senate, invested with authority over all the twelve cities, should be formed within the walls of Teôs, as the most central in position; and that all the other cities should account themselves mere demes of this aggregate commonwealth, or polis. Nor can we doubt that such was the unavailing aspiration of many a patriot of Milêtus or Ephesus, even before the final operations of Crœsus were opened against them. [495] Herodot. v, 28. κατύπερθε δὲ τουτέων, ἐπὶ δύο γενέας ἀνδρῶν νοσήσασα τὰ μάλιστα στάσει. Alyattês reigned fifty-seven years, and the vigorous resistance which the Milesians offered to him took place in the first six years of his reign. The “two generations of intestine dissension” may well have succeeded after the reign of Thrasybulus. This, indeed, is a mere conjecture, yet it may be observed that Herodotus, speaking of the time of the Ionic revolt (500 B. C.), and intimating that Milêtus, though then peaceable, had been for two generations at an earlier period torn by intestine dissension, could hardly have meant these “two generations” to apply to a time earlier than 617 B. C. [496] Herodot. i, 17; v, 99; Athenæ. vi, p. 267. Compare K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterthümer, sect. 77, note 28. [497] See the remarkable case of Milêtus sending no deputies to a Pan-Ionic meeting, being safe herself from danger (Herodot. i, 141). [498] Herodot. i, 141-170. χρηστὴ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ διαφθαρῆναι Ἰωνίην, Θάλεω ἀνδρὸς Μιλησίου γνώμη ἐγένετο, etc. About the Pan-Ionia and the Ephesia, see Thucyd. iii, 104; Dionys. Halik. iv, 25; Herodot. i, 143-148. Compare also Whitte, De Rebus Chiorum Publicis, sect. vii, pp. 22-26.