passed, the spectacle of a Great King governing by treachery, buying his
enemies, and impotent to recover Egypt even with their mercenary help
had its effect. Belief gained ground that the ship of Empire was
sinking, and even in Susa the fear grew that a wind from the West was to
finish her. The Great King's court officers watched Greek politics
during the first seventy years of the fourth century with ever closer
attention. Not content with enrolling as many Greeks as possible in the
royal service, they used the royal gold to such effect to buy or support
Greek politicians whose influence could be directed to hindering a union
of Greek states and checking the rising power of any unit, that a Greek
orator said in a famous passage that the archers stamped on the Great
King's coins were already a greater danger to Greece than his real
archers had ever been.

By such lavish corruption, by buying the soldiers and the politicians of
the enemy, a better face was put for a while on the fortunes of the
dynasty and the Empire. Before the death of the aged Artaxerxes Mnemon
in 358, the revolt of the Western satraps had collapsed. His successor,
Ochus, who, to reach the throne, murdered his kin like any
eighteenth-century sultan of Stambul, overcame Egyptian obstinacy about
346, after two abortive attempts, by means of hireling Greek troops, and
by similar vicarious help he recovered Sidon and the Isle of Cyprus. But
it was little more than the dying flicker of a flame fanned for the
moment by that same Western wind which was already blowing up to the
gale that would extinguish it. The heart of the Empire was not less
rotten because its shell was patched, and in the event, when the storm
broke a few years later, nothing in West Asia was able to make any stand
except two or three maritime cities, which fought, not for Persia, but
for their own commercial monopolies.