Thales suggested that the Ionians should form themselves into a confederation, to be governed by a congress which should meet at Teos, the several cities retaining their own laws and internal independence, but being united for military purposes into a single community.

Judged by the light which later events, the great Ionian revolt especially, throw upon it, this advice is seen to have been of the greatest importance.

It is difficult to say what check, or even reverse, the arms of Persia might not have at this time sustained, if the spirit of Thales had animated his Asiatic countrymen generally; if the loose Ionic Amphictyony, which in reality left each state in the hour of danger to its own resources, had been superseded by a true federal union, and the combined efforts of the thirteen Ionian communities had been directed to a steady resistance of Persian aggression and a determined maintenance of their own independence.
Mazares and Harpagus would almost certainly have been baffled, and the Great King himself would probably have been called off from his eastern conquests to undertake in person a task which after all he might have failed to accomplish.
The fall of the last Ionian town left Harpagus free to turn his attention to the tribes of the south-west which had not yet made their submission--the Carians, the Dorian Greeks, the Caunians, and the people of Lycia.

Impressing the services of the newly-conquered Ionians and AEolians, he marched first against Caria, which offered but a feeble resistance.

The Dorians of the continent, Myndians, Halicarnassians, and Cnidians.