, crossing Asia and Armenia, gained
at length the shores of the Black Sea. Up to that time the Greeks had
looked upon Persia as a compact state, which they were sufficiently
powerful to conquer by sea and hold in check by land, but which
they could not, without imprudence, venture to attack within its own
frontiers. The experience of the Ten Thousand was a proof to them that
a handful of men, deprived of their proper generals, without guides,
money, or provisions, might successfully oppose the overwhelming forces
of the great king, and escape from his clutches without any serious
difficulty. National discords prevented them from at once utilising
the experience they thus acquired, but the lesson was not lost upon
the court of Susa. The success of Lysander had been ensured by Persian
subsidies, and now Sparta hesitated to fulfil the conditions of the
treaty of Miletus; the Lacedaemonians demanded liberty once more for the
former allies of Athens, fostered the war in Asia in order to enforce
their claims, and their king Agesilaus, penetrating to the very heart of
Phrygia, would have pressed still further forward in the tracks of the
Ten Thousand, had not an opportune diversion been created in his rear by
the bribery of the Persians. Athens once more flew to arms: her fleet,
in conjunction with the Phoenicians, took possession of Cythera; the
Long Walls were rebuilt at the expense of the great king, and Sparta,
recalled by these reverses to a realisation of her position, wisely
abandoned her inclination for distant enterprises. Asia Minor was
reconquered, and Persia passed from the position of a national enemy
to that of the friend and arbiter of Greece; but she did so by force of
circumstances only, and not from having merited in any way the supremacy
she attained. Her military energy, indeed, was far from being exhausted;
but poor Artaxerxes, bewildered by the rivalries between his mother and
his wives, did not know how to make the most of the immense resources
still at his disposal, and he met with repeated checks as soon as he
came face to face with a nation and leaders who refused to stoop to
treachery. He had no sooner recovered possession of the AEgean littoral
than Egypt was snatched from his grasp by a new Pharaoh who had arisen
in the Nile valley. The peace had not been seriously disturbed in Egypt
during the forty years which had elapsed since the defeat of Inarus.
Satrap had peaceably succeeded satrap in the fort