Some hundred or two hundred years after the siege of Troy we find certain colonies or cities of the Greeks founded along the western shore of Asia Minor. The Greeks living in these cities were called Ionians. Shortly before the coming of Cyrus, the all-conquering Persian, those Ionians had been conquered by that king Crœsus of Lydia whom we saw taking command of that ill-fated alliance formed against Persia. The Persian had now, by the time, 500 B.C., to which we have brought down the story, made himself master of all Asia Minor. The Ionian cities had come under his dominance. {129} CHAPTER IX THE GLORIOUS DAYS OF GREECE It is amusing to stop now and then in the course of a story to wonder how it would have gone if one or other of the events in it had happened rather differently. Sometimes it seems as if just one event turned the whole course of what happened afterwards. So here in this great story of ours we may wonder what would have happened to the world if the Persians, pushing their way westward, had not come up against that strong wall of opposition which they found in the Greek phalanx. There was no other power, so far as we know, at this time, in the west, that was at all likely to be able to stop them. If we look at what happened in the more southward direction of their advance, in Egypt, we shall perhaps be inclined to think that they would not have gone very much farther westward than they did, for the Egyptian story of that time shows that they were not able to establish their power very securely in that country. For nearly forty years after the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, Egypt was held as a province of Persia, but in 488 B.C. the Egyptians made a successful revolt and threw off the Persian yoke for a time. Three years later they were again subdued by Xerxes, who was then king of Persia, but only fifteen years afterwards they were {130} again revolting, and through the whole of that century, 500 to 400 B.C., they were continually rising against their Persian masters, never quite succeeding in winning their freedom, but constantly giving trouble, never completely subdued. It is evident that the Persians, after their first and most effective conquest, never had a very secure hold over the people of the Nile. Then, if we turn to look at what was going on farther north, where the Persian cavalry were coming up against that famous Greek phalanx, we shall see good reason why the Persians were not able to give a great deal of attention to making their position good in Egypt. The wonder is that they should have found any forces at all to spare for that enterprise.