At this point it will be as well to look briefly at the Persians and the vast empire which they ruled. In the closing years of the seventh and the opening decades of the sixth centuries BC, the rulers of the Medes, an Iranian people in the highlands of what is now northwestern Iran, slowly built up an empire which by 550 BC extended from the Halys River in the west (Hdt. I 72) to at least Parthia in the east (Behistun, col. II 92-98 with 13-17). In the south it bordered on the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom. In 550 BC Cyrus, the ruler of Persis (in what is now southwestern Iran) revolted against the Median king Astyages. In the ensuing war, Astyages’ army deserted him and went over to Cyrus who became the new ruler (Nabonidus Chronicle, II 1-4, ANET, p. 305; Hdt. I 127). Convention treats Cyrus’ revolt as the beginning of a new empire although it was clearly nothing more than a switch from one dynasty to another which happened to be from another Iranian people, the Persians.
After his defeat of Astyages, Cyrus rapidly conquered additional territory. In 546 he defeated King Croesus of Lydia (Hdt. I 76-81, 85-86; Nabonidus Chronicle, II 15-17, ANET, p. 306), famed amongst the Greeks for his legendary wealth (e. g., Hdt. VI 125). Croesus and his predecessors had in painstaking work united under Lydian rule all of Asia Minor not under Median rule with the exception of Lycia in the southwest and Cilicia in the southeast (Hdt. I 28). In particular, the Lydians had conquered all the Greek cities on the mainland of Asia Minor (Hdt. I 26-27) with the exception of Miletus which, nearly inaccessible by land, had withstood Lydian attempts at conquest and with which the Lydians in the end concluded a treaty of alliance (Hdt. I 22). At one blow Cyrus reaped all the fruits of the Lydian kings’ labors; Cilicia must at about this time have willingly submitted to the Persians. In 539 Cyrus conquered the
Neo-Babylonian kingdom which besides Mesopotamia included Cyprus, Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria (Nabonidus Chronicle, ANET, p. 306; Cyrus-Cylinder, ANET, pp. 315-316; Hdt. I 178, 190-191). Before his death in 529 Cyrus also added Bactria, the Sogdiane, and eastern Iran up to the Indus River as these are already integral parts of the empire when Darius becomes king in 521 (Behistun, Col. I 16-17) and were not, apparently, added by Cambyses (529-522 BC) to whom Herodotus ascribes the acquisition of Egypt only (Hdt. III 1sqq.).
The political and administrative entity which Cyrus had erected on the foundations which his Median, Lydian, and Babylonian predecessors had laid was still standing, with its borders hardly changed, three and a half centuries later. Its rulers by then were Greco-Macedonians, but no matter - it was still the same empire (see chap. 23). It was by far the largest and the most durable of the empires in the Near East. Its general stability and durability bears witness to Cyrus’ achievement in the most authoritative way possible.
With Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia, the Persians also began to rule over Greeks. The Persians, as a general rule, retained the established state of affairs in any territory which they conquered and, if at all possible, they retained existing rulers. Thus, the royal dynasty of Cilicia, which evidently had entered the Persian Empire voluntarily, continued to rule over Cilicia, granted, at least officially, as satraps of the satrapy of Cilicia (Hdt. I 74, V 118, VII 98). Likewise, the tiny Athenian outpost of Sigeium in northwestern Asia Minor, which was ruled as a family fiefdom by the tyrants of Athens (Hdt. V 94-95), continued under the rule of those tyrants so that Hippias, when he was expelled from Athens, could flee to Sigeium and rule it personally (Hdt. V 65). The same applies to the position of Miltiades the Younger on the Chersonese - he continued to rule this region after its incorporation into the Persian Empire in the late sixth century (Hdt. VI 39 and IV 137). Most of the Greek cities stood under the rule of tyrants at the time of the Persian conquest, and the Persians supported the tyrants’ regimes (Hdt. IV 137). Moreover, under the Persians the anomalous status of Miletus continued. It did not stand under the direct authority of the new Persian satrap, but was bound by a treaty of alliance - just now to Persia rather than to Lydia (I 141). The tribute which the Greeks had paid to the Lydians now went to the Persian satrap who did not increase or restructure it in any way until some fifty years later (Hdt. VI 42).
This desire to act in conformity with established tradition fully characterized the Persians’ dealings with the Greeks even then when the Persians intervened in the internal affairs of a Greek city. Thus, when the Persians conquered Samos - unlike the Lydians, the Persians did expand onto the Aegean islands -, the old tyrant dynasty had recently been deposed (see also chap. 7). So the Persians installed as the new tyrant the senior surviving male relative of the last tyrant, Syloson, the brother to Polycrates (Hdt. III 139 and 144). In Mytilene the Persians installed Coes as tyrant (Hdt. V 11). Unfortunately, it is not known what situation preceded Coes’ installation. All the same, it is clear that the Persians strove to allow the Greeks to be governed in the
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