The Persian Empire appears in history as a great military power because it only appears in extant records when engaged in warfare with the Greek. But it was not a military monarchy in any real sense of the word. It did not, relatively to the size of the empire, keep a large standing army on foot. It met military necessities by the calling forth of levies, the gathering of which must have demanded time. The Persian king, like the Roman emperor of later days, did not entrust the governors of distant provinces with the disposal of large bodies of troops, unless circumstances rendered such a step absolutely necessary. The reverse suffered by the Greeks at Ephesus cannot have been serious; but it had clearly demonstrated the fact that, on land, Artaphernes was able to hold his own against the insurrection, so long as it was confined to Ionia. At sea the circumstances were not so promising. The defeat off Pamphylia had placed the Phœnician fleet _hors de combat_ for the time being, and it is not difficult to imagine that at least a year would have to pass before the cities of the Syrian coast could turn out a fleet sufficiently powerful to cope with that of the Ionian Greeks. This second fleet would be that one which was defeated off Cyprus in 497. But in the course of that year the whole balance of military power on land had been completely changed by the spread of the revolt to Hellespont and Caria. This would necessitate the despatch of reinforcements from Susa to the Western satrapies, reinforcements which would, doubtless, have reached Sardes by the latter part of the summer of 497, had not the state of affairs in Cyprus rendered it necessary to divert them, as well as the new Phœnician fleet, to the suppression of the revolt in that island. That was an affair of some months; and these reinforcements cannot have reached Sardes until early in the year 496. There is, and there must be, a certain arbitrariness in any scheme for the rearrangement of the confused chronology of those years. All that can be urged in favour of the one here set forth is that it is of a piece with Herodotus’ own chronology of the opening year of the revolt, and is in accord with the facts, other than chronological, stated by him.[30] The arrival of these troops at Sardes in the late winter or early spring of 496 made it possible for the Persian generals to devise a scheme for the simultaneous suppression of the revolt in Hellespont and Cana. The events of 498 had shown that the Ionians were not formidable on land unless the Persians were taken by surprise. ◆H. v. 116.◆ The three chief commanders were Daurises, Hymeës, and Otanes, the last of whom had been the successor of Megabazos, nigh ten years before, in the command in Thrace. ◆H. v. 117.◆