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In the coming century Cyme of Aeolis would give a wife to a Phrygian king. Ephesus seems to have become already an important social as well as religious centre. Miletus, too, was certainly an adult centre of Hellenism and about to become a mother of new cities, if she had not already become so.
Meanwhile Eurylochus and his companions, finding that this force had entered and that it was impossible to storm the town, withdrew, not to Peloponnese, but to the country once called Aeolis, and now Calydon and Pleuron, and to the places in that neighbourhood, and Proschium in Aetolia; the Ambraciots having come and urged them to combine with them in attacking Amphilochian Argos and the rest of Amphilochia and Acarnania; affirming that the conquest of these countries would bring all the continent into alliance with Lacedaemon.
In the original revolt appear to have been included only the cities of Ionia and AEolis. Aristagoras felt that some further strength was needed, and determined to seek it in European Greece. Repulsed from Sparta, which was disinclined to so distant an expedition, he applied for aid to cities on which he had a special claim.
The superiority of the Phoenician ships to others is generally allowed, and was clearly shown when Xerxes collected his fleet of twelve hundred and seven triremes against Greece. The fleet included contingents from Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Caria, Ionia, AEolis, and the Greek settlements about the Propontis.
Against the combined ships of Phoenicia, Cyprus, Ionia, and AEolis, Egypt was powerless, and her fleets seem to have quietly yielded the command of the sea.
Aristagoras of Miletus, finding himself in a position of difficulty, had lighted up the flames of war in Asia Minor, and brought about a general revolt of the Greeks in those parts against the Persian power a revolt which spread on from the Greeks to the native Asiatics, and in a short time embraced, not only Ionia and AEolis, but Caria, Caunus, and almost the whole of Cyprus.
By the side of Pausanias was a man whose dark beard was already sown with grey. This man, named Gongylus, though a Greek a native of Eretria, in Euboea was in high command under the great Persian king. At the time of the barbarian invasion under Datis and Artaphernes, he had deserted the cause of Greece and had been rewarded with the lordship of four towns in Aeolis.
The junction of the Phoenician fleet with the navies of Cyprus, Ionia, Caria, and AEolis would have transferred the complete sovereignty of the Eastern Mediterranean to the side of the rebels. The contagion of revolt would probably have spread.
But though at first successful against Pharnabazus in AEolis, Dercyllidas was subsequently surprised in Caria in such an unfavourable position that he would have suffered severely but for the timidity of Tissaphernes, who was afraid to venture upon an action. Pharnabazus availed himself of this armistice to make active preparations for a renewal of the war.
The ancients celebrated the wheat of AEolis, the dates of Babylon, the citrons of Media, the Persian peach, the grapes of Carmania, the Hyrcanian fig, the plum of Damascus, the cherries of Pontus, the mulberries of Egypt and of Cyprus, the silphium of Gyrene, the wine of Helbon, the wild-grape of Syria.
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