with gold and silver, and even showered munificent presents on the Delphians, who requited him with all the honours and privileges that a Greek city could bestow. He then collected an army from his subject provinces, and marched against Cyrus.

Caspian: till they should be subdued or humbled, his eastern provinces could never enjoy peace or safety. These objects demanded his own presence; the subjugation of the Asiatic Greeks, as a less urgent and less difficult enterprise, he committed to his lieutenants. Before He crossed the Halys into Cappadocia, not, he quitted Sardis he had received envoys from however, with the intention of pushing forward the Eolian and Ionian cities, who offered subinto the dominions of his adversary, but of chal- mission on the same terms as had been granted lenging him to a conflict, and waiting for his to them by Croesus. But the conqueror reapproach. The Persian speedily came up with minded them of his rejected invitation, and a superior force, swelled from the various na- taunted them for their tardy acquiescence with tions that lay in his way. Before he tried the a significant fable. "The fisherman stood by strength of Croesus, he sent envoys to the Ioni- the seaside and played upon his flute; but the an cities, inviting them to seize the opportunity fish would not listen, and kept still in the water. of throwing off the Lydian yoke. But they had Then he took his net and drew them out on the found it too light to be anxious for a change shore, and they quivered and leaped; but it was which would only transfer them to another mas- in the agonies of death."* The Greeks, when ter, and they were deaf to his summons. A they heard that they had no choice between war battle took place between the hostile armies; and slavery, began to prepare for resistance. neither could claim a decided advantage; but But Cyrus in his anger had been politic enough Croesus believed that his preparations had not to exempt Miletus from his stern demand of been sufficient to accomplish the decree of des- unconditional submission, and to content himtiny, and he resolved to return to Sardis, to as-self with the tribute she had paid to Croesus, semble a larger force during the winter, and to renew his expedition on the following spring. Arrived in his capital, he despatched his envoys to the kings of Egypt and of Babylon, for both were his allies, and called upon them for succours; at the same time, he requested aid from Sparta. When he had taken these measures, he disbanded his army, ordering all his vassals to hold themselves in readiness for the next campaign. It never came. Before tidings reached Sardis of the motions of Cyrus, he was seen encamped before its walls. Croesus had no force at his command but his Lydian cavalry. With this, however, he still tried his fortune in a desperate battle; he lost it, and was shut up in his citadel, and closely besieged by the Persians. The fortress was surprised on its strongest and least guarded side, and Crœsus, with his treasures and his kingdom, fell into the hands of the conqueror.

According to a legend which, in the form in which it is reported by Herodotus, could only have become current among the Greeks through their ignorance of the Persian customs and modes of thinking, the life of the royal captive was at first threatened, but finally spared. Ctesias had heard something of a similar story, but he adds a fact which has all the air of truth, that a Median city near Ecbatana was assigned to Croesus for his residence: here he probably closed his checkered life.

and thus severed her from the cause of her brethren. The other Ionians of the coast-for the islands were secure from invasion-assembled at the Panionian temple to consult for the common weal, and resolved to send ambassadors to beg assistance from Sparta. The Spartans, however, did not deem themselves connected with the suppliants by ties strong enough to draw them into a contest with Persia, and they refused to take up arms in their behalf. Yet either for the sake of learning something about the Persians and the state of Ionia, or under the simple belief that their name would carry weight with Cyrus, they sent an envoy to his court, and in language rather of command than of intercession desired that he would refrain from doing harm to any Grecian city. The shepherd-king, who had never heard of Sparta, but supposed it was like the Ionian towns, a mart of busy traffic, bade the messenger return, and tell his countrymen that Cyrus despised the threats of men who had a public place in their city set apart for the purpose of false swearing and mutual deceit. Such in his eye was the Greek agora: what other ends it served, what high thoughts might there spring up in the minds of freemen, and be cherished by the interchange of words, and ripen into great actions-this was beyond the imagination of an Eastern despot to conceive.

Mazares, the same general-and it is worth observing that he was a Mede, not a Persianwhom Cyrus appointed to quell the insurrection of the Lydians, after he had reduced them to obedience, proceeded to punish and subdue the Ionians, who had aided them in their attempt to shake off the Persian yoke. But he only lived to take Priené and Magnesia, and to ravage the vale of the Mæander. On his death Harpagus (likewise a Mede) succeeded to the command, and vigorously pressed the Ionian cities. His

The conquest of Lydia established the Persian monarchy on a firm foundation; an insurrection which soon after broke out there was speedily quelled, and that it might never recur, the vanquished people were deprived of their arms, and compelled to abandon themselves to the arts of peace and luxury. Cyrus had been called away to the East by vast designs, and by the threats of a distant and formidable enemy. Babylon still remained an independent city in the heart of his empire; to reduce it was his first and most pressing care. On another side * Her, i., 141 According to Diodorus (Mai, 11., p. 27), he was tempted by the wealth and the weak-swered it by a different story. He told the Greeks that he it was Harpagus who received the application, and who anness of Egypt; while his northeast frontier was once sought the hand of a maiden whose father betrothed disturbed and endangered by the fierce barbari- her to a more powerful person; but afterward, seeing Har ans who ranged over the plains that stretch agus high in favour at court, offered him his daughter. from the skirts of the Indian Caucasus to the be, not as his wife, but as his concubine. But Harpagus said that, if he accepted her now, it should

method of besieging appears to have been new which they had been afterward expelled by the to the Ionians, though it is the same which had Thracians. The Teians now took possession been long used in the civilized states of Asia.* of the vacant site, and the new city Abdera It consisted, according to Herodotus, in casting flourished like Elea, innocently renowned for a up mounds against the walls. We hear nothing peculiar school of philosophy. Before the Perof battering engines, though these, too, were sian invasion, Thales is said to have recomalready known in the East; and we may there- mended Teos to the Ionians as an advantageous fore conclude that Harpagus relied entirely on position for a new capital, and to have advised his superiority in numbers, which enabled him them to concentrate their forces there, and reto raise his mounds above the walls of the city, duce the other cities of their confederacy to the to clear them by showers of missiles, or to ef- rank of provincial towns, depending on it as fect an entrance by filling up the intervening the general seat of government. This scheme space. The first he attacked was Phocæa. Its shocked too many prejudices and partial interstrong walls were of no avail against the con-ests to be well received. The Ionian cities fell tinual labours of the Persians; their works were successively under the attacks of Harpagus, steadily advancing, and Harpagus sent a taunt- and even the islanders thought it prudent to ing message to the besieged, "that he would be disarm the irresistible conqueror by voluntary content if they would but throw down a single submission. While their new fetters were still battlement, and convert one dwelling into holy galling them, Bias gave them a counsel similar ground." The Phocæans, in reply, asked for a to that of Thales: to make a common expedi day to deliberate, and desired Harpagus, in the tion, and found a single Ionian state in the great mean while, to draw off his troops. He saw island of Sardinia. But all were not capable through their design, and connived at it. Du- of the heroism of Phocæa and Teos; and when ring the armistice he granted, they freighted they had recovered from the disasters of the their ships with the most sacred and precious war, the Persian dominion proved, perhaps, not of their treasures, embarked with their wives much more burdensome than that of Croesus. and children, and steered for Chios. The Per- The worst part of their lot was, that they were sians, when they returned, found the city empty. now compelled to carry the arms which they The Phocæans first proposed to purchase from had so often turned against one another in the the Chians a small group of adjacent islands service of a foreign master, and to assist him I called the Enussæ. But the Chians feared in reducing freemen and Greeks under the same lest their commerce might suffer from so close yoke. a neighbourhood of such active and enterprising After Eolis and Ionia were subdued, Harparivals, and refused their consent. The Pho-gus pushed his conquests along the southern cæans then resolved on a longer voyage in coast. The Carians submitted without a strug-. search of a new settlement in the same west-gle; only Pedasa, the ancient seat of the Leleern sea where they had already planted some ges, strong by nature and in the bravery of its flourishing colonies. But before they abandon-inhabitants, held out long after all around had ed their country they once more sailed home, yielded. The Dorians of Cnidus had also medand surprised and slew the Persian garrison.itated resistance, and while the Persians were Then they dropped an iron bar into the sea, and swore that, till it should rise up to the surface, they would not return to Phocæa. Yet before they had left the Ægean, the larger half, unable to endure the loss of their native city, repented of their vow, and remained behind. The rest bent their course to Corsica, where, twenty years before, they had founded a town called Alalia, and settled among their kinsmen. But they were soon engaged in war with the Car-men of Xanthus marched out of their city thaginians and the Tyrrhenians of Agylla, and lost the greater part of their fleet. After this disaster they took their families on board their remaining ships, and made for Rhegium. While they rested there and repaired their shattered navy, they heard of a site on the coast afterward conquered by the Lucanians, but where, at that time, Sybaris was mistress. Under her protection, to the southeast of Posidonia, they founded Elea, which became, as we have seen, a celebrated seat of arts and learning, and, after its neighbours had fallen under the yoke of the barbarians, long preserved the independence which its founders had bought so dearly.

still detained in Ionia, had begun to dig through the neck of land, about half a mile broad, which connected their peninsula with the continent. But the undertaking was interrupted by religious scruples, and the Delphic oracle declared it contrary to the will of Jove: the work was abandoned, and Cnidus surrendered at the first summons of Harpagus. In Lycia the spirit of freedom was more resolute and reckless; the

against the Persian host, and when their little band was overpowered by numbers, and forced back within the walls, they collected their wives, and children, and treasures in the citadel, and set it on fire. While the flames were blazing, the husbands and fathers, having bound themselves by a solemn vow, again sallied forth, and died sword in hand. Only a few families, which happened to be absent during the siege, afterward returned to their country, and perpetuated the race of the ancient Xanthians. Caunus made a like display of unavailing courage. Whatev er did not bend to the will of the conqueror, was broken and ground to dust; and after a few struggles, the sovereignty of Persia was peacefully acknowledged throughout the whole of Lesser Asia.

The men of Teos followed the example of the Phocæans: when the mound of the Persians had risen to the top of their walls, they took to their ships, and sailed to the coast of While the lieutenants of Cyrus were execu Thrace, where some time before a band of Io-ting his commands in the West, he was humnian adventurers had founded a town, from * 2 Sam., xx., 15. 2 Kings, x1x., 32. Jeremiah, vi., 6.

Habakkuk, i., 10.

self enlarging and strengthening his power in the East. After completing the subjection of the nations west of the Euphrates, he laid siege

troops of his predecessor Apries by the superior numbers of his Egyptian forces; but he was not the less convinced of their value: he removed them from their old quarters near Pelusium to Memphis, that they might guard his person; and he distinguished himself by the favour he showed to their nation. He assigned the city of Naucratis to the Greek settlers, and gave lands for the building of Grecian temples. When that of Delphi had been burned down, he contributed largely to its restoration; and may other Grecian sanctuaries were adorned by his munificence. He cultivated the friendship of Sparta, and honoured her with a present which was at the same time a specimen of the skill and ingenuity of his people.

It was against this prince that Cambyses had prepared an expedition, which he himself conducted in the fifth year of his reign. Amasis

to Babylon. The voluptuous and unwarlike people were protected by impregnable walls, and provided with stores for many years; and, if we might believe the account of Herodotus, they would, perhaps, have worn out the patience of Cyrus, had he not found it easier to turn the Euphrates out of its course than to force their defences. It seems doubtful, however, whether he stormed the city either in this or any other manner, and did not rather owe his success to some internal revolution, which put an end to the dynasty of the Babylonian kings. In Xenophon's romance Cyrus is made to fix his residence at Babylon during seven months in the year perhaps we cannot safely conclude that this was ever the practice of any of his successors; but it is highly probable that the reduction of this luxurious city contributed more than any other of the Persian conquests to change the manners of the court and of the nation. Cy-was conscious of his weakness, and he had enrus himself scarcely enjoyed so long an interval deavoured to avert the hostility of the Persian of repose. The protection he afforded to the kings by every mark of obsequious respect. At Jews was probably connected with his designs the request of Cyrus he had sent an Egyptian upon Egypt; but he never found leisure to car- physician to his court, and he did not even venry them into effect. Soon after the fall of Bab-ture to refuse the demand of Cambyses, when ylon he undertook an expedition against one of he asked the daughter of Amasis for his harem. the nations on the eastern side of the Caspian- He is said, indeed, to have substituted the according to Herodotus, it was the Massagetæ, daughter of Apries for his own; and the anger a nomad horde, which had driven the Scythians of Cambyses, when he detected the fraud, was before them towards the West-and after gain-imagined to have occasioned the invasion of ing a victory over them by stratagem, he was defeated in a great battle and slain. The event is the same in the narrative of Ctesias; but the people against whom Cyrus marches are the Derbices, and their army is strengthened by troops and elephants furnished by Indian allies; and the death of Cyrus is speedily avenged by one of his vassals, Amorges, king of the Saci-it to the treachery of an Egyptian eunuch, who ans, who gains a decisive victory over the Derbices, and annexes their land to the Persian Empire. This account is so far confirmed by Herodotus, that we do not hear from him of any consequences that followed the success of the Massagetæ, or that the attention of Cambyses, the son and heir of Cyrus, was called away towards the north. The first recorded measure of his reign was the invasion of Egypt.

Egypt. The motive, however, that impelled Cambyses to this undertaking, undoubtedly lies much nearer the surface. It was one which his father had meditated, but which more pressing cares had prevented him from accomplishing. The manner in which the conquest was effected is variously related. Ctesias ascribes

abused his master's confidence, and opened the passes to Cambyses on condition of being appointed to the government of the kingdom. Herodotus, whose authority must be held greater in the affairs of Egypt, seems to know nothing of such intrigues; he only relates that Cambyses was aided by the counsels of a Greek who had deserted the service of Amasis. The chief difficulty which the invading army had to overcome was the passage of the desert that separates Palestine from Egypt. At the suggestion of the Greek, Cambyses secured the assistance of an Arabian chief whose tribe wandered over the Syrian desert, and was enabled to cross it in safety. But before he arrived in Egypt Amasis died; his son Psammenitus, whom Ctesias names Amyrtæus, awaited the approach of the Persians with an army, the main strength of which probably consisted in the Greek auxiliaries. They were earnest in the Egyptian cause; and an act of savage ferocity, by which they took vengeance on their countryman who had betrayed it, while it proves

The old Egyptian monarchy had been long ripe for destruction, ready to fall at the first blow struck by a vigorous hand, and protected only by the obstacles that nature interposed against its invaders. The only sure foundation of national independence had sunk under the oppressive and corrupting dominion of the priesthood, which had wasted and stifled the energies of the people. The caste of warriors, the privileged hereditary militia, was so feeble and helpless that it could not defend itself, when a priest who had mounted the throne deprived it of its honours and its lands. The effect of the new intercourse opened with Greece in the seventh century B.C. by Psammetichus, appear-their zeal, seems also to imply that they had ed in the reign of his successor Necho, who concerted vast plans of commerce and navigation, in which, however, he seems to have been thwarted by the arts of the priesthood: but he displayed his respect for the Greeks by dedicating the armour in which he had gained a great victory over the Jewish king Josiah in the temple of Apollo at Branchide. The usurper Amasis, who was on the throne of Egypt at the death of Cyrus, had overpowered the Greek VOL. I.-Fr

lost much of their national character among the barbarians: they murdered his children whom he had left behind him in Egypt before his eyes. and mixed their blood in the bowl out of which they drank, while the hostile armies stood in battle array. The Egyptians, however, were defeated with great slaughter, and Psammenitus threw himself into Memphis, where he was besieged and taken. He was mildly treated by the conqueror, like Croesus and Astyages; and

Herodotus observes that such respect for fallen | zeal; for, though the Egyptian superstition was greatness was a maxim with the Persians: if so, it is the less probable that the clemency shown by Cambyses was, any more than that of Cyrus in the case of Croesus, the effect of a sudden fit of capricious compassion.

repugnant to all the Persian modes of thinking, we have no reason to suppose that Cambyses viewed it with any other feeling than contempt. The effect, however, produced on the people by these insults was the same, to whatever cause they were imputed, and the frequent attempts which the Egyptians afterward made to shake off the Persian yoke may be probably ascribed to the remembrance of these unpardonable wrongs.

The possession of Egypt opened a boundless field for wild and unprofitable adventures; it also afforded an opportunity for some useful and important conquests. The temper of Cambyses inclined him no less to the former than the latter: he aimed at all, and accomplished nothing. An During the reign of Cambyses, the Greek army which he sent over the Libyan Desert to cities of Asia Minor remained quietly subject subdue the Oasis, where the temple of Jupiter to their Persian governors. Even without any Ammon was the centre of a little independent direct and formal constraint, they naturally fell state, was buried in the sands; another, which under that kind of domestic rule, tyrannical, or, he led in person up the Nile, was near perish- at least, oligarchical, which was most congenial ing from hunger. Some of the adjacent African to the character of the monarchy under which tribes, however, acknowledged his sovereignty they lived. The adjacent islands, though they by sending gifts and tribute, and the Greeks of had likewise made professions of obedience, Barcè and Cyrenè followed their example. But and probably continued to pay tribute to Persia, Cambyses, either because he had resolved to were really more independent, because the sabecome absolute master of these flourishing traps on the coast had no naval force at their cities, or was dissatisfied with the amount of command to enforce their will. Among them their presents, contemptuously scattered their none had risen to a higher pitch of prosperity gold among his troops. His views were drawn than Samos. Its political constitution had passstill farther to the west by the growing fame of ed through a series of changes such as we have Carthage, and he had now a navy at his com- already seen pretty uniformly occurring in the mand which seemed to afford him the means of Grecian commonwealths. The ancient kingly reducing it under his power. The Phoenicians government had given way to a small number had submitted to the Persian dominion without of wealthy landowners, who had become hatea struggle, and had sent a fleet to second the ful to the great body of the people, and were invasion of Egypt. Cyprus, too, which had be- not formidable or prudent enough to suppress fore been tributary to Amasis, revolted from their discontent. They had sent a fleet to the aid him when his throne seemed ready to fall, and of their colony Perinthus, which was threatenjoined its forces to the invading army. Cam-ed by the Megarians: the Samians gained the byses now ordered the Phoenician fleet to sail victory, and sailed back with six hundred Meto the attack of Carthage; but the Phenicians garian prisoners. But before they entered their were too pious or too politic to lend their aid harbour they had reflected on the folly of fightin destroying the independence of their own ing for a few men, who reaped all the profit and colony, and Cambyses was compelled to accept honour of their success without sharing the danthe plea with which they covered their refusal. ger, and they resolved to set their captives at The situation of Egypt and the character of liberty, and with their aid to rid themselves of its people evidently required that it should be their lords. The rulers were surprised in the ruled with a firm, yet gentle hand; but the con-council-chamber, and put to death, and a demoqueror felt too secure in his irresistible power cratical constitution was established.* But toto resp et the feelings and opinions of his sub-wards the end of the reign of Cyrus, a bold and jects. He had even trampled on the laws of fortunate man, named Polycrates, supported by Persia by an incestuous union with his sisters, a few armed followers whom Lygdamis, the ty and he sported with the lives of the first men rant of Naxos, had sent to his aid, made himin the nation. His tyranny was so wild and self master of the city. At first he shared his capricious that it seemed like the effect of mad-power with his two brothers, but afterward ness, and he was believed to have lost his reason in habitual drunkenness, or to have been deprived of it by the gods whom his impiety had provoked. The actions ascribed to him are, however, not more extravagant than those recorded of other despots whose minds were only disturbed by the possession of absolute power. We hear that he ordered the body of Amasis to be taken out of the royal sepulchre, and loaded it with gross indignities; that he plundered and wantonly defaced the monuments of Egypt, disturbed the most solemn festivals, violated the most revered sanctuaries, and laid sacrilegious hands on the persons of the priests, and even of their god, the sacred calf. Perhaps these outrages have not been greatly exaggerated, and to a Greek who, like Herodotus, regarded the Egyptian worship with reverence, they must have appeared acts of phrensy. They were certainly not meant as proofs of religious

put one of them to death, and forced the other into exile. Thus become absolute master of the island, he took a thousand bowmen into his pay as his lifeguards, and raised a fleet of a hundred galleys. With this he protected the Samian commerce, and enriched himself by piratical excursions, subdued many of the islands, and took several towns on the continent. He made war on Miletus, and defeated a Lesbian armament sent to its relief in a seafight. These expeditions involved him in hostilities with Persia; and though the Persian power was secure enough from his attacks, still he too could safely defy it on his own element. Since the fabled maritime empire of Minos, no navy had rode on the Ægean so formidable as that of Polycrates. In the mean while he adorned his island with magnificent and useful works;

* Plut., Qu. Gr., 57.