ived at the inhabitants escaping in their ships, while, in others,
he allowed them to take up the ordinary position of Persian subjects,
liable to tribute and military service, but not otherwise molested. So
little irksome were such terms to the Ionians of this period that even
those who dwelt in the islands off the coast, with the single exception
of the Samians--though they ran no risk of subjugation, since the
Persians did not possess a fleet--accepted voluntarily the same
position, and enrolled themselves among the subjects of Cyrus.

One Greek continental town alone suffered nothing during this time of
trouble. When Cyrus refused the offers of submission, which reached him
from the Ionian and AEolian Greeks after his capture of Sardis, he made
an exception in favor of Miletus, the most important of all the Grecian
cities in Asia. Prudence, it is probable, rather than clemency, dictated
this course, since to detach from the Grecian cause the most powerful
and influential of the states was the readiest way of weakening the
resistance they would be able to make. Miletus singly had defied the
arms of four successive Lydian kings, and had only succumbed at last
to the efforts of the fifth, Croesus. If her submission had been now
rejected, and she had been obliged to take counsel of her despair, the
struggle between the Greek cities and the Persian generals might have
assumed a different character.

Still more different might have been the result, if the cities
generally had had the wisdom to follow a piece of advice which the great
philosopher and statesman of the time, Thales, the Milesian, is said
to have given them. Thales suggested that the Ionians should form
themselves into a confederation, to be governed by a congress which
should meet at Teos, the several cities retaining their own laws and
internal independence, but being united for military purposes into a
single community. Judged by the light which later events, the great
Ionian revolt especially, throw upon it, this advice is seen to have
been of the greatest importance. It is difficult to say what check, or
even reverse, the arms of Persia might not have at this time sustained,
if the spirit of Thales had animated his Asiatic countrymen generally;
if the loose Ionic Amphictyony, which in reality left each state in
the hour of danger to its own resources, had been superseded by a
true federal union, and the combined efforts of the thirteen Ionian
communitie