The catastrophe of 480 had been long in maturing. The march of events in South-eastern Europe and Western Asia had been slow. Still, the two paths of development tended in opposite directions; and it was inevitable that those who followed them should meet in a collision, the shock of which would be proportionate to the forces of propulsion. The moral strength of those forces was enormous. The ancient civilization of the East, ages old, strong in development, the one ideal of the millions of Western Asia, came into contact through its most western off-shoot with a civilization which, whatever its origin, and whatever the influences to which it had been exposed, was in striking contrast to it. On the eastern shores of the Ægean the two first met. It is impossible to say on the one hand what was the level of the civilization attained by the Greeks at the time they first settled on these coasts, more than 1000 years before Christ; and it is still less possible to say what was the state of the peoples they found there at the time of their settlement. Whether Lydia at this early age of its development had as yet come into contact with, and been influenced by, the civilization of the lands east and south of Taurus must also be matter of doubt. It is, on the whole, probable that it had; for the number and rapid development of the Greek trading towns on the East Ægean coast point to a considerable and valuable overland trade, whose roots would, in all probability, be in the lands of Mesopotamia, if not still farther east. The caravans from that rich plain would be sure to carry the infection of its civilization to the lands they traversed. But, in any case, neither the Greek nor this most westerly off-shoot of the Asiatic civilization can have passed beyond an early stage of development, nor, in so far as is known, did the representatives of either seek to inflict their own form of life upon the representatives of the other. Neither side seems to have been strong enough to conquer the other, even if either had been disposed to try. The Greek was content to trade; the various native races were without union, and cannot have been equal to the conquest of a people whose original settlements they had apparently been unable to prevent.