Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 65
troops; and secondly, a six years' struggle between
the Greeks and the satraps of Lydia and Phrygia
(B.C. 399-394), in which Agesilaus proved himself the
foremost man of his time, alike as a general and as a
diplomatist. Indeed, had he been able to retain his
command a little longer, it is probable that he
would have cleared all Asia Minor of Persians. Here,
however, Persian gold turned the balance (thirty
thousand "archers," i.e. darics, were, as he said, his
real foes), and Argos, Athens, Thebes, and Corinth,
gladly accepted bribes to join in a common league
against Sparta. Then we find the Athenian Conon in
alliance with Pharnabazus, recovering
for Athens her
lost naval supremacy, and proh ! pudcr, a Persian fleet
in Greek waters, in alliance with Athens ! nay,
as if
this were not enough, the actual rebuilding of her
Long Walls by the aid of Persian money ! The reply
of Sparta was a fresh negotiation with the Great
King, ending
in the so-called "Peace of Antalkidas"
(B.C. 387), a fact truly characterised by Professor
Rawlinson, as " a mandate from the Court of Susa,
to which obedience was required." The advantage
to Persia was, that the Greeks were, for the time,
interdicted from getting up provincial insurrections,
while she herself crushed the Cypriotes, who had
risen under Evagoras (B.C. 380). This peace further
enabled Artaxerxes to attack the Cadusii, and to
avail himself of Athenian soldiers under Iphicrates,
for a fresh descent upon Egypt. Yet neither the
Cadusian, nor the Egyptian war produced any laurels
for the Persians, the more so, that in the latter case
the Greek and Persian generals came to loggerheads.
In a subsequent revolt of the satraps of Asia Minor
F