is, from the eastern point of Lycia to the opening of the Black Sea:  this prohibition did not apply to the merchant vessels of the contracting parties, and they received permission to traffic freely in each other’s waters—­the Phoenicians in Greece, and the Greeks in Phonicia, Cilicia, and Egypt.  And yet, when we consider the matter, Athens and Hellas were, of the two, the greater losers by this convention, which appeared to imply their superiority.  Not only did they acknowledge indirectly that they felt themselves unequal to the task of overthrowing the empire, but they laid down their arms before they had accomplished the comparatively restricted task which they had set themselves to perform, that of freeing all the Greeks from the Iranian yoke:  their Egyptian compatriots still remained Persian tributaries, in company with the cities of Cyrenaica, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, and, above all, that island of Cyprus in which they had gained some of their most signal triumphs.  The Persians, relieved from a war which for a quarter of a century had consumed their battalions and squadrons, drained their finances, and excited their subjects to revolt, were now free to regain their former wealth and perhaps their vigour, could they only find generals to command their troops and guide their politics.  Artaxerxes was incapable of directing this revival, and his inveterate weakness exposed him perpetually to the plotting of his satraps or to the intrigues of the women of his harem.  The example of Artabanus, followed by that of Hystaspes, had shown how easy it was for an ambitious man to get rid secretly of a monarch or a prince and seriously endanger the crown.  The members of the families who had placed Darius on the throne, possessed by hereditary right, or something little short of it, the wealthiest and most populous provinces—­Babylonia, Syria, Lydia, Phrygia, and the countries of the Halys—­and they were practically kings in all but name, in spite of the surveillance which the general and the secretary were supposed to exercise over their actions.  Besides this, the indifference and incapacity of the ruling sovereigns had already tended to destroy the order of the administrative system so ably devised by Darius:  the satrap had, as a rule, absorbed the functions of a general within his own province, and the secretary was too insignificant a personage to retain authority and independence unless he received the constant support of the sovereign.  The latter, a tool in the hands of women and eunuchs, usually felt himself powerless to deal with his great vassals.  His toleration went to all lengths if he could thereby avoid a revolt; when this was inevitable, and the rebels were vanquished, he still continued to conciliate them, and in most cases their fiefs and rights were preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he could rid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the case of their proving themselves too troublesome.  Megabyzos by his turbulence