The wars between the Persian empire, and Athens as the head of the confederacy of Delos (477-449 B.C.), have been already related in one of my earlier volumes. But the internal history of the Persian empire during these reigns is scarcely at all known to us; except a formidable revolt of the satrap Megabyzus, obscurely noticed in the Fragments of Ktesias.[2] About 414 B.C. the Egyptians revolted. Their native prince Amyrtæus maintained his independence,—though probably in a part only, and not the whole, of that country,[3]—and was succeeded by a native Egyptian dynasty for the space of sixty years. A revolt of the Medes, which took place in 408 B.C., was put down by Darius, and subsequently a like revolt of the Kadusians.[4] The peace concluded in 449 B.C., between Athens and the Persian empire, continued without open violation, until the ruinous catastrophe which befel the former near Syracuse, in 413 B.C. Yet there had been various communications and envoys from Sparta to the Persian court, endeavoring to procure aid from the Great King during the early years of the war; communications so confused and contradictory, that Artaxerxes (in a letter addressed to the Spartans, in 425 B.C., and carried by his envoy Artaphernes who was captured by the Athenians), complained of being unable to understand what they meant,—no two Spartans telling the same story.[5] It appears that Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardis, revolted from the Persian king, shortly after this period, and that Tissaphernes was sent by the Great King to suppress this revolt; in which having succeeded, by bribing the Grecian commander of the satrap’s mercenary troops, he was rewarded by the possession of the satrapy.[6] We find Tissaphernes satrap in the year 413 B.C., commencing operations jointly with the Spartans, for detaching the Asiatic allies from Athens, after her reverses in Sicily; and employing the Spartans successfully against Amorges, the revolted son of Pissuthnes, who occupied the strong maritime town of Iasus.[7] [2] Ktesias, Persica, c. 38-40. [3] See the Appendix of Mr. Fynes Clinton, mentioned in the preceding note, p. 317. There were some Egyptian troops in the army of Artaxerxes at the battle of Kunaxa; on the other hand, there were other Egyptians in a state of pronounced revolt. Compare two passages of Xenophon’s Anabasis, i, 8, 9; ii, 5, 13; Diodor. xiii, 46; and the Dissertation of F. Ley, Fata et Conditio Ægypti sub imperio Persarum, p. 20-56 (Cologne, 1830). [4] Xen. Hellen. i, 2, 19; ii, 1, 13. [5] Thucyd. iv, 50. πολλῶν γὰρ ἐλθόντων πρεσβέων οὐδένα ταὐτὰ λέγειν. This incompetence, or duplicity, on the part of the Spartan envoys, helps to explain the facility with which Alkibiades duped them at Athens (Thucyd. v, 45). See above, in this History, Vol. VII. ch. lv, p. 47. [6] Ktesias, Persic. c. 52. [7] Thucyd. viii, 28. See Vol. VII, ch. lxi, p. 389 of this History.