s enabled to withdraw from the country
without serious disaster, having shown in his short campaign that he
possessed the qualities of a soldier, but was entirely deficient in
those of a general.

A time of comparative tranquillity seems to have followed the Cadusian
campaign. Artaxerxes strengthened his hold upon the Asiatic Greeks by
razing some of their towns and placing garrisons in others. His satraps
even ventured to commence the absorption of the islands off the coast;
and there is evidence that Sanaos, at any rate, was reduced and added
to the Empire. Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Idumaea were doubtless recovered
soon after the great defeat of Evagoras. There remained only one
province in this quarter which still maintained its revolt, and enjoyed,
under native monarchs, the advantages of independence. This was Egypt,
which had now continued free for above thirty years, since it shook off
the yoke of Darius Nothus. Artaxerxes, anxious to recover this portion
of his ancestral dominions, applied in B.C. 375 to Athens for the
services of her great general, Iphicrates. His request was granted, and
in the next year a vast armament was assembled at Acre under Iphicrates
and Pharnabazus, which effected a successful landing in the Delta at the
Mendesian mouth of the Nile, stormed the town commanding this branch of
the river, and might have taken Memphis, could the energetic advice of
the Athenian have stirred to action the sluggish temper of his Persian
colleague. But Pharnabazus declined to be hurried, and preferred to
proceed leisurely and according to rule. The result was that the season
for hostilities passed and nothing had been done. The Nile rose as the
summer drew on, and flooded most of the Delta; the expedition could
effect nothing, and had to return. Pharnabazus and Iphicrates parted
amid mutual recriminations; and the reduction of Egypt was deferred for
above a quarter of a century.

In Greece, however, the Great King still retained that position of
supreme arbiter with which he had been invested at the "Peace of
Antalcidas." In B.C. 372 Antalcidas was sent by Sparta a second time up
to Susa, for the purpose of obtaining an imperial rescript, prescribing
the terms on which the then existing hostilities among the Greeks should
cease. In B.C. 367 Pelopidas and Ismenias proceeded with the same object
from Thebes to the Persian capital. In the following year a rescript,
more in their favor than former ones, was obtai