y powerful. Only a strong
central power enables a country to resist hostile aggressions on a great
scale. Thus Greece herself ultimately fell into the hands of Philip, and
afterward into those of the Romans.

The conquest of the Ionian cities also introduced into Asia Minor and
perhaps into Europe Oriental customs, luxuries, and wealth hitherto
unknown. Certainly when Persia became an irresistible power and ruled
the conquered countries by satraps and royal governors, it assimilated
the Greeks with Asiatics, and modified the forms of social life; it
brought Asia and Europe together, and produced a rivalry which finally
ended in the battle of Marathon and the subsequent Asiatic victories of
Alexander. While the conquests of the Persians introduced Oriental ideas
and customs into Greece, the wars of Alexander extended the Grecian sway
in Asia. The civilized world opened toward the East; but with the
extension of Greek ideas and art, there was a decline of primitive
virtues in Greece herself. Luxury undermined power.

The annexation of Asia Minor to the empire of Cyrus was followed by a
protracted war with the barbarians on his eastern boundaries. The
imperfect subjugation of barbaric nations living in Central Asia
occupied Cyrus, it is thought, about twelve years. He pushed his
conquests to the Iaxartes on the north and Afghanistan on the east,
reducing that vast country which lies between the Caspian Sea and the
deserts of Tartary.

Cyrus was advancing in years before he undertook the conquest of
Babylon, the most important of all his undertakings, and for which his
other conquests were preparatory. At the age of sixty, Cyrus, 538 B.C.,
advanced against Narbonadius, the proud king of Babylon,--the only
remaining power in Asia that was still formidable. The Babylonian
Empire, which had arisen on the ruins of the Assyrian, had lasted only
about one hundred years. Yet what wonders and triumphs had been seen at
Babylon during that single century! What progress had been made in arts
and sciences! What grand palaces and temples had been erected! What a
multitude of captives had added to the pomp and wealth of the proudest
city of antiquity! Babylon the great,---"the glory of kingdoms," "the
praise of the whole earth," the centre of all that was civilized and all
that was corrupting in the Oriental world, with its soothsayers, its
magicians, its necromancers, its priests, its nobles,--was now to fall,
for its abominations cr