The country of Elam had been invaded, and its {111} power shattered, by the Assyrians shortly before the break-up of their own empire, and this shattering, together with the fighting between the Assyrians and the alliance formed against them, gave the Persians (who inhabited a country to the east called Iran, and especially the part of that country called Persis) the chance of getting possession of Elam. This they did, and established themselves in Susa, the old capital city of the Elamites. Persia was actually the vassal of Media, until Cyrus, who was the Persian king at Susa, led a revolt against them. Within three years he had conquered and taken their capital, and Media was now a subject state to its own late subject, Persia. Thus they were, then, established in their power along the Eastern boundary of Babylonia, which had now become the master empire by the defeat of Assyria. Nevertheless Cyrus, at the head of the Persian army, took this mighty Babylon without a battle! But he had to fight some hard battles first. It seems that the Medes had made treaties with their allies of Babylon and Egypt which the Persians did not feel disposed to pay attention to. This aroused such opposition to the Persians that an alliance of Babylonians and Egyptians with Crœsus, king of Lydia in Asia Minor, and with the Spartans, was formed against them. [Sidenote: Spartan mercenaries] Notice particularly those Spartans. Sparta was the southern state of Greece, and this is the first appearance of Greece in our story. It is very notable. These great nations of the East already thought so well of the fighting qualities of the Greek soldiers, and especially of the Spartan soldiers, that it was worth their while to bring them over and pay them to fight for them. There seems to be little doubt that they were mercenaries, that is to say, soldiers who were {112} paid to fight and who fought for pay. But the alliance was of no avail. Within the space of a few months, in the summer of 546 B.C., the whole of Asia Minor was in the Persian hands, right away to the Mediterranean shore. It was not until six years later that Cyrus had leisure to attend to Babylon itself; but when he did attend to it the resistance was not great. The Babylonian king's allies had been broken. Cyrus took Syria and Palestine also in his own reign, and after his death his son Cambyses pressed on down into Egypt and conquered that ancient land likewise. The victorious career of the Persians was only checked when they came against the Ethiopians and Nubians in farther Africa. [Sidenote: The Persian conquest]