The power of Persia began about this time to decline, and the Phoenicians seem to have wavered in their allegiance.  In B.C. 406 or 405 Egypt shook off the Persian yoke, and established her independence under a native sovereign.[14323] Soon afterwards, probably in B.C. 392 or 391, Evagoras, a Cypriot Greek, who claimed descent from Teucer, inaugurated a revolution at Salamis in Cyprus, where he slew the Phoenician monarch, Abdemon, who held his throne under Persia, and, himself mounting the throne, proceeded to reduce to subjection the whole island.[14324] Vast efforts were made to crush him, but for ten years he defied the power of Persia, and maintained himself as an independent monarch.[14325] Even when finally he made his submission, it was under an express stipulation that he should retain his royal dignity, and be simply bound to pay his tribute regularly, and to render such obedience as subject kings commonly paid to their suzerain.[14326]

In the course of his resistance to Persia, it is beyond question that Evagoras received a certain amount of support from Phoenicia; but the circumstances under which the support was given was doubtful.  According to Isocrates,[14327] he equipped a large fleet, and attacked the Phoenicians on the mainland with so much vigour as even to take the great city of Tyre by assault; but Diodorus says nothing of the attack, and it is conjectured that the contagion of revolt, which certainly affected, more or less, Cyprus, Cilicia, Caria, and some of the Syrian Arabs,[14328] spread also thus early to Phoenicia, and that “the surrender of Tyre was a voluntary defection."[14329] In that case, we must view Phoenicia, or at any rate a portion of it, as having detached itself from Persia, about B.C. 390, sixty years before the final break-up of the Empire.

But the disaffection of Phoenicia does not become open and patent until about thirty years later.  The decline of Persia had continued.  In B.C. 375 an attempt to recover Egypt, for which a vast armament had been collected under Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, completely failed.[14330] Nine years afterwards, in B.C. 366, the revolt of the satraps began.  First Ariobarzanes, satrap of Phrygia, renounced his allegiance, and defended himself with success against Autophradutes, satrap of Lydia, and Mausolus, native king of Caria under Persia.  Then Aspis, who held a part of Cappadocia, revolted and maintained himself by the help of the Pisidians, until he was overpowered by Datames.  Next Datames himself, satrap of the rest of Cappadocia, understanding that the mind of the Persian king was poisoned against him, made a treaty with Ariobarzanes, and assumed an independent attitude in his own province.  Finally, in B.C. 362, there seems to have been something like a general revolt of the western provinces, in which the satraps of Mysia, Phrygia, and Lydia, Mausolus prince of Caria, and the peoples of Lycia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Syria participated.[14331] Then, if not earlier,