submitted still more tamely, without any struggle at all; but the Caunians and Lycians showed a different spirit.

These tribes, which were ethnically allied, and of a very peculiar type, had never yet, it would seem, been subdued by any conqueror.

Prizing highly the liberty they had enjoyed so long, they defended themselves with desperation.
When they were defeated in the field they shut themselves up within the walls of their chief cities, Caunus and Xanthus, where, finding resistance impossible, they set fire to the two places with their own hands, burned their wives, children, slaves, and valuables, and then sallying forth, sword in hand, fell on the besiegers' lines, and fought till they were all slain.
Meanwhile Cyrus was pursuing a career of conquest in the far east.

It was now, according to Herodotus, who is, beyond all question, a better authority than Ctesias for the reign of Cyrus, that the reduction of the Bactrians and the Sacans, the chief nations of what is called by moderns Central Asia, took place.

Bactria was a country which enjoyed the reputation of having been great and glorious at a very early date.