The short but terrible tyranny of Cambyses was over, and Darius, who succeeded in 522 B.C., proved a mild and forbearing ruler. But after his defeat by the Athenians at Marathon, the Egyptians rose in revolt; Xerxes had to put down this insurrection before he too went against Greece. During the two centuries when hostilities were so often renewed between Persians and Greeks, there was friendship between Egypt and Greece, and not unfrequently alliance against the Persian kings. The relations between these two countries had long been of a friendly character. Egypt representing all that was wisest and greatest in the long æon that was closing, Greece representing all that was brightest and fairest in the era that was opening. Homer already knew, concerning Egypt, that it was a fertile and a wealthy land—a land especially famed for the skill of its physicians; he tells of its ‘god-descended stream,’ and of the Isle of Pharos, with the safe anchorage by it afforded to storm-tossed mariners. Nor was he ignorant of Thebes in the far south, and her imperial magnificence—Egyptian Thebes, the ‘treasure-house of countless wealth, who boasts her hundred gates—through each of which with horse and car two hundred warriors march.’[102] To the Egyptians of Homer’s time, the Greeks were probably known as roving pirates of the Mediterranean; afterwards, by a natural transition, as mercenary troops—later on, as busy and successful merchants. Greeks, however, visited Egypt on nobler errands than the mere pursuit of wealth. In the reign of Amasis, Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, resided for a while both at the ‘city of the Sun,’ the most ancient seat of Egyptian learning, and at Sais, the sanctuary of the goddess of wisdom. To him it was that an old Egyptian priest, who was his friend, addressed the memorable words—‘O Solon! Solon! you Greeks are ever children; having no ancient opinion nor any discipline of long standing.’ The earliest Greek philosophers, Pythagoras of Samos, and Thales of Miletus, were believed to have visited Egypt, and no doubt their eager restless inquiries also seemed to the Egyptians like those of ‘children,’ who can so easily ask more than the wisest man can ever answer. Nothing could be more natural, or indeed inevitable, than that the awakening intellectual and artistic life of Greece should be strongly attracted towards the ancient wisdom and civilisation of Egypt.[103] Geometric and other scientific ideas they certainly carried home from the Land of the Pyramids, and the rudiments of their own civilisation and learning were always said by the Greeks to have come from Egypt. Persia had conquered Egypt, and was threatening Greece, but the invasion of Xerxes was triumphantly repulsed, and the Athenians subsequently sent aid to the Egyptians in their renewed attempt to cast off the yoke of the common foe.