyrian, talents (252,000 l.) from Assyria. The comparison of two passages in Herodotus (1. i. c. 192, 1. iii. c. 89-96) reveals an important difference between the gross and the net revenue of Persia; the sums paid by the province, and the gold or silver deposited in the royal treasure. The monarch might annually save three millions six hundred thousand pounds, of the seventeen or eighteen millions raised upon the people.

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The History Of The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire— Chapter 24