It is needless to say that we are here in the presence of evidence which, if not actually conflicting, is at any rate extremely difficult to reconcile. Only one great fact stands out with certainty, namely, that two great simultaneous attacks were made in 480 B.C. on the two great divisions of the free Hellenic world. The question is: Were they part of one great scheme, or was their coincidence purely fortuitous? To speak with the appearance of assuredness on such a question would be delusive, in that it would assume that there existed in the evidence attainable a conclusiveness to which it cannot lay any claim. Such as it is, it can only be judged by the law of probabilities. Let us first take the probabilities of the case apart from the evidence actually quoted here. Phœnicia, the mother country of Carthage, was at this time within the Persian dominion. Its population seems, on the whole, to have received exceptionally favourable treatment from the Persian Government, probably because it supplied the best material, animate and inanimate, to the fleet of the empire. It would also be to the interest of the Persian Government to encourage the most enterprising traders of its dominion. Furthermore, the subjugation of Phœnicia had not broken the tie of relationship between the mother country and the greatest of its colonies. When, under Cambyses, the Persian dominions had been extended as far as the Greater Syrtis, the Phœnicians had refused to prosecute the war further against their kin (H. iii. 17–19); and it had apparently been thought wise, if not necessary, to submit to this refusal. From that time forward there had, in so far as is known, been no unfriendly relations between Persia and Carthage. So long as the Phœnician was well treated there was hardly a point on which they could clash. In the present instance their interests manifestly coincided. It was certainly to the interest of Xerxes that the Sicilian Greeks should have their hands full at the time of his great attack on Greece. The Persians had plenty of means of knowing that there was a great Greek military power in Sicily which might render important aid to the Greeks in the coming struggle. The Carthaginian, on the other hand, might well think this a favourable opportunity for crushing the ever-increasing Greek trade competition in the richest island in the Mediterranean, at a time when the Sicilian Greek could not expect help from the mother country.