The Persian rule over Anatolia under Darius and Xerxes was a continuation of the take-over initiated by Cyrus when he pushed across the Halys to Lydia and captured Sardis, the residence of the Lydian dynasty and de facto capital of Western Anatolia after the Phrygian collapse in the early seventh century B.C. The Lydian kings gradually had claimed a small empire beyond their own ethnic boundaries, extending their authority over the Phrygian plateau west of the Halys and making use of what must have been a traditional system of control through garrisons in citadels, tax collection and safeguarding of roads.

The major problem of controlling Western Anatolia was symbiosis with the Greeks. This is also an old story. Land-bound rulers of the Anatolian plateau need to come to an understanding with the coastal and island dwellers of the Aegean to live in mutual peace and prosperity; they have to make their political status clear and strong along the borders. This was true in the second millennium B.C. of the Hittites and their Aegean neighbours (including Ahhiyawa). It was also evident to every Lydian king from Gyges on that the Ionians and Carians had to be made into constructive allies as seafaring merchants and soldiers. Struggles with the Ionians marked the rules of the kings before Croesus, concentrating on the great harbour city of Miletus with which Alyattes finally established a peaceful alliance. Miletus–Millawanda had been the key site also in the days of the Ahhiyawa and Hittites, and the major troubles of those days came from the Achaean allies of Miletus overseas in Greek territory.