Such was the fate of the Phôkæan exiles, while their brethren at home remained as subjects of Harpagus, in common with all the other Ionic and Æolic Greeks except Milêtus. For even the insular inhabitants of Lesbos and Chios, though not assailable by sea, since the Persians had no fleet, thought it better to renounce their independence and enrol themselves as Persian subjects,—both of them possessing strips of the mainland which they were unable to protect otherwise. Samos, on the other hand, maintained its independence, and even reached, shortly after this period, under the despotism of Polykratês, a higher degree of power than ever. Perhaps the humiliation of the other maritime Greeks around may have rather favored the ambition of this unscrupulous prince, to whom I shall revert presently. But we may readily conceive that the public solemnities in which the Ionic Greeks intermingled, in place of those gay and richly-decked crowds which the Homeric hymn describes in the preceding century as assembled at Delos, presented scenes of marked despondency: one of their wisest men, indeed, Bias of Priênê, went so far as to propose, at the Pan-Ionic festival, a collective emigration of the entire population of the Ionic towns to the island of Sardinia. Nothing like freedom, he urged, was now open to them in Asia; but in Sardinia, one great Pan-Ionic city might be formed, which would not only be free herself, but mistress of her neighbors. The proposition found no favor; the reason of which is sufficiently evident from the narrative just given respecting the unconquerable local attachment on the part of the Phôkæan majority. But Herodotus bestows upon it the most unqualified commendation, and regrets that it was not acted upon.[363] Had such been the case, the subsequent history of Carthage, Sicily, and even Rome, might have been sensibly altered. [363] Herodot. i, 170. Πυνθάνομαι γνώμην Βίαντα ἄνδρα Πριηνέα ἀποδέξασθαι Ἴωσι χρησιμωτάτην, τῇ εἰ ἐπείθοντο, παρεῖχε ἂν σφι εὐδαιμονέειν Ἑλλήνων μάλιστα.