bylonian throne within little more than six years, two of whom met
with a violent end, yet Amasis seems to have continued quiescent and
contented, in the enjoyment of a life somewhat more merry and amusing
than that of most monarchs, without making any effort to throw off the
Babylonian supremacy or reassert the independence of his country. It was
not till his self-indulgent apathy was intruded upon from without, and
he received an appeal from a foreign nation, to which he was compelled
to return an answer, that he looked the situation in the face, and came
to the conclusion that he might declare himself independent without much
risk. He had at this time patiently borne his subject position for the
space of above twenty years, though he might easily have reasserted
himself at the end of seven.

The circumstances under which the appeal was made were the following. A
new power had suddenly risen up in Asia. About B.C. 558, ten years after
Nebuchadnezzar's subjection of Egypt, Cyrus, son of Cambyses, the
tributary monarch of Persia under the Medes, assumed an independent
position and began a career of conquest. Having made himself master of a
large portion of the country of Elam, he assumed the title of "King of
Ansan," and engaged in a long war with Astyages (Istivegu), his former
suzerain, which terminated (in B.C. 549) in his taking the Median
monarch prisoner and succeeding to his dominions. It was at once
recognized through Asia that a new peril had arisen. The Medes, a
mountain people of great physical strength and remarkable bravery, had
for about a century been regarded as the most powerful people of Western
Asia. They had now been overthrown and conquered by a still more
powerful mountain race. That race had at its head an energetic and
enterprising prince, who was in the full vigour of youth, and fired
evidently with a high ambition. His position was naturally felt as a
direct menace by the neighbouring states of Babylon and Lydia, whose
royal families were interconnected. Croesus of Lydia was the first to
take alarm and to devise measures for his own security. He formed the
conception of a grand league between the principal powers whom the rise
of Persia threatened, for mutual defence against the common enemy; and,
in furtherance of this design, sent, in B.C. 547, an embassy to Egypt,
and another to Babylon, proposing a close alliance between the three
countries. Amasis had to determine whether he would maintain