Master of Media, the Persian chief in his turn became a great Oriental conqueror; indeed all the Oriental conquests bear the same character. A nomadic race, led by a chief of great abilities, invades the more organized states, and conquers them; the chief assumes the government, and founds a dynasty, which after a rule of several generations, becomes enervated, and gives way before some new nomadic incursion. The first power against which Cyrus turned his arms, after having subdued the Medes, was the famous Lydian kingdom, which then subsisted in Asia Minor under the great Crœsus. And here, therefore, we must give some account of the ancient condition of Asia Minor and its principalities.
STATES OF ASIA MINOR――THE LYDIANS. The river Halys divided Asia Minor into two parts. East of the Halys, or near its source, were various nations of the Semitic stock――Cappadocians, Cilicians, Pamphylians etc.――each organized apart, but all included under the Assyrian, and latterly, as we have seen, under the Median empire. West of the Halys, the inhabitants were apparently of the Indo-Germanic race, although separated by many removes from the Indo-Germans of Persia. Overspreading this part of Asia Minor, as well as Thrace and other parts of south-eastern Europe, this great race had been broken up into fragments distinguished by characteristic differences. To enumerate these various nations, assigning to each its exact geographical limits, is impossible; the chief, however, were the Bithynians, a sort of Asiatic Thracians on the southern coast of the Euxine; the Lydians and Carians in the south-west; and, intermediate between the two, geographically as well as in respect of race and language, the Mysians and Phrygians. These were the native states; but along the whole Ægean shore was diffused a large Greek population, emigrants, it is believed, from European Greece, chiefly gathered into cities. These Greeks of Asia Minor were of three races――the Æolic Greeks in the north, and the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in the south; and perhaps the earliest manifestations of Greek genius, political or literary, were among these Greeks of Asia. The intercourse of these Greeks with the native Lydians, Phrygians, etc., gave rise to mixture of population as well as to interchange of habits; the native music especially of the Lydians and Phrygians became incorporated with that of the Greeks.