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 himself to live in a public-house, and to let his own residence to some wealthy stranger. Even in the extremity of a siege they could not throw off their careless ways, and the story was told that, in the time of Philip of Macedon, the officers could only keep them to their duty on the ramparts by transferring thither the public-houses and taverns. The very idea of discipline and law seems to have vanished so utterly that one of their mob orators, when he was asked in some case what the law prescribed, was able to reply, "Whatever I please."

Of the history of the city before the fifth century B.C. we know nothing. By that time it is certain that it was prosperous and moderately powerful. Linking, as it did, two continents and their civilizations, being the key of the Ægean and Euxine, and having the singular advantages of which we have spoken, it could not possibly fail to figure in Greek history, and to attract the notice of Persia, as soon as war with Greece had been resolved on. For a long period after its foundation it was quite able to hold its own against its neighbours, and it even appears to have reduced some of them to tributaries. This was its position in the sixth century B.C., at the close of which Dareius Hystaspes made his famous expedition from Asia into Europe. One of his satraps, Otanes, won several considerable conquests on the Propontis and the Bosporus, and among them the cities of Byzantium and Chalcedon. These Greek colonies remained under the power of Persia till that great Ionian revolt, early in the fifth century B.C., which led to the desperate struggle between Greece and Persia, and from which may be said