ng to the story, was still in deep grief on account of the
untimely death of his eldest son, when the intelligence reached
him. Instantly rousing himself from his despair, he set about his
preparations for the struggle, which his sagacity saw to be inevitable.
After consultation of the oracles of Greece, he allied himself with the
Grecian community, which appeared to him on the whole to be the most
powerful. At the same time he sent ambassadors to Babylon and Memphis,
to the courts of Labynetus and Amasis, with proposals for an alliance
offensive and defensive between the three secondary powers of the
Eastern world against that leading power whose superior strength and
resources were felt to constitute a common danger. His representations
were effectual. The kings of Babylon and Egypt, alive to their own
peril, accepted his proposals; and a joint league was formed between the
three monarchs and the republic of Sparta for the purpose of resisting
the presumed aggressive spirit of the Medo-Persians.

Cyrus, meanwhile, was not idle. Suspecting that a weak point in his
adversary's harness would be the disaffection of some of his more
recently conquered subjects, he sent emissaries into Asia Minor to sound
the dispositions of the natives. These emissaries particularly addressed
themselves to the Asiatic Greeks, who, coming of a freedom-loving stock,
and having been only very lately subdued, would it was thought, be
likely to catch at an opportunity of shaking off the yoke of their
conqueror. But, reasonable as such hopes must have seemed, they were in
this instance doomed to disappointment. The Ionians, instead of hailing
Cyrus as a liberator, received his overtures with suspicion. They
probably thought that they were sure not to gain, and that they might
possibly lose, by a change of masters. The yoke of Croesus had not,
perhaps, been very oppressive; at any rate it seemed to them preferable
to "bear the ills they had," rather than "fly to others" which might
turn out less tolerable.

Disappointed in this quarter, the Persian prince directed his efforts to
the concentration of a large army, and its rapid advance into a position
where it would be excellently placed both for defence and attack. The
frontier province of Cappadocia, which was only separated from the
dominions of the Lydian monarch by a stream of moderate size, the
Halys, was a most defensible country, extremely fertile and productive,
abounding in natural fast