Part 14 (1/2)

and perhaps in one Syrian town, which acquired the name of Scythopolis,[14189] the invaders left no permanent trace of their brief but terrible inroad.

The shock of the Scythian irruption cannot but have greatly injured and weakened a.s.syria. The whole country had been ravaged and depopulated; the provinces had been plundered, many of the towns had been taken and sacked, the palaces of the old kings had been burnt,[14190] and all the riches that had not been hid away had been lost. a.s.syria, when the Scythian wave had pa.s.sed, was but the shadow of her former self. Her _prestige_ was gone, her armed force must have been greatly diminished, her hold upon the provinces, especially the more distant ones, greatly weakened. Phoenicia is likely to have detached herself from a.s.syria at latest during the time that the Scyths were dominant, which was probably from about B.C. 630 to B.C. 610. When a.s.syrian protection was withdrawn from Syria, as it must have been during this period, and when every state and town had to look solely to itself for deliverance from a barbarous and cruel enemy, the fiction of a nominal dependence on a distant power could scarcely be maintained. Without any actual revolt, the Phoenician cities became their own masters, and the speedy fall of a.s.syria before the combined attack of the Medes and Babylonians,[14191]

after the Scythians had withdrawn, prevented for some time any interference with their recovered independence.

A double danger, however, impended. On the one side Egypt, on the other Babylon, might be confidently expected to lay claim to the debatable land which nature had placed between the seats of the great Asiatic and the great African power, and which in the past had almost always been possessed by the one or the other of them. Egypt was the nearer of the two, and probably seemed the most to be feared. She had recently fallen under the power of an enterprising native monarch, who had already, before the fall of a.s.syria, shown that he entertained ambitious designs against the Palestinian towns, having begun attacks upon Ashdod soon after he ascended the throne.[14192] Babylon was, comparatively speaking, remote and had troublesome neighbours, who might be expected to prevent her from undertaking distant expeditions. It was clearly the true policy for Phoenicia to temporise, to enter into no engagements with either Babylon or Egypt, to strengthen her defences, to bide her time, and, so far as possible, to consolidate herself. Something like a desire for consolidation would seem to have come over the people; and Tyre, the leading city in all but the earliest times, appears to have been recognised as the centre towards which other states must gravitate, and to have risen to the occasion. If there ever was such a thing as a confederation of all the Phoenician cities, it would seem to have been at this period. Sidon forgot her ancient rivalry, and consented to furnish the Tyrian fleet with mariners.[14193] Arvad gave not only rowers to man the s.h.i.+ps, but also men-at-arms to help in guarding the walls.[14194] The ”ancients of Gebal” lent their aid in the Tyrian dockyards.[14195] The minor cities cannot have ventured to hold aloof.

Tyre, as the time approached for the contest which was to decide whether Egypt or Babylon should be the great power of the East, appears to have reached the height of her strength, wealth, and prosperity. It is now that Ezekial says of her--”O Tyrus, thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a G.o.d, I sit in the seat of G.o.d in the midst of the seas--Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel, there is no secret that they can hide from thee: from thy wisdom and with thine understanding hast thou gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: by thy great wisdom and by thy traffick thou hast increased thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches”[14196]; and again, ”O thou that are situated at the entry of the sea, which art the merchant of the peoples unto many isles, thus saith the Lord G.o.d, Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am perfect in beauty. Thy borders are in the heart of the sea; thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy planks of fir-trees from Senir; they have taken from Lebanon cedars to make masts for thee; of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; they have made thy benches of ivory, inlaid in boxwood, from the isles of Kittim . . . The s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh were thy caravans for thy merchandise; and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the heart of the sea.”[14197]

The first to strike of the two great antagonists was Egypt. Psamatik I., who was advanced in years at the time of a.s.syria's downfall,[14198] died about B.C. 610, and was succeeded by a son still in the full vigour of life, the brave and enterprising Neco. Neco, in B.C. 608, having made all due preparations, led a great expedition into Palestine,[14199] with the object of bringing under his dominion the entire tract between the River of Egypt (Wady el Arish) and the Middle Euphrates. Already possessed of Ashdod[14200] and perhaps also of Gaza[14201] and Askelon,[14202] he held the keys of Syria, and could have no difficulty in penetrating along the coast route, through the rich plain of Sharon, to the first of the mountain barriers which are interposed between the Nile and the Mesopotamian region. His famous fleet[14203] would support him along the sh.o.r.e, at any rate as far Carmel; and Dor and Accho would probably be seized, and made into depots for his stores and provisions.

The powerful Egyptian monarch marching northward with his numerous and well-disciplined army, partly composed of native troops, partly of mercenaries from Asia Minor, Greeks and Carians, probably did not look to meet with any opposition, till, somewhere in Northern Syria, he should encounter the forces of Babylonia, which would of course be moved westward to meet him. What then must have been his surprise when he found the ridge connecting Carmel with the highland of Samaria occupied by a strong body of troops, and his further progress barred by a foe who had appeared to him too insignificant to be taken into account? Josiah, the Jewish monarch of the time, grandson of Mana.s.seh and great-grandson of Hezekiah, who, in the unsettled state of Western Asia, had united under his dominion the entire country of the twelve tribes,[14204] had quitted Jerusalem, and thrown himself across the would-be conqueror's path in the strong and well-known position of Megiddo. Here, in remote times, had the great Thothmes met and defeated the whole force of Syria and Mesopotamia under the king of Kadesh;[14205] here had Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinoam, utterly destroyed the mighty army of Jabin, king of Canaan, under Sisera.[14206] Here now the gallant, if rash, Judaean king elected to take his stand, moved either by a sense of duty, because he regarded himself as a Babylonian feudatory, or simply determined to defend the Holy Land against any heathen army that, without permission, trespa.s.sed on it. In vain did Neco seek to induce Josiah to retire and leave the way open, by a.s.suring him that he had no hostile intentions against Judaea, but was marching on Carchemish by the Euphrates, there to contend with the Babylonians.[14207] The Jewish king persisted in his rash enterprise, and Neco was forced to brush him from his path. His seasoned and disciplined troops easily overcame the hasty levies of Josiah; and Josiah himself fell in the battle.

We have no details with respect to the remainder of the expedition.

Neco, no doubt, pressed forward through Galilee and Coele-Syria towards the Euphrates. Whether he had to fight any further battles we are not informed. It is certain that he occupied Carchemish,[14208] and made it his headquarters, but whether it submitted to him, or was besieged and taken, is unknown. All Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine were overrun, and became temporarily Egyptian possessions.[14209] But Phoenicia does not appear to have been subdued by force. Tyrian prosperity continued, and the terms on which Phoenicia stood towards Egypt during the remainder of Neco's reign were friendly. Phoenicians at Neco's request accomplished the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa;[14210] and we may suspect that it was Neco who granted to Tyre the extraordinary favour of settling a colony in the Egyptian capital, Memphis.[14211] Probably Phoenicia accepted at the hands of Neco the same sort of position which she had at first occupied under a.s.syria, a position, as already explained, satisfactory to both parties.

But the glory and prosperity which Egypt had thus acquired were very short-lived. Within three years Babylonia a.s.serted herself. In B.C.

605, the crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, acting on behalf of his father, Nabopola.s.sar, who was aged and infirm,[14212] led the forces of Babylon against the audacious Pharaoh, who had dared to affront the ”King of kings,” ”the Lord of Sumir and Accad,” had taken him off his guard, and deprived him of some of his fairest provinces. Babylonia, under Nabopola.s.sar and Nebuchadnezzar, was no unworthy successor of the mighty power which for seven hundred years had held the supremacy of Western Asia. Her citizens were as brave; her armies as well disciplined; her rulers as bold, as sagacious, and as unsparing. Habakkuk's description of a Babylonian army belongs to about this date, and is probably drawn from the life--”Lo, I raise up the Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; from them shall proceed judgment and captivity; their horses are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their hors.e.m.e.n shall spread themselves, and their hors.e.m.e.n shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. They shall come all for violence; their faces shall sup as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at kings, and princes shall be a scorn unto them; they shall derive every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.”[14213] Early in the year B.C. 605 the host of Nebuchadnezzar appeared on the right bank of the Euphrates, moving steadily along its reaches, and day by day approaching nearer and nearer to the great fortress in and behind which lay the army of Neco, well ordered with s.h.i.+eld and buckler, its horses harnessed, and its hors.e.m.e.n armed with spears that had been just furbished, and protected by helmets and brigandines.[14214] One of the ”decisive battles of the world” was impending. If Egypt conquered, Oriental civilisation would take the heavy immovable Egyptian type; change, advance, progress would be hindered; sacerdotalism in religion, conventionalism in art, pure unmitigated despotism in government would generally prevail; all the throbbing life of Asia would receive a sudden and violent check; Semitism would be thrust back; Aryanism, just pus.h.i.+ng itself to the front, would shrink away; the monotonous Egyptian tone of thought and life would spread, like a lava stream, over the manifold and varied forms of Asiatic culture; crus.h.i.+ng them out, concealing them, making them as though they had never been. The victory of Babylon, on the other hand, would mean room for Semitism to develop itself, and for Aryanism to follow in its wake; fresh stirs of population and of thought in Asia; further advances in the arts; variety, freshness, growth; the continuance of the varied lines of Oriental study and investigation until such time as would enable Grecian intellect to take hold of them, sift them, and a.s.similate whatever in them was true, valuable, and capable of expansion.

We have no historical account of the great battle of Carchemish.

Jeremiah, however, beholds it in vision. He sees the Egyptians ”dismayed and turned away back--their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back, since fear is round about them.”[14215] He sees the ”swift flee away,” and the ”mighty men” attempting to ”escape;” but they ”stumble and fall toward the north by the river Euphrates.”[14216] ”For this is the day of the Lord G.o.d of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries; and the sword devours, and it is satiate and made drunk with their blood, for the Lord G.o.d of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.”[14217] The ”valiant men” are ”swept away”--”many fall--yea, one falls upon another, and they say, Arise and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity from the oppressing sword.”[14218] Nor do the mercenaries escape. ”Her hired men are in the midst of her, like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation.”[14219]

The defeat was, beyond a doubt, complete, overwhelming. The shock of it was felt all over the Delta, at Memphis, and even at distant Thebes.[14220] The hasty flight of the entire Egyptian host left the whole country open to the invading army. ”Like a whirlwind, like a torrent, it swept on. The terrified inhabitants retired into the fortified cities,”[14221] where for the time they were safe.

Nebuchadnezzar did not stop to commence any siege. He pursued Neco up to the very frontier of Egypt, and would have continued his victorious career into the Nile valley, had not important intelligence arrested his steps. His aged father had died at Babylon while he was engaged in his conquests, and his immediate return to the capital was necessary, if he would avoid a disputed succession.[14222] Thus matters in Syria had to be left in a confused and unsettled state, until such time as the Great King could revisit the scene of his conquests, and place them upon some definite and satisfactory footing.

On the whole, the campaign had, apparently, the effect of drawing closer the links which united Phoenicia with Egypt.[14223] Babylon had shown herself a fierce and formidable enemy, but had disgusted men more than she had terrified them. It was clear enough that she would be a hard mistress, a second and crueller a.s.syria. There was thus, on Nebuchadnezzar's departure, a general gravitation of the Syrian and Palestinian states towards Egypt, since they saw in her the only possible protector against Babylon, and dreaded her less than they did the ”bitter and hasty nation.”[14224] Neco, no doubt, encouraged the movement which tended at once to strengthen himself and weaken his antagonist; and the result was that, in the course of a few years, both Judaea and Phoenicia revolted from Nebuchadnezzar, and declared themselves independent. Phoenicia was still under the hegemony of Tyre, and Tyre had at its head an enterprising prince, a second Ithobal,[14225] who had developed its resources to the uttermost, and was warmly supported by the other cities.[14226] His revolt appears to have taken place in the year B.C. 598, the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar.[14227] Nebuchadnezzar at once marched against him in person. The sieges of Tyre, Sidon, and Jerusalem were formed. Jerusalem submitted almost immediately.[14228] Sidon was taken after losing half her defenders by pestilence;[14229] but Tyre continued to resist for the long s.p.a.ce of thirteen years.[14230] The continental city was probably taken first. Against this Nebuchadnezzar could freely employ his whole force--his ”horses, his chariots, his companies, and his much people”--he could bring moveable forts close up to the walls, and cast up banks against them, and batter them with his engines, or undermine them with spade and mattock. When a breach was effected, he could pour his horse into the streets, and ride down all opposition. It is the capture of the continental city which Ezekiel describes when he says:[14231] ”Thus saith the Lord G.o.d: Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses and with chariots, and with hors.e.m.e.n, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field; and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses, their dust shall cover thee; thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horseman, and of the wheels and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach. With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise; and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.”

But the island city did not escape. When continental Phoenicia was reduced, it was easy to impress a fleet from maritime towns; to man it, in part with Phoenicians, in part with Babylonians, no mean sailors,[14232] and then to establish a blockade of the isle. Tyre may more than once have crippled and dispersed the blockading squadron; but by a moderate expenditure fresh fleets could be supplied, while Tyre, cut off from Lebanon, would find it difficult to increase or renew her navy. There has been much question whether the island city was ultimately captured by Nebuchadnezzar or no; but even writers who take the negative view[14233] admit that it must have submitted and owned the suzerainty of its a.s.sailant. The date of the submission was B.C. 585.

Thus Tyre, in B.C. 585, ”fell from her high estate.” Ezekiel's prophecies were fulfilled. Ithobal II., the ”prince of Tyrus” of those prophecies,[14234] whose ”head had been lifted up,” and who had said in his heart, ”I am a G.o.d, I sit in the seat of G.o.d, in the midst of the waters,” who deemed himself ”wiser than Daniel,” and thought that no secret was hid from him, was ”brought down to the pit,” ”cast to the ground,” ”brought to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that beheld him.”[14235] Tyre herself was ”broken in the midst of the seas.”[14236] A blight fell upon her. For many years, Sidon, rather than Tyre, became once more the leading city of Phoenicia, was regarded as pre-eminent in naval skill,[14237] and is placed before Tyre when the two are mentioned together.[14238] Internal convulsion, moreover, followed upon external decline. Within ten years of the death of Ithobal, the monarchy came to an end by a revolution,[14239] which subst.i.tuted for Kings Suffetes or Shophetim, ”judges,” officers of an inferior status, whose tenure of office was not very a.s.sured. Ecnibal, the son of Baslach, the first judge, held the position for no more than two months; Chelbes, the son of Abdaeus, who followed him, ruled for ten months; Abbarus, a high priest, probably of Melkarth, for three months.

Then, apparently to weaken the office, it was shared between two, as at Carthage, and Mytgon (perhaps Mattan), together with Ger-ashtoreth, the son of Abd-elim, judged Tyre for six years. But the partisans of monarchy were now recovering strength; and the reign of a king, Balator, was intruded at some point in the course of the six years' judges.h.i.+p.

Judges were then abolished by a popular movement, and kings of the old stock restored. The Tyrians sent to Babylon for a certain Merbal, who must have been either a refugee or a hostage at the court of Neriglissar. He was allowed to return to Tyre, and, being confirmed in the sovereignty, reigned four years. His brother, Eirom, or Hiram, succeeded him, and was still upon the throne when the Empire of Babylon came to an end by the victory of Cyrus over Nabonidus (B.C. 538).

Phoenicia under the Babylonian rule was exceptionally weak. She had to submit to attacks from Egypt under Apries, which fell probably in the reign of Baal over Tyre, about B.C. 565. She had also to submit to the loss of Cyprus under Amasis,[14240] probably about B.C. 540, or a little earlier, when the power of Babylon was rapidly declining. She had been, from first to last, an unwilling tributary of the Great Empire on the Lower Euphrates, and was perhaps not sorry to see that empire go down before the rising power of Persia. Under the circ.u.mstances she would view any chance as likely to advance her interests, and times of disturbance and unsettlement gave her the best chance of obtaining a temporary independence. From B.C. 538 to B.C. 528 or 527 she seems to have enjoyed one of these rare intervals of autonomy. Egypt, content with having annexed Cyprus, did not trouble her; Persia, engaged in wars in the far East,[14241] made as yet no claim to her allegiance. In peace and tranquillity she pursued her commercial career, covered the seas with her merchant vessels, and the land-routes of trade with her caravans, repaired the damages inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar on her cities; maintained, if she did not even increase, her naval strength, and waited patiently to see what course events would take now that Babylon was destroyed, and a new and hitherto unknown power was about to a.s.sume the first position among the nations of the earth.

5. Phoenicia under the Persians (B.C. 528-333)

Phoenicia not claimed by Cyrus--Submits willingly to Cambyses--Takes part in his invasion of Egypt--Refuses to proceed against Carthage--Exceptional privileges enjoyed by the Phoenicians under the Persians--Government system of Darius advantageous to them--Their conduct in the Ionian revolt--In the expeditions of Mardonius and Datis--In the great expedition of Xerxes--Interruption of the friendly relations between Phoenicia and Persia--Renewal of amity-- Services rendered to Persia between B.C. 465 and 392-- Amicable relations with Athens--Phoenicia joins in revolt of Evagoras--Supports Tachos, king of Egypt--Declares herself independent under Tennes--Conquered and treated with great severity of Ochus--Sidonian dynasty of the Esmunazars.

The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus gave him, according to Oriental notions generally, a claim to succeed to the inheritance of the entire Babylonian empire; but the claim would remain dormant until it was enforced. The straggling character of the territory, which was shaped like a Greek {L}, ascending from Babylon along the course of the Euphrates to the Armenian mountains, and then descending along the line of the Mediterranean coast as far as Gaza or Raphia, rendered the enforcement of the claim a work of difficulty, more especially in the remote West, which was distant fifteen hundred miles from Persia Proper, and more than a thousand miles from Babylon. Cyrus, moreover, was prevented, first by wars in his immediate neighbourhood,[14242] and later on by a danger upon his north-eastern frontier,[14243] from taking the steps usually taken by a conqueror to establish his dominion in a newly-annexed region, and thus he neither occupied Syria with troops, nor placed it under the administration of Persian governors. The only step which, so far as we know, he took, implying that his authority reached so far, was the commission which he gave to Zerubbabel and the other chiefs of the Jewish nation to proceed from Babylonia to Judaea, and re-establish themselves, if they could, on the site of the destroyed Jerusalem.[14244] The return from the Captivity which followed was in some sense the occupation of a portion of the extreme West by a Persian garrison, and may be viewed as a step intended to be ”preparatory towards obtaining possession of the entire sea-coast;”[14245] but it appears to have been an isolated movement, effected without active Persian support, and one whereby the neighbouring countries were only slightly affected.

That Phoenicia retained her independence until the reign of Cambyses is distinctly implied, if not actually a.s.serted, by Herodotus.[14246] She saw without any displeasure the re-establishment in her neighbourhood of a nation with which her intercourse had always been friendly, and sometimes close and cordial. Tyre and Sidon vied with each other in their readiness to supply the returned exiles with the timber which they needed for the rebuilding of their temple and city; and once more, as in the days of Solomon, the Jewish axes were heard amid the groves of Lebanon, and the magnificent cedars of that favoured region were cut down, conveyed to the coast, and made into floats or rafts, which Phoenician mariners transported by sea to Joppa, the nearest seaport to Jerusalem.[14247] In return, the Jews willingly rendered to the Phoenicians such an amount of corn, wine, and oil as was equivalent in value to the timber received from them,[14248] and thus the relations between the two peoples were replaced on a footing which recalled the time of their closest friends.h.i.+p, nearly five hundred years previously.

On the death of Cyrus, and the accession of his son Cambyses, B.C. 529, the tranquillity which South-western Asia had enjoyed since the time of the wars of Nebuchadnezzar came to an end. Cyrus had, it is said, designed an expedition against Egypt,[14249] as necessary to round off his conquests, and Cambyses naturally inherited his father's projects.

He had no sooner mounted the throne than he commenced preparations for an attack upon the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs, which, under the dynasty of the Psamatiks, had risen to something of its early greatness, and had been especially wealthy and prosperous under the usurper Amasis.[14250] It was impossible to allow an independent and rival monarchy so close upon his borders, and equally impossible to shrink from an enterprise which had been carried to a successful issue both by a.s.syria and by Babylon. Persian prestige required the subjugation and absorption of a country which, though belonging geographically to Africa, was politically and commercially an integral part of that Western Asia over which Persia claimed a complete and absolute supremacy.

The march upon Egypt implied and required the occupation of the Mediterranean seaboard. No armies of any considerable size have ever attempted to traverse the almost waterless desert which separates the Lower Euphrates valley from the delta of the Nile. Light _corps d'armee_ have no doubt occasionally pa.s.sed from Circesium by way of Tadmor to Damascus, and _vice versa_;[14251] but the ordinary line of route pursued by conquerors follows the course of the Euphrates to Carchemish, then strikes across the chalky upland in the middle of which stands the city of Aleppo, and finally descends upon Egypt by way of the Orontes, the Coele-Syrian valley, and the plains of Sharon and Philistia.[14252]

This was undoubtedly the line followed by Cambyses,[14253] and it necessarily brought him into contact with the Phoenicians. The contact was not an hostile one. It would have been madness on the part of the Phoenicians to have attempted any resistance to the vast host with which Cambyses, we may be sure, made his invasion, and it would have been folly on the part of Cambyses to employ force when he could better obtain his object by persuasion. It must have been a very special object with him to obtain the hearty co-operation of the Phoenician naval forces in the attack which he was meditating, since he would otherwise have had no fleet at all capable of coping with the fleet of Egypt. Neco had made Egypt a strong naval power;[14254] Apries had contented for naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean with Tyre;[14255] Amasis had made an expedition by sea against Cyprus, had crushed whatever resistance the Cyprians were able to offer, had permanently occupied the island,[14256] and added the Cyprian fleet to his own. Cambyses had as yet no s.h.i.+ps, except such as he could procure from the Greek cities of Asia Minor, which were not likely to be very zealous in his service, since they had friends engaged upon the other side.[14257] Accordingly, the Persian monarch seems to have made friendly overtures to the Phoenician states, which were received with favour, and led to an arrangement satisfactory to both parties. Phoenicia surrendered the independence which it was impossible for her to maintain, and placed her fleet at the disposal of Persia.[14258] Persia spared her cities any occupation, imposed on her a light tribute, and allowed her that qualified independence which is implied in the retention of her native princes. From first to last under the Persian _regime_, Phoenician monarchs bear rule in the Phoenician cities,[14259] and command the contingents which the cities furnish to any combined Persian fleet.

The friendly arrangement concluded between Phoenicia and Persia was followed, very naturally, by a further accession to the Persian power.

Cyprus, whose population was in great part Phoenician, had for centuries been connected politically in the closest manner with the Phoenician towns on the Asiatic mainland, especially with Tyre and Sidon. Her enslavement by Amasis must have been hateful to her, and she must have been only too glad to see an opportunity of shaking off the Egyptian yoke. Accordingly, no sooner did the Phoenicians of the mainland conclude the arrangement by which they became part and parcel of the Persian Empire than the Cyprians followed their example, and, revolting from Egypt, offered themselves of their own free will to Persia.[14260]

Cambyses, it is needless to say, readily accepted them as his subjects.