of Cyprus had (we
have seen) before attracted the ambition of the mistress of the
Aegaean. Its possession was highly advantageous, whether for military
or commercial designs, and once subjected, the fleet of the Athenians
might readily retain the dominion. Divided into nine petty states,
governed, not by republican, but by monarchical institutions, the
forces of the island were distracted, and the whole proffered an easy
as well as glorious conquest; while the attempt took the plausible
shape of deliverance, inasmuch as Persia, despite the former successes
of Cimon, still arrogated the supremacy over the island, and the war
was, in fact, less against Cyprus than against Persia. Cimon, who
ever affected great and brilliant enterprises, and whose main policy
it was to keep the Athenians from the dangerous borders of the
Peloponnesus, hastened to cement the truce he had formed with the
states of that district, by directing the spirit of enterprise to the
conquest of Cyprus.

Invested with the command of two hundred galleys, he set sail for that
island (B. C. 450) [207]. But designs more vast were associated with
this enterprise. The objects of the late Egyptian expedition still
tempted, and sixty vessels of the fleet were despatched to Egypt to
the assistance of Amyrtaeus, who, yet unconquered, in the marshy
regions, sustained the revolt against the Persian king.

Artabazus commanded the Persian forces, and with a fleet of three
hundred vessels he ranged himself in sight of Cyprus. Cimon, however,
landing on the island, succeeded in capturing many of its principal
towns. Humbled and defeated, it was not the policy of Persia to
continue hostilities with an enemy from whom it had so much to fear
and so little to gain. It is not, therefore, altogether an improbable
account of the later authorities, that ambassadors with proposals of
peace were formally despatched to Athens. But we must reject as a
pure fable the assertions that a treaty was finally agreed upon, by
which it was decreed, on the one hand, that the independence of the
Asiatic Greek towns should be acknowledged, and that the Persian
generals should not advance within three days' march of the Grecian
seas; nor should a Persian vessel sail within the limit of Phaselis
and the Cyanean rocks; while, on the other hand, the Athenians were
bound not to enter the territories of Artaxerxes [208]. No such
arrangement was known to Thucydides; no reference is eve