THE GREEKS AND THE IMPERIAL EXPANSION (TO 500 B.C.)

The First Conquest of Ionia

Before Cyrus marched against Croesus, he had made overtures to the Asian Greeks, of whom the Ionians were the most important; a very reasonable effort to stir up trouble in the enemy's rear, or at least to induce Croesus' recently conquered subjects, with their armoured infantry, not to march. It is a warning, such as Eduard Meyer emphasised, against conceiving the oriental monarchies as “much too primitive” in their geographical knowledge. Cyrus controlled Assyria and the same secretaries as had served the Medes in their dealings with Lydia; and his agents could travel on Greek ships trading with Trebizond or Phoenicia. When Ionian delegates waited upon him at Sardis, he may well have told them that the terms would now be stiffer. But Cyrus knew enough to renew Croesus' treaty with powerful Miletos.

When envoys from Sparta landed at Phokaia, the most powerful of the remaining Ionian states, their name was perhaps new to him, though Croesus had made alliance with them too. (He had not received any actual aid either. Sparta, dominating a never completely conquered Peloponnese, never in her history sent her unmatched but unreplaceable main citizen forces over sea.) But when Cyrus asked “the Greeks who were beside him” (so he was already using Greeks) “who were the Spartans, and how many?” it was no mere sarcasm. He asked those who knew for a report. However, the envoys' warning that Sparta “would not regard with indifference any interference with the Greeks” fell flat. Herodotus indeed opines that their envoys were sent chiefly as an intelligence mission, to have a look at Cyrus' forces. For the rest, their bluff had been called.