Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/200

182 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER XXXII. RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. - CYRUS. IN the preceding chapter, I have followed the history of Cen- tral Greece very nearly down to the point at which the history of the Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which the two streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same channel. I now revert to the affairs of the Asiatic Greeks, and of the Asiatic kings as connected with them, at the point in which they were left in my seventeenth chapter. The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad nnd serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and /Eolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Crossus : " down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free." Their con- queror Crrcsus, who ascended the throne in 560 B.C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unas- sailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as Ilie river Halys to the east ; on the other side of that river be- gan the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising in a southeastern direction Persis proper, or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line of Mount Zagros the present boundary- line between Persia and Turkey. Babylonia, with its won- drous city, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians, or Chaldeans, under their king Labynetus : a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prod- igies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline, but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chalda^an dominion under Labynetus reached to the borders of Egypt, including, as dependent territories, both JucUea and Pbe-