ABSTRACT
The enquiries of the Greek historian Herodotus into the wars between the Greeks and the Persians led him to conclude that their origins lay in the rise to power of the Persian Empire under the first of the Achaemenid kings, Kyros the Great. It was Kyros who conquered the kingdom of Lydia in 547. The king of Lydia, Kroisos, had tried to take advantage of the turmoil caused by Kyros' seizure of the Median Empire by invading its western territories. Kyros met the Lydian king in battle in Kappadokia and forced him to withdraw. Kroisos stood his army down, thinking that there would be no further fighting, but Kyros pressed on to Sardis, the Lydian capital and laid siege to the city, which he captured after only two weeks. Kroisos had brought the prosperous Greek cities of Ionia on the western coast of Asia Minor under his rule and made them pay tribute to him. After his defeat they acknowledged the rule of Kyros, but many of them participated in a revolt of the Lydians and had to be brought back under Persian control by force. Some of the Greeks chose to flee overseas rather than submit to the Persians. Half the people of Phokaia emigrated to the western Mediterranean, where many Greek cities were already flourishing, and most of the inhabitants of Teos founded a new city at Abdera on the Thracian coast. The larger islands off the coast of Ionia retained their independence for some time, but by 518 the Persians controlled all of Asia Minor and most of the eastern Aegean islands, including Lesbos, Chios and Samos. In keeping with their practice elsewhere in the territories under their control the Persian kings installed or sponsored local aristocrats as rulers of the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the nearby islands. These men were called 'tyrants', a Lydian word used by the Greeks to describe an individual ruler who was not necessarily an hereditary monarch, but who had not been elected or put in power by overwhelming popular support. These local rulers were answerable to a Persian governor, called a 'satrap' - an Old Persian word meaning 'guardian of the land' - who normally resided in Sardis. The Persians also exacted tribute from the Ionians, probably at the same level as the Lydian kings before them.
