his own gods, and would not admit Amon, Phtah, Horus, and Ra to the rank of supreme deities.  Ochus had, by his treatment of the Apis and the other divine animals, put it out of his power ever to win their good will.  His brutality had made an irreconcilable enemy of that state which alone gave signs of vitality among the nations of the decaying East.  This was all the more to be regretted, since the Persian empire, in spite of the accession of power which it had just manifested, was far from having regained the energy which had animated it, not perhaps in the time of Darius, but at all events under the first Xerxes.  The army and the wealth of the country were doubtless still intact—­an army and a revenue which, in spite of all losses, were still the largest in the world—­but the valour of the troops was not proportionate to their number.  The former prowess of the Persians, Medians, Bactrians, and other tribes of Iran showed no degeneracy:  these nations still produced the same race of brave and hardy foot-soldiers, the same active and intrepid horsemen; but for a century past there had not been the improvements either in the armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which were necessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the Greek army.  The Persian king placed great faith in extraordinary military machines.  He believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes; besides this, his relations with India had shown him what use his Oriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employ these animals, he had collected a whole corps of them, from which he. hoped great things.  In spite of the addition of these novel recruits, it was not on the Asiatic contingents that he chiefly relied in the event of war, but on the mercenaries who’ were hired at great expense, and who formed the chief support of his power.  From the time of Artaxerxes II. onwards, it was the Greek hoplites and peltasts who had always decided the issue of the Persian battles.  The expeditions both by land and sea had been under the conduct of Athenian or Spartan generals—­Conon, Chabrias, Iphi-crates, Agesilas, Timotheus, and their pupils; and again also it was to the Greeks—­to the Rhodian Mentor and to, Memnon—­that Ochus had owed his successes.  The older nations—­Egypt, Syria, Chaldaea, and Elam—­had all had their day of supremacy; they had declined in the course of centuries, and Assyria had for a short time united them under her rule.  On the downfall of Assyria, the Iranians had succeeded to her heritage, and they had built up a single empire comprising all the states which had preceded them in Western Asia; but decadence had fallen upon them also, and when they had been masters for scarcely two short centuries, they were in their turn threatened with destruction.  Their rule continued to be universal, not by reason of its inherent vigour, but on account of the weakness of their subjects and neighbours, and a determined attack on any of the frontiers of the empire would doubtless have resulted in its overthrow.