the Aegean, the Black, the Caspian, the Indian, the
Persian, the Red Seas. Through its territories there flowed six of the
grandest rivers in the world--the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the
Jaxartes, the Oxus, the Nile, each more than a thousand miles in length.
Its surface reached from thirteen hundred feet below the sea-level to
twenty thousand feet above. It yielded, therefore, every agricultural
product. Its mineral wealth was boundless. It inherited the prestige of
the Median, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean Empires, whose
annals reached back through more than twenty centuries.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. Persia had always looked upon European Greece as
politically insignificant, for it had scarcely half the territorial
extent of one of her satrapies. Her expeditions for compelling its
obedience had, however, taught her the military qualities of its people.
In her forces were incorporated Greek mercenaries, esteemed the very
best of her troops. She did not hesitate sometimes to give the command
of her armies to Greek generals, of her fleets to Greek captains. In the
political convulsions through which she had passed, Greek soldiers had
often been used by her contending chiefs. These military operations were
attended by a momentous result. They revealed, to the quick eye of
these warlike mercenaries, the political weakness of the empire and
the possibility of reaching its centre. After the death of Cyrus on the
battle-field of Cunaxa, it was demonstrated, by the immortal retreat of
the ten thousand under Xenophon, that a Greek army could force its way
to and from the heart of Persia.

That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic generals, so
profoundly impressed on the Greeks by such engineering exploits as the
bridging of the Hellespont, and the cutting of the isthmus at Mount
Athos by Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis, Platea, Mycale. To
plunder rich Persian provinces had become an irresistible temptation.
Such was the expedition of Agesilaus, the Spartan king, whose brilliant
successes were, however, checked by the Persian government resorting to
its time-proved policy of bribing the neighbors of Sparta to attack her.
"I have been conquered by thirty thousand Persian archers," bitterly
exclaimed Agesilaus, as he re-embarked, alluding to the Persian coin,
the Daric, which was stamped with the image of an archer.

THE INVASION OF PERSIA BY GREECE. At length Philip, the King of Macedon,
proj