The power of Persia began about this time to decline, and the Phoenicians seem to have wavered in their allegiance. In B.C. 406 or 405 Egypt shook off the Persian yoke, and established her independence under a native sovereign.[14323] Soon afterwards, probably in B.C. 392 or 391, Evagoras, a Cypriot Greek, who claimed descent from Teucer, inaugurated a revolution at Salamis in Cyprus, where he slew the Phoenician monarch, Abdemon, who held his throne under Persia, and, himself mounting the throne, proceeded to reduce to subjection the whole island.[14324] Vast efforts were made to crush him, but for ten years he defied the power of Persia, and maintained himself as an independent monarch.[14325] Even when finally he made his submission, it was under an express stipulation that he should retain his royal dignity, and be simply bound to pay his tribute regularly, and to render such obedience as subject kings commonly paid to their suzerain.[14326] In the course of his resistance to Persia, it is beyond question that Evagoras received a certain amount of support from Phoenicia; but the circumstances under which the support was given was doubtful. According to Isocrates,[14327] he equipped a large fleet, and attacked the Phoenicians on the mainland with so much vigour as even to take the great city of Tyre by assault; but Diodorus says nothing of the attack, and it is conjectured that the contagion of revolt, which certainly affected, more or less, Cyprus, Cilicia, Caria, and some of the Syrian Arabs,[14328] spread also thus early to Phoenicia, and that “the surrender of Tyre was a voluntary defection.”[14329] In that case, we must view Phoenicia, or at any rate a portion of it, as having detached itself from Persia, about B.C. 390, sixty years before the final break-up of the Empire.