The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

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СКАЧАТЬ Asiatics, and in a short time embraced, not only Ionia and Æolis, but Caria, Caunus, and almost the whole of Cyprus.14274 The bulk of the Cyprian cities were Phoenician colonies, and the political connection between these cities and Phoenicia was so close and of such ancient date that the Phoenicians can scarcely have failed to be moved by their example and by their danger. A wave of sympathy might have been expected to sweep across the excitable people, and it would not have been surprising had they rushed headlong into rebellion with the same impetuosity as their Cyprian brethren. Had they done so the danger to Persia would have been very great, and the course of the world’s history might perhaps have been differently shaped. The junction of the Phoenician fleet with the navies of Cyprus, Ionia, Caria, and Æolis would have transferred the complete sovereignty of the Eastern Mediterranean to the side of the rebels.14275 The contagion of revolt would probably have spread. Lycia and Cilicia, always eager for independence,14276 would probably have joined the malcontents; Pamphylia, which lay between them, would have followed their example; the entire seaboard of Asia Minor and Syria would have been lost; Egypt would, most likely, have seen in the crisis her opportunity, and have avenged the cruelties and insults of Cambyses14277 by the massacre of her Persian garrison. Persia’s prosperity would have received a sudden check, from which it might never have recovered; Greece would have escaped the ordeal of the invasion of Xerxes; and the character of the struggle between Europe and Asia would have been completely altered.

But the view which the Phoenicians took of their duties, or of their interests, led them to act differently. When the Persians, anxious to recover Cyprus, applied to the Phoenician cities for a naval force, to transport their army from Cilica to the island, and otherwise help them in the war, their request was at once complied with. Ships were sent to the Cilician coast without any delay;14278 the Persian land force was conveyed in safety across the strait and landed on the opposite shore; the ships then rounded Cape St. Andreas and anchored in the bay opposite Salamis, where the Ionian fleet was drawn up in defence of the town.14279 An engagement followed—the first, so far as we know, between Phoenicians and Greeks—wholly to the advantage of the latter.14280 No complaint, however, is made of any lukewarmness, or want of zeal, on the part of the Phoenicians, who seem to have been beaten in fair fight by an enemy whom they had perhaps despised. Their ill fortune did not lead to any very serious result, since the Persian land force defeated the Cyprians, and thus Persia once more obtained possession of the island.

A year or two later the Phoenicians recovered their lost laurels. In B.C. 495 the Persians, having trampled out the flames of revolt in Cyprus, Caria, and Caunus, resolved on a great effort to bring the war to a close by attacking the Ionian Greeks in their own country, and crushing the head and front of the rebellion, which was the great and flourishing city of Miletus. Miletus lay on the southern shore of a deep bay—the Sinus Latmicus—which penetrated the western coast of Asia Minor in about Lat. 37º 30´, but which the deposits of the Mæander have now filled up.14281 North-west of the town, at the distance of about a mile, was the small island of Ladé, now a mere hillock on the flat alluvial plain. While the Persian land force advanced along the shore, and invested Milestus on the side towards the continent, a combined fleet of six hundred vessels14282 proceeded to block the entrance to the bay, and to threaten the doomed city from the sea. This fleet was drawn from four only of the countries subject to Persia—viz. Phoenicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt—whereof Phoenicia, we are told, “showed the greatest zeal,"14283 and we may presume furnished by far the larger number of ships. On their arrival in Milesian waters the captains found a strong naval force collected to meet them, which rested upon the island of Ladé, and guarded the approaches to the town. Miletus had summoned to her aid the contingents of her various allies—Chios, Lesbos, Samos, Teos, Priene, Erythræ, Phocæa, Myus—and had succeeded in gathering together a fleet amounting to above three hundred and fifty vessels.14284 This time Phoenicia did not despise her foe. Before engaging, every effort was made to sow discord and dissension among the confederates, and induce the Greek captains to withdraw their squadrons, or at any rate to remain neutral in the battle.14285 Considerable effect was produced by these machinations; and when at last the attack was made, two of the principal of the Greek allies14286 drew off, and sailed homewards, leaving the rest of the confederates to their fate. Yet, notwithstanding this defection, the battle was stoutly contested by the ships which remained, especially those of the Chians,14287 and though a very decisive and complete victory was ultimately gained by the Phoenicians and their allies, the cost of the victory was great. Persia regained her naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean; Phoenicia re-established her claim to be considered the great sea power of the time; but she lost a large number of her best vessels and seamen, and she was taught the lesson that, to cope with Greeks, she must have a vast superiority of force upon her side—a superiority of not much less than three to one.

Miletus soon fell after the victory of Ladé, and the Phoenician fleet was then employed for some time in chastising the islanders who had taken part in the revolt, and in reducing various towns upon the European shores of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Bosphorus, including Perinthus, Selymbria, and Byzantium.14288 Miltiades, the destined hero of Marathon, narrowly escaped capture at the hands of the Phoenicians at this time, as he fled from his government in the Thracian Chersonese to Athens. The vessel which bore him just escaped into the harbour of Imbrus; but his son, Metiochus, who was on board a worse sailer, was less fortunate. The Phoenicians captured him, and, learning who he was, conveyed him to Darius at Susa, where he was well treated and became a naturalised Persian.14289

After the Ionian revolt had been completely put down and avenged, the states subject to Persia, and the Phoenicians among them, enjoyed a brief period of repose. But soon the restless spirit which possessed all the earlier Persian monarchs incited Darius to carry his warlike enterprises into “fresh fields and pastures new.” From the eastern coast of the Ægean Sea he looked out towards a land possessing every attraction that soil or clime could offer, fertile, rich in minerals, and with many excellent harbours, well watered, abounding in corn and wine and oil, in wooded hillsides, and in productive plains. According to Herodotus,14290 he had already explored the strength and weakness of the region by means of a commission of Persian nobles, who had surveyed all the shores of Greece from the decks of Phoenician ships. The result was that he coveted the possession of the land thus made known to him, and came to a fixed resolution that he would add it to his territories.

There were two modes by which Greece might be approached from Asia. Bridges of boats could be thrown across the Bosphorus or the Hellespont, mere salt rivers, scarcely more formidable than the streams of the Euphrates and the Tigris. In this way Europe could be invaded in force, and the army sent across the straits, could pursue its way along the shore till it reached the rich plains of Thessaly, and from Thessaly passed into Boetia, Attica, and the Peloponnese. Or a fleet, with a land force on board, might proceed from Asia Minor across the Ægean, where the numerous islands, scattered at short intervals, seemed to have been arranged by nature as stepping-stones, whereby the adventurous denizens of either continent might cross easily into the other; and a landing might be suddenly effected near the very СКАЧАТЬ