The revolt had severely taxed the resources of the Empire. It took Persia six years to suppress it, and in this time she lost two fleets and one great army with its generals, besides the losses incurred in successful operations. It resulted that, though she did make two efforts in the years immediately following the revolt to gain a footing beyond the Ægean, those efforts were not of a nature which, judged in the light of knowledge after the event, could have attained any measure of success. She was unable at this time to set on foot an expedition adequate to the greatness of the undertaking. It is impossible, on the evidence, to say that the struggle was carried on with a unanimity of courage on the part of all the Ionian towns; but it is plain that this aspect of the history of the time has had undue weight in the judgment formed by Herodotus. ◆H. vi. 18.◆ The end was near. Miletus, the heart and soul of the revolt, was besieged by sea and land. The walls were undermined, and all sorts of siege engines were employed. #FALL OF MILETUS.# Finally, some time in the late summer or autumn of 494, the city fell. The fate of the population was a piteous one. The great majority of the male inhabitants were massacred. The women and children were enslaved, and carried captives to Susa. They and the remnant of the male population were placed in a settlement on the Persian Gulf, near the mouth of the river Tigris. It is very difficult to estimate the loss which civilization has suffered by the destruction of this great city, which had been, up to the very time of its destruction, the foremost in the Hellenic world. It was not merely in the front rank in Greek commerce; it was also an intellectual centre unrivalled among the cities of the age. Whether it could ever have developed a period of literary brilliance equal to that of the Athens of the later part of this century, must remain a matter of speculation. It had a long start in the intellectual race. The wide interest of its material relations called forth a corresponding breadth of interest in literary speculation of various kinds; and the world would certainly have been enriched, had it possessed an Asiatic Greek literature parallel to that of European Greece. Difference of environment and difference of political circumstances would have produced a literary development on different lines; and the literature itself could not have failed to display one side of the many-sidedness of the Greeks, which is lost to the present world, save for a few fragments, which point to a promise of future greatness. ◆H. vi. 21.◆