Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/216

 198 HISTORY OF GREECE. historian, common to him with the philosopher, to recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid towards the prevision of the future. 1 The destruction of the Lydian monarchy, and the establish- ment of the Persians at Sardis an event pregnant with conse- quences to Hellas generally took place in 546 B.C.' 2 Sorely did the Ionic Greeks now repent that they had rejected the proposi- tions made to them by Cyrus for revolting from Croesus, though at the time when these propositions were made, it would have been highly imprudent to listen to them, since the Lydian power might reasonably be looked upon as the stronger. As soon as Sardis had fallen, they sent envoys to the conqueror, entreating that they might be enrolled as his tributaries, on the footing which they had occupied under Croesus. The reply was a stern and angry refusal, with the exception of the Milesians, to whom the terms which they asked were granted : 3 why this favorable exception was extended to them, we do not know. The other continental lonians and JEolians (exclusive of Miletus, and ex- clusive also of the insular cities which the Persians had no means of attacking), seized with alarm, began to put themselves 1 Thucyd. i, 22. 2 This important date depends upon the evidence of Solinus (Polyhistor, i, 112) and Sosikrates (ap. Dipg. Laert. i, 95): see Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 546, and his Appendix, ch. 17, upon the Lydian kings. Mr. Clinton and most of the chronologists accept the date without hesi t&tion, but Volney (Recherches surl'Histoire Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 306-308; Chronologic des Hois Lydiens) rejects it altogether; considering the cap- ture of Sardis to have occurred in 557 B.C., and the reign of Croesus to have begun in 571 B.C. He treats very contemptuously the authority of Solinus and Sosikrates, and has an elaborate argumentation to prove that the date which he adopts is borne out by Herodotus. This latter does not appear to me at all satisfactory : I adopt the date of Solinus and Sosikrates, though agreeing with Volney that such positive authority is not very con- siderable, because there is nothing to contradict them, and because the date which they give seems in consonance with the stream of the history. Volney's arguments suppose in the mind of Herodotus a degree of chron- ological precision altogether unreasonable, in reference to events anterior to contemporary records. He, like other chronologists, exhausts his inge- nuity to find a proper point of historical time lor the supposed conversa- tion between Solon and Croesus (p. 320). 3 Herodot. i, 141.