ites and peltasts who had always decided
the issue of the Persian battles. The expeditions both by land and
sea had been under the conduct of Athenian or Spartan generals--Conon,
Chabrias, Iphi-crates, Agesilas, Timotheus, and their pupils; and again
also it was to the Greeks--to the Rhodian Mentor and to, Memnon--that
Ochus had owed his successes. The older nations--Egypt, Syria, Chaldaea,
and Elam--had all had their day of supremacy; they had declined in the
course of centuries, and Assyria had for a short time united them under
her rule. On the downfall of Assyria, the Iranians had succeeded to
her heritage, and they had built up a single empire comprising all the
states which had preceded them in Western Asia; but decadence had fallen
upon them also, and when they had been masters for scarcely two short
centuries, they were in their turn threatened with destruction. Their
rule continued to be universal, not by reason of its inherent vigour,
but on account of the weakness of their subjects and neighbours, and a
determined attack on any of the frontiers of the empire would doubtless
have resulted in its overthrow.

Greece herself was too demoralised to cause Darius any grave anxiety.
Not only had she renounced all intention of attacking the great king in
his own domain, as in the days of the Athenian hegemony, when she could
impose her own conditions of peace, but her perpetual discords had
yielded her an easy prey to Persia, and were likely to do so more and
more. The Greek cities chose the great king as the arbiter in their
quarrels; they vied with each other in obtaining his good will, his
subsidies in men and vessels, and his darics: they armed or disarmed at
his command, and the day seemed at hand when they would become a normal
dependency of Persia, little short of a regular satrapy like Asiatic
Hellas. One chance of escape from such a fate remained to them--if one
or other of them, or some neighbouring state, could acquire such an
ascendency as to make it possible to unite what forces remained to them
under one rule. Macedonia in particular, having hitherto kept aloof from
the general stream of politics, had at this juncture begun to shake
off its lethargy, and had entered with energy into the Hellenic concert
under the auspices of its king, Philip. Bagoas recognised the danger
which threatened his people in the person of this ambitious sovereign,
and did not hesitate to give substantial support to the adversari