Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/158

 136 HISTORY OF GREECE. time comprise the Greek cities on the coast, which were still left to Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus. 1 But he nevertheless brought down with him a strong interest in the Grecian war, and an intense anti- Athenian feeling, with full authority from his father to carry it out into act. Whatever this young man willed, he willed strongly ; his bodily activity, rising superior to those temp- tations of sensual indulgence which often enervated the Persian grandees, provoked the admiration even of Spartans : 2 and his energetic character was combined with a certain measure of ability. Though he had not as yet conceived that deliberate plan for mounting the Persian throne which afterwards absorbed his whole mind, and was so near succeeding by the help of the Ten Thousand Greeks, yet he seems to have had from the beginning the sentiment and ambition of a king in prospect, not those of a satrap. He came down, well aware that Athens was the efficient enemy by whom the pride of the Persian kings had been humbled, the insular Greeks kept out of the sight of a Persian ship, and even the continental Greeks on the coast practically emancipated, for the last sixty years. He therefore brought down with him a strenuous desire to put down the Athenian power, very different from the treacherous balancing of Tissaphernes, and much more formidable even than the straightforward enmity of Pharnabazus, who had less money, less favor at court, and less of youthful ar- dor. Moreover, Pharnabazus, after having heartily espoused the cause of the Peloponnesians for the last three years, had now become weary of the allies whom he had so long kept in pay. Instead of expelling Athenian influence from his coasts with little difficulty, as he had expected to do, he found his satrapy plun- dered, his revenues impaired or absorbed, and an Athenian fleet all-powerful in the Propontis and Hellespont ; while the Lacedae- monian fleet, which he had taken so much pains to invite, was destroyed. Decidedly sick of the Peloponnesian cause, he was even leaning towards Athens ; and the envoys whom he was escorting to Susa might perhaps have laid the foundation of an altered Persian policy in Asia Minor, when the journey of Cyrua 1 The Anabasis of Xenophon (i, 1, 6-8; i, 9, 7-9) is better authority, aid speaks more exactly, than the Hellenica, i, 4, 3.
 * See the anecdote of Cyrus and Lysander in Xer.opk CEconom. iv, 2 1-23