In the preceding chapter an account has been given, the best which we can pick out from Herodotus, of the steps by which the Asiatic Greeks became subject to Persia; and if his narrative is meagre, on a matter which vitally concerned not only so many of his brother Greeks, but even his own native city, we can hardly expect that he should tell us much respecting the other conquests of Cyrus. He seems to withhold intentionally various details which had come to his knowledge, and merely intimates in general terms that while Harpagus was engaged on the coast of the Ægean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting any one of them.” He alludes to the Baktrians and the Sakæ, who are also named by Ktêsias as having become subject partly by force, partly by capitulation; but he deems only two of the exploits of Cyrus worthy of special notice—the conquest of Babylon, and the final expedition against the Massagetæ. In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ktêsias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon; but his narrative, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different.