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tl^at runs through Asia, and their apparent insignificancy as a na- 

 tion, added to the endless feuds and jealousy that raged among 

 themselves, would probably have for ever prevented their beco- 

 ming an object of apprehension to the Persians, had it not been 

 for their great experience in maritime concerns and the restless 

 ambition of some of their chiefs, whose intrigues or perfidy brought 

 down upon them the vengeance of the satraps of Sardis. The 

 greater the exertions made by the Persians for the establishment 

 of a navy,, the more sensible did they become of the growing 

 power of that republic, the more feelingly did they lament their 

 own inferiority on that ocean, upon which, as upon land, they 

 equally now aspired at uncontrolled dominion. It was not, how- 

 ever, the Greeks of the distant islands that yet excited any vio- 

 lent sensation of alarm at the Persian court, it was the Greeks 

 settled in the nearer districts of Ionia and JSolia, whose history, 

 or, at least, all of it that is important to our subject to be rela- 

 ted, is as follows. The rich and flourishing kingdom of Lydia, 

 previously to its reduction, had early cherished, on its extensive 

 coast, successive colonies from Athens, Thebes, and the other great 

 cities of Greece ; and these Asiatic Greeks, firmly established and 

 widely diffused over the western shore of Asia Minor, by assi- 

 duously cultivating that commerce, for carrying on which they 

 were so advantageously situated, at the time of the subjugation 

 of Groesus, had arrived at no inconsiderable height of splendor 

 and power. In the overwhelming violence, however, with which 

 the weight of the Persian power descended upon that region of 

 Asia, distinction was lost, and subordinate states and interests in- 

 gulphcd. Lydia became a province of the Persian empire, and 

 the Greek republics of Ionia, dependent upon it, after a resolute 

 but ineffectual resistance to the generals of Cyrus, commissioned 

 to effect the complete conquest of them, finally became tribu- 



