Her failure, despite the success of her treachery, places her military weakness in the strongest possible light.

The Greeks, though deprived of their leaders, deceived, surprised, and hemmed in by superior numbers, amid terrific mountains, precipices, and snows, forced their way by sheer dogged perseverance through all obstacles, and reached Trebizond with the loss of not one fourth of their original number.
There was also another discovery made during the return which partly indicated the weakness of the Persian power, and partly accounted for it.

The Greeks had believed that the whole vast space enclosed between the Black Sea, Caucasus, Caspian, and Jaxartes on the one hand, and the Arabian Desert, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean on the other, was bound together into one single centralized monarchy, all the resources of which were wielded by a single arm.

They now found that even towards the heart of the empire, on the confines of Media and Assyria, there existed independent tribes which set the arms of Persia at defiance; while towards the verge of the old dominion whole provinces, once certainly held in subjection, had fallen away from the declining State, and succeeded in establishing their freedom.

The nineteenth satrapy of Herodotus existed no more; in lieu of it was a mass of warlike and autonomous tribes--Chalybes, Taochi, Chaldeans, Macronians, Scythians, Colchians, Mosynoecians, Tibarenians--whose services, if he needed them, the King of Persia had to buy, while ordinarily their attitude towards him was one of distrust and hostility.