A good part of the East, however, remains which owed allegiance neither
to Media nor to Babylon. It is, indeed, a considerably larger area than
was independent of the Farther East at the date of our last survey. Asia
Minor was in all likelihood independent from end to end, from the Aegean
to the Euphrates--for in 600 B.C. Kyaxares had probably not yet come
through Urartu--and from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Issus. About much
of this area we have far more trustworthy information now than when we
looked at it last, because it had happened to fall under the eyes of the
Greeks of the western coastal cities, and to form relations with them of
trade and war. But about the residue, which lay too far eastward to
concern the Greeks much, we have less information than we had in 800
B.C., owing to the failure of the Assyrian imperial annals.
The dominant fact in Asia Minor in 600 B.C. is the existence of a new
imperial power, that of Lydia. Domiciled in the central west of the
peninsula, its writ ran eastwards over the plateau about as far as the
former limits of the Phrygian power, on whose ruins it had arisen. As
has been stated already, there is reason to believe that its "sphere of
influence," at any rate, included Cilicia, and the battle to be fought
on the Halys, fifteen years after our present survey, will argue that
some control of Cappadocia also had been attempted. Before we speak of
the Lydian kingdom, however, and of its rise to its present position, it
will be best to dispose of that outlying state on the southeast,
probably an ally or even client of Lydia, which, we are told, was at
this time one of the "four powers of Asia." These powers included
Babylon also, and accordingly, if our surmise that the Mede was then the
overlord of Nebuchadnezzar be correct, this statement of Eusebius, for
what it is worth, does not imply that Cilicia had attained an imperial
position. Doubtless of the four "powers," she ranked lowest.