selves on Psammetichus. To
make themselves his equals, they would have been obliged either to take
a sufficient number of similar warriors into their own pay--and this
they were not able to afford--or they must have won over those
already in the employ of their suzerain; but the liberality with
which Psammetichus treated his mercenaries gave them good cause to be
faithful, even if military honour had not sufficed to keep them loyal to
their employer. Psammetichus granted to them and their compatriots, who
were attracted by the fame of Egypt, a concession of the fertile lands
of the Delta stretching along the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, and
he was careful to separate the Ionians from the Carians by the whole
breadth of the river: this was a wise precaution, for their union
beneath a common flag had not extinguished their inherited hatred of
one another, and the authority of the general did not always suffice
to prevent fatal quarrels breaking out between contingents of different
nationalities.

[Illustration: 347.jpg THE SAITE FORTRESS OF DAPHNE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a restoration by Fl. Petrie.

They occupied, moreover, regularly entrenched camps, enclosed within
massive walls, containing a collection of mud huts or houses of
brick, the whole enclosure commanded by a fortress which formed the
headquarters of the general and staff of officers. Some merchants from
Miletus, emboldened by the presence of their fellow-countrymen, sailed
with thirty vessels into the mouth of the Bolbitine branch of the
Nile, and there founded a settlement which they named the Port of the
Milesians, and, following in their wake, successive relays of emigrants
arrived to reinforce the infant colony. The king entrusted a certain
number of Egyptian children to the care of these Greek settlers, to be
instructed in their language,* and the interpreters thus educated in
their schools increased in proportion as the bonds of commercial and
friendly intercourse between Greece and Egypt became strengthened, so
that ere long, in the towns of the Delta, they constituted a regular
class, whose function was to act as intermediaries between the two
races.

* Diodorus, or rather the historian whom he follows, assures
us that Psammetichus went still further, and gave his own
children a Greek education; what is possible and even
probable, is, that he had them taught Greek. A bronze Apis
in the Gizeh Museum was dedica