They were the king's advisers in the palace, and his generals in the field.

They superintended the education of the young princes, and found it easy to make them their tools.

The plots and conspiracies, the executions and assassinations, which disfigure the later portion of the Persian annals, maybe traced chiefly to their intrigues and ambition.

But the early Persian annals are free from these horrors; and it is clear that the power of the eunuchs was, during this period, kept within narrow bounds.

We hear little of them in authentic history till the reign of Xerxes.