Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

30
HISTORY OF PERSIA.
though whether with the view of attacking Cyrus or
of repelling an invasion by him, is not certain. On
the other hand, Cyrus acted at once, and,
with the
decision of an able general, closed on the Lydian
king before he could receive the sought-for aid, and
thus put an end, in the briefest manner, to the
separate existence of the kingdom of Croesus, who
remained for more than thirty years the guest of
himself and of successive Persian monarchs. Nor
was this all ; the conquest of the rest of Asia
Minor, by the aid of his Median generals Harpagus
and Mazares, immediately followed, while we
may believe that the proposed alliance of Croesus with
Babylon and Egypt was not forgotten when Cyrus had
leisure to turn against these powers his conquering
legions.
The next period of the life of Cyrus is involved
in obscurity, and we know little more than that he
was engaged in a series of wars, of the actual motives
of which we are uninformed, with the Bactrians and
other tribes of North-east Asia, which lasted for thir-
teen or fourteen years. As Arrian however places a
Cryopolis (elsewhere called Cyreschata) on the Jaxartes,
we may presume that even Sogdiana fell under
the sway of Cyrus. Again, as we find traces of him to
the extreme north-east, as far as the territory, believed
to be that of tha Sacae, and also to the south-east and
south, in Seistan (Sacastene) and Khora'sa'n, we must
suppose that, at various intervals, he overran the whole
district between the Jaxartes on the north, the Indus on
the east, and the Indian Ocean on the south. Perhaps
too, as suggested by Professor Rawlinson, these wars
really resembled the annual out-marches recorded of