Such a mode of life, in which a large portion of the population of the Asiatic Greek towns must have shared, was not calculated to produce a people lacking in courage or, indeed, in perseverance. It is true that by the time that Darius’ organization of the empire had been brought to something like completion, the race had been for more than half a century under a foreign yoke. Judged by the standard of those days, the yoke had been a light one; it could hardly have been accounted heavy at any period of history. It might easily have been much heavier. It would have been to the advantage of the conqueror to have made it so, had the subject cities displayed the temper of passive submission. #THE ASIATIC GREEKS.# Little is known of the history of these cities during the half century which intervened between the fall of Crœsus and the outbreak of the revolt. If they tamely submitted to their fate during this period, the revolt itself becomes incomprehensible. There is absolutely no adequate _immediate_ cause for it; and Herodotus’ own account of its beginning shows by certain significant phrases which he uses that, though the actual outbreak was premature, the design had existed before ever Aristagoras made his failure at Naxos. There is no record of an actual change of attitude on the part of Persia towards the towns during the years which immediately preceded it, which could lead to the supposition that the relations between them had become suddenly embittered. The cause which lay behind the whole of the history of Darius’ dealings with the West is the feeling with which the Greek regarded the very idea of subjection. He must have been at the period the most restless subject that ever empire had. Darius seems to have recognized from the very first that the presence of this wayward, bold, intriguing race on the western fringe of his dominions constituted an ever-present danger. The intensity of the political feeling within the cities themselves with regard to their internal affairs, which is known to have existed within them at this time, indicates the intensity of the feeling with which they regarded the foreign yoke. Democrat, aristocrat, and tyrant did not fight their fierce battles with one another to win the prize of pre-eminence in servitude. The opponents would seek, too, for external support; and the satraps of the West must have been continually worried by appeals for assistance from whatever side assumed for the time being the philo-Persian _rôle_; and must have known, too, that the opposite side would seek for help elsewhere. And what was “elsewhere” likely to mean, save beyond the narrow seas, in European Greece? Nor can the intense desire for freedom in the mass of the populations of the Greek cities have remained in any way a secret from the Persian governors. There were plenty of people in every city whose interest it would be to tell tales of their neighbours, and it is perhaps the blackest blot