Mediterranean to the Tigris and from the Tigris to the Black Sea, and
with him had marched more than ten thousand Greeks. Not only have works
by these three men of letters survived, wholly or in part, to our time,
but also many notes on the East as it was before 400 B.C. have been
preserved in excerpts, paraphrases and epitomes by later authors. And we
still have some archaeological documents to fall back upon. If the
cuneiform records of the Persian Empire are less abundant than those of
the later Assyrian Kingdom, they nevertheless include such priceless
historical inscriptions as that graven by Darius, son of Hystaspes, on
the rock of Behistun. There are also hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic
texts of Persian Egypt; inscriptions of Semitic Syria and a few of
archaic Greece; and much other miscellaneous archaeological material
from various parts of the East, which, even if uninscribed, can inform
us of local society and life.


SECTION 1. EASTWARD MOVEMENT OF THE GREEKS

The Greek had been pushing eastward for a long time. More than three
hundred years ago, as has been shown in the last chapter, he had become
a terror in the farthest Levant. Before another century had passed he
found his way into Egypt also. Originally hired as mercenaries to
support a native revolt against Assyria, the Greeks remained in the Nile
valley not only to fight but to trade. The first introduction of them to
the Saite Pharaoh, Psammetichus, was promoted by Gyges the Lydian to
further his own ends, but the first development of their social
influence in Egypt was due to the enterprise of Miletus in establishing
a factory on the lowest course of the Canopic Nile. This post and two
standing camps of Greek mercenaries, one at Tahpanhes watching the
approach from Asia, the other at Memphis overawing the capital and