History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) eBook

Gaston Maspero
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 357 pages of information about History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12).

History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) eBook

Gaston Maspero
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 357 pages of information about History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12).

He sent lavish gifts of corn to the Cypriots, as well as munitions of war, ships, and money while Athens sent them several thousand men under the command of Chabrias; not only did an expedition despatched against them under Autophradates fail miserably, but Evagoras seized successively Citium and Amathus, and, actually venturing across the sea, took Tyre by assault and devastated Phoenicia and Cilicia.  The princes of Asia Minor were already preparing for revolt, and one of them, Hecatomnus of Caria, had openly joined the allies, when Sparta suddenly opened negotiations with Persia:  Antalcidas presented himself at Susa to pay homage before the throne of the great king.  The treaty of Miletus had brought the efforts of Athens to naught, and sold the Asiatic Greeks to their oppressors:  the peace obtained by Antalcidas effaced the results of Salamis and Platsae, and laid European Greece prostrate at the feet of her previously vanquished foes.  An order issuing from the centre of Persia commanded the cities of Greece to suspend hostilities and respect each other’s liberties; the issuing of such an order was equivalent to treating them as vassals whose quarrels it is the function of the suzerain to repress, but they nevertheless complied with the command (387 B.C.), Artaxerxes, relieved from anxiety for the moment, as to affairs on the AEgean, was now free to send his best generals into the rebel countries, and such was the course his ministers recommended.  Evagoras was naturally the first to be attacked.  Cyprus was, in fact, an outpost of Egypt; commanding as she did the approach by sea, she was in a position to cut the communications of any army, which, issuing from Palestine, should march upon the Delta.  Artaxerxes assembled three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and three hundred triremes under the command of Tiribazus, and directed the whole force against the island.  At first the Cypriot cruisers intercepted the convoys which were bringing provisions for this large force, and by so doing reduced the invaders to such straits that sedition broke out in their camp; but Evagoras was defeated at sea off the promontory of Citium, and his squadron destroyed.  He was not in any way discouraged by this misfortune, but leaving his son, Pnytagoras, to hold the barbarian forces in check, he hastened to implore the help of the Pharaoh (385 B.C.).  But Hakoris was too much occupied with securing his own immediate safety to risk anything in so desperate an enterprise.  Evagoras was able to bring back merely an insufficient subsidy; he shut himself up in Salamis, and there maintained the conflict for some years longer.  Meanwhile Hakoris, realising that the submission of Cyprus would oppose his flank to attack, tried to effect a diversion in Asia Minor, and by entering into alliance with the Pisidians, then in open insurrection, he procured for it a respite, of which he himself took advantage to prepare for the decisive struggle.  The peace effected by Antalcidas

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History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.