indeed, the whole well-being, disposition and well nigh the very foundation of civic life were in question; and certainly when this was so with the foundations of legally established institutions. Thales and Bias thus appear as the representatives of the Ionic towns. Herodotus (I. 169-171) speaks of both, and says of Thales that he advised even before the overthrow of the Ionians (apparently through Crœsus), that they should constitute a supreme council (_ἓν βουλευτήριον_) in Teos, in the centre of the Ionian people, and thus make a federal state with a capital and principal federal town, so that they might still remain separate nations (_δῆμοι_) as before. However, they did not follow this advice, and this isolated and weakened them, and the result was their conquest; it has always been a difficult thing for the Greeks to give up their individuality. Later on, when Harpagus, the general of Cyrus who accomplished their overthrow, pressed in upon them, the Ionians took no better the most excellent advice of Bias of Priene, given them at the decisive moment when they were assembled at Panionium, “to go in a common fleet to Sardinia, there to found an Ionic state. By so doing they would escape servitude, be happy, and, inhabiting the largest island, subdue the others. But if they remained in Ionia there was no hope of liberty to be seen for them.” Herodotus gives his corroboration to this advice—“If they had followed him they would have been the happiest of Greeks.” Such things take place, but through force and not voluntarily.