her satraps continued to manage the western trade and equally clear that
the wealth of her empire increased in greater ratio than that of the
Greek cities. There is little evidence for Hellenic commercial expansion
consequent on the Persian wars, but much for continued and even
increasing Hellenic poverty. In the event Persia found herself in a
position almost to regain by gold what she had lost by battle, and to
exercise a financial influence on Greece greater and longer lasting than
she ever established by arms. Moreover, her empire was less likely to be
attacked when it was limited by the western edge of the Anatolian
plateau, and no longer tried to hold any European territory. There is a
geographical diversity between the Anatolian littoral and the plateau.
In all ages the latter alone has been an integral part of inner Asia,
and the society and politics of the one have remained distinct from
those of the other. The strong frontier of Asia at its western
peninsular extremity lies not on, but behind the coast.

At the same time, although their immediate results to the Persian Empire
were not very hurtful, those abortive expeditions to Europe had sown the
seeds of ultimate catastrophe. As a direct consequence of them the
Greeks acquired consciousness of their own fighting value on both land
and sea as compared with the peoples of inner Asia and the Phoenicians.
Their former fear of numerical superiorities was allayed, and much of
the mystery, which had hitherto magnified and shielded Oriental power,
was dissipated. No less obviously those expeditions served to suggest to
the Greeks for the first time that there existed both a common enemy of
all their race and an external field for their own common encroachment
and plundering. So far as an idea of nationality was destined ever to be
operative on Greek minds it would draw its inspiration thenceforward
from a sense of common superiority and common hostility to the Oriental.
Persia, in a word, had laid the foundations and promoted the development