fortresses perched on inaccessible rocks, all rendered it easy for the
inhabitants to carry on a successful petty warfare against the enemy.
The inhabitants of Xanthos, although very inferior in numbers, issued
down into the plain and disputed the victory with the invaders for a
considerable time; at length their defeat and the capitulation of their
town induced the remainder of the Lycians to lay down arms, and brought
about the final pacification of the peninsula. It was parcelled out into
several governorships, according to its ethnographical affinities;
as for instance, the governorship of Lydia, that of Ionia, that of
Phrygia,* and others whose names are unknown to us. Harpàgus appeared
to have resided at Sardes, and exercised vice-regal functions over the
various districts, but he obtained from the king an extensive property
in Lycia and in Caria, which subsequently caused these two provinces to
be regarded as an appanage of his family.

* Herodotus calls a certain Mitrobates satrap of Daskylion;
he had perhaps been already given this office by Cyrus.
Orcetes had been made governor of Ionia and Lydia by Cyrus.

While thus consolidating his first conquest, Cyrus penetrated into the
unknown regions of the far East. Nothing would have been easier for him
than to have fallen upon Babylon and overthrown, as it were by the way,
the decadent rule of Nabonidus; but the formidable aspect which the
empire still presented, in spite of its enfeebled condition, must have
deceived him, and he was unwilling to come into conflict with it until
he had made a final reckoning with the restless and unsettled peoples
between the Caspian and the slopes on the Indian side of the table-land
of Iran. As far as we are able to judge, they were for the most part of
Iranian extraction, and had the same religion, institutions, and customs
as the Medes and Persians. Tradition had already referred the origin of