on would have to be promptly dealt
with and tightly curbed, if perpetual troubles in the future were to
be avoided. The Asianic peoples soon rallied round their new
master--Phrygians, Mysians, the inhabitants on the shores of the Black
Sea, and those of the Pamphylian coast;* even Cilicia, which had held
its own against Chaldaea, Media, and Lydia, was now brought under the
rising power, and its kings were henceforward obedient to the Persian
rule.**

* None of the documents actually say this, but the general
tenor of Herodotus' account seems to show clearly that, with
the exception of the Greek cities of the Carians and
Lycians, all the peoples who had formed part of the Lydian
dominion under Croesus submitted, without any appreciable
resistance, after the taking of Sardes.

** Herodotus mentions a second Syennesis king of Cilicia
forty years later at the time of the Ionian revolt.

The two leagues of the Ionians and AEolians had at first offered to
recognise Cyrus as their suzerain under the same conditions as those
with which Croesus had been satisfied; but he had consented to accept
it only in the case of Miletus, and had demanded from the rest an
unconditional surrender. This they had refused, and, uniting in a common
cause perhaps for the first time in their existence, they had resolved
to take up arms. As the Persians possessed no fleet, the Creeks had
nothing to fear from the side of the AEgean, and the severity of the
winter prevented any attack being made from the land side till the
following spring. They meanwhile sought the aid of their mother-country,
and despatched an embassy to the Spartans; the latter did not consider
it prudent to lend them troops, as they would have done in the case of
Croesus, but they authorised Lakrines, one of their principal citizens,
to demand of the great king that he should respect the Hellenic cities,
under pain of incurring their enmity.

[Illustration: 080.jpg THE PRESENT SITE OF MILETUS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

Cyrus was fully occupied with the events then taking place in the
eastern regions of Iran; Babylon had not ventured upon any move after
having learned the news of the fall of Sardes, but the Bactrians and the
Sakae had been in open revolt during the whole of the year that he had
been detained in the extreme west, and a still longer absence might risk
the loss of his prestige in Media, and even in Persi