s had been directed to a steady resistance of Persian
aggression and a determined maintenance of their own independence.
Mazares and Harpagus would almost certainly have been baffled, and the
Great King himself would probably have been called off from his eastern
conquests to undertake in person a task which after all he might have
failed to accomplish.

The fall of the last Ionian town left Harpagus free to turn his
attention to the tribes of the south-west which had not yet made their
submission--the Carians, the Dorian Greeks, the Caunians, and the people
of Lycia. Impressing the services of the newly-conquered Ionians and
AEolians, he marched first against Caria, which offered but a feeble
resistance. The Dorians of the continent, Myndians, Halicarnassians, and
Cnidians. submitted still more tamely, without any struggle at all; but
the Caunians and Lycians showed a different spirit. These tribes, which
were ethnically allied, and of a very peculiar type, had never yet, it
would seem, been subdued by any conqueror. Prizing highly the liberty
they had enjoyed so long, they defended themselves with desperation.
When they were defeated in the field they shut themselves up within
the walls of their chief cities, Caunus and Xanthus, where, finding
resistance impossible, they set fire to the two places with their own
hands, burned their wives, children, slaves, and valuables, and then
sallying forth, sword in hand, fell on the besiegers' lines, and fought
till they were all slain.

Meanwhile Cyrus was pursuing a career of conquest in the far east. It
was now, according to Herodotus, who is, beyond all question, a better
authority than Ctesias for the reign of Cyrus, that the reduction of the
Bactrians and the Sacans, the chief nations of what is called by moderns
Central Asia, took place. Bactria was a country which enjoyed the
reputation of having been great and glorious at a very early date. In
one of the most ancient portions of the Zendavesta it was celebrated
as "Bahhdi eredhwo-drafsha," or "Bactria" with the lofty banner; and
traditions not wholly to be despised made it the native country of
Zoroaster. There is good reason to believe that, up to the date of
Cyras, it had maintained its independence, or at any rate that it had
been untouched by the great monarchies which for above seven hundred
years had borne sway in the western parts of Asia. Its people were
of the Iranic stock, and retained in their remote and som