The old Hittite realms were now reunited under Persian rule, and continued to share in the common history of the Empire of the Great King for more than two hundred years. For the purpose of administration Asia Minor was divided into provinces, governed by Satraps, of which the old kingdom of Lydia formed one, and the regions of Konia, Angora, Pteria, and Sivas were included in another, the largest of all, which reached from Lydia to Armenia, and included the whole plateau from the Taurus northwards to the sea. The tract of Cilicia with part of the province of Aleppo formed another, while the former Hittite states in the north of Syria were similarly grouped together. But the hold of the Great King ruling in Susa over his distant provinces was weak, and the spirit of Persian civilisation did not penetrate, or could not, into these historic lands. No monument remains to tell us of this phase, during which the old local institutions were maintained and even developed unrestrained. The Greek cities of the coast retained their Greek characters under Greek governors; while the tribes of the interior restored the rule of their local princes or priest-dynasts amid a condition of security and freedom which they had not known for many generations. All that the central power demanded was tribute and tranquillity. Local feuds between the Satraps might smoulder, and the symptoms of rebellion here and there remain almost unheeded, so long as these conditions were fulfilled. Under these circumstances the western people gradually recovered the spirit of independence, while from across the sea the Greek states even aspired to empire. The march of the Ten Thousand in 402, under Cyrus the younger, made famous by Xenophon in his _Anabasis_, showed how lax was the organisation and how weak the control of the central government. It also opened up incidentally the southern route by the Mæander, Ilgîn, and Iconium to the Cilician gates, in preference to the longer royal road by way of Boghaz-Keui, by which hitherto the posts from Susa had travelled west to Sardis.