But the Great King was not satisfied with a single, albeit a magnificent, achievement.  He had accomplished in one short campaign what it took the Assyrians ten years, and Nebuchadnezzar eighteen years, to effect.  But he now set his heart on further conquests.  “He designed,” says Herodotus,[14262] “three great expeditions.  One was to be against the Carthaginians, another against the Ammonians, and a third against the long-lived Ethopians, who dwelt in that part of Lybia which borders upon the southern sea.”  The expedition against the Carthaginians is the only one of the three which here concerns us:  it was to be entrusted to the fleet.  Instead of conducting, or sending, a land force along the seaboard of North Africa, which was probably known to be for the most part barren and waterless, Cambyses judged that it would be sufficient to dispatch his powerful navy against the Liby-Phoenician colony, which he supposed would submit or else be subjugated.  But on broaching this plan to the leaders of the fleet he was met with a determined opposition.  The Phoenicians positively refused to proceed against their own colonists.  They urged that they were bound to the Carthaginians by most solemn oaths, and that it would be as wicked and unnatural for them to execute the king’s orders as for parents to destroy their own children.[14263] It was a bold act to run counter to the will of a despotic monarch, especially of one so headstrong and impetuous as Cambyses.  But the Phoenicians were firm, and the monarch yielded.  “He did not like,” Herodotus says, “to force the war upon the Phoenicians, because they had surrendered themselves to the Persians, and because on the Phoenicians his entire sea-service depended.”  He therefore allowed their opposition to prevail, and desisted from his proposed undertaking.[14264]

This acquiescence in their wishes on the part of the Great King, and his abstinence from any attempt at compulsion, would seem to have paved the way for that thoroughly good understanding between the suzerain power and her dependency which characterises the relations of the two for the next century and a half, with the single exception of one short interval.  “The navy of Phoenicia became a regular and very important part of the public power"[14265] of the Persian state.  Complete confidence was felt by their Persian masters in the fidelity, attachment, and hearty good-will of the Phoenician people.  Exceptional favour was shown them.  Not only were they allowed to maintain their native kings, their municipal administration, their national laws and religion, but they were granted exceptional honours and exceptional privileges and immunities.  The Great King maintained a park and royal residence in some portion of Phoenicia,[14266] probably in the vicinity of Sidon,[14267] and no doubt allowed his faithful subjects to bask occasionally in the sunshine of his presence.  When the internal organisation of the empire was taken in hand, and something