of Croesus to Persia, he hastily set out for Ecbatana.  He had scarcely accomplished half of his journey when a revolt broke out in his rear; Paktyas, instead of obeying his instructions, intrigued with the Ionians, and, with the mercenaries he had hired from them, besieged Tabalos in the citadel of Sardes.  If the place capitulated, the entire conquest would have to be repeated; fortunately it held out, and its resistance gave Cyrus time to send its governor reinforcements, commanded by Mazares the Median.  As soon as they approached the city, Paktyas, conscious that he had lost the day, took refuge at Kyme.  Its inhabitants, on being summoned to deliver him up, refused, but helped him to escape to Mytilene, where the inhabitants of the island attempted to sell him to the enemy for a large sum of money.  The Kymaeans saved him a second time, and conveyed him to the temple of Athene Poliarchos at Chios.  The citizens, however, dragged him from his retreat, and delivered him over to the Median general in exchange for Atarneus, a district of Mysia, the possession of which they were disputing with the Lesbians.* Paktyas being a prisoner, the Lydians were soon recalled to order, and Mazares was able to devote his entire energies to the reduction of the Greek cities; but he had accomplished merely the sack of Priene,** and the devastation of the suburbs of Magnesia on the aeander, when he died from some illness.

* A passage which has been preserved of Charon of Lampsacus sums up in a few words the account given by Herodotus of the adventures of Paktyas, but without mentioning the treachery of the islanders:  he confines himself to saying Cyrus caught the fugitive after the latter had successively left Chios and Mytilene.

     ** Herodotus attributes the taking of this city to the
     Persian Tabules, who is evidently the Tabalos of Herodotus.

The Median Harpagus, to whom tradition assigns so curious a part as regards Astyages and the infant Cyrus, succeeded him as governor of the ancient Lydian kingdom, and completed the work which he had begun.  The first two places to be besieged were Phocaea and Teos, but their inhabitants preferred exile to slavery; the Phocaeans sailed away to found Marseilles in the western regions of the Mediterranean, and the people of Teos settled along the coast of Thracia, near to the gold-mines of the Pangseus, and there built Abdera on the site of an ancient Clazomenian colony.  The other Greek towns were either taken by assault or voluntarily opened their gates, so that ere long both Ionians and AEolians were, with the exception of the Samians, under Persian rule.  The very position of the latter rendered them safe from attack; without a fleet they could not be approached, and the only people who could have furnished Cyrus with vessels were the Phoenicians, who were not as yet under his power.  The rebellion having been suppressed in this quarter, Harpagus made a descent into Caria; the natives hastened to place themselves under the Persian yoke, and the Dorian colonies scattered along the coast, Halicarnas-sus, Cnidos, and the islands of Cos and Rhodes, followed their examples, but Lycia refused to yield without a struggle.