days under the XXVIth
Dynasty. In 655 Psamtik I reunited and resurrected her while his
overlord Assurbanipal was wrecking his--Assurbanipal's--empire
elsewhere; thirteen decades afterwards, in 525, she fell before
Cambyses. Thirteen decades, nearly, of Persian rule followed,
with interruptions of revolt, before she regained her independence
in 404;--stealing, you may say, the nine years short from
the weakness of Persia. Then she was free for another half
-cycle, less one year; a weak precarious freedom at best, lost to
Artaxerxes Ochus in 340. All but the first fourteen years of it
fell beyond the limits of the manvantara; the West Asian forces
were spent. Egypt was merely waiting til the Greek cycle should
have sunk low enough and on to the military plane; and had not
long to wait. She paid back most of her nine years to Persia;
then hailed Alexander as her savior; and was brought by him, to
some extent, under the influence of European cycles; to share
then in what uninteresting twilight remained to Greece, and
presently in the pomps and crimsons of Rome.

Persia, too, was waiting for that Greek military cycle; until it
should rise, however, something had to be going on in West Asia.
The Athenian first half-cycle--sixty-five years from the
inception of the hegemony--ended in 413, when the Peloponnesian
War entered its last, and for Athens, disastrous, phase. Another
half-cycle brings us to the rise of Philip; who about that time
became dominant in Greece. But not yet had a power consolidated,
which could contest with Persia the hegemony of the world.
Having enabled Sparta to put down Athens, the western satraps
turned their attention to finding those who should put down
Sparta. Corinth, Thebes, Argos and Athens were willing; and
Pharnabazus financed them for war in 395. A year after, he and
Conon destroyed the Spartan fleet. In 387 came the Peace of
Antalicidas, by which Persia won what Xerxes had fought for of
old; the suzerainty of Greece. But she was not strong; her
cycle was long past; she stood upon the wealth and prestige of
her better days, and the weakness of her contemporaries.
Internally she was falling to pieces until Artaxerxes Ochus,
between 362 and 338, wading through blood and cruelty, restored
her unity, wore out her resources, and left her apparently as
great as under Xerxes, but really ready to fall at a touch. He
prepared the way for Alexander.

So ended an impulse that began, who