of a Greek nationality in a common ambition directed against herself. It
was her fate also, by forcing Athens into the front of the Greek states,
to give the nascent nation the most inspiriting and enterprising of
leaders--the one most fertile in imperial ideas and most apt to proceed
to their realization: and in her retreat before that nation she drew her
pursuer into a world which, had she herself never advanced into Europe,
would probably not have seen him for centuries to come.

Moreover, by a subsequent change of attitude towards her victorious
foe--though that change was not wholly to her discredit--Persia bred in
the Greeks a still better conceit of themselves and a better
understanding of her weakness. The Persians, with the intelligence and
versatility for which their race has always been remarkable, passed very
rapidly from overweening contempt to excessive admiration of the Greeks.
They set to work almost at once to attract Hellenic statesmen and men of
science to their own society, and to make use of Hellenic soldiers and
sailors. We soon find western satraps cultivating cordial relations with
the Ionian cities, hospitably entertaining Greeks of distinction and
conciliating Greek political and religious prepossessions. They must
have attained considerable success, while thus unwittingly preparing
disaster. When, a little more than a century later, western Europe would
come eastward in force, to make an end of Persian dominion, some of the
greater Ionian and Carian cities would offer a prolonged resistance to
it which is not to be accounted for only by the influence of Persian
gold or of a Persian element in their administration. Miletus and
Halicarnassus shut their gates and defended their walls desperately
against Alexander because they conceived their own best interests to be
involved in the continuance of the Persian Empire. Nor were the Persians
less successful with Greeks actually taken into their service. The Greek
mercenaries remained to a man loyal to the Great King when the Greek