essor of Achaemenes appears to have been his son,
Teispes. Of him and of the next three monarchs, the information that
we possess is exceedingly scanty. The very names of one or two in the
series are uncertain. One tradition assigns either to the second or the
fourth king of the list the establishment of friendly relations with
a certain Pharnaces, King of Cappadocia, by an intermarriage between a
Persian princess, Atossa, and the Cappadocian monarch. The existence
of communication at this time between petty countries politically
unconnected, and placed at such a distance from one another as
Cappadocia and Persia, is certainly what we should not have expected;
but our knowledge of the general condition of Western Asia at the period
is too slight to justify us in a positive rejection of the story, which
indicates, if it be true, that even during this time of comparative
obscurity, the Persian monarchs were widely known, and that their
alliance was thought a matter of importance.

The political condition of Persia under these early monarchs is a more
interesting question than either the names of the kings or the foreign
alliances which they attracted. According to Herodotus, that condition
was one of absolute and unqualified subjection to the sway of the Medes,
who conquered Persia and imposed their yoke upon the people before
the year B.C. 634. The native records, however, and the accounts which
Xenophon preferred, represent Persia as being at this time a separate
and powerful state, either wholly independent of Media, or, at any
rate, held in light bonds of little more than nominal dependence. On the
whole, it appears most probable that the true condition of the country
was that which this last phrase expresses. It maybe doubted whether
there had ever been a conquest; but the weaker and less developed of
the two kindred states owned the suzerainty of the stronger, and though
quite unshackled in her internal administration, and perhaps not very
much interfered with in her relations towards foreign countries, was,
formally, a sort of Median fief, standing nearly in the position in
which Egypt now stands to Turkey. The position was irksome to the
sovereigns rather than unpleasant to the people. It detracted from the
dignity of the Persian monarchs, and injured their self-respect; it
probably caused them occasional inconvenience, since from time to time
they would have to pay their court to their suzerain; and it seems
towa