independence from its Lydian and, later, its Persian neighbors. In 546 BC the Lydian Empire of King
Croesus came to an end, defeated in battle by, and incorporated into the Persian Empire of, Cyrus the
Great. This was the unintended result of the campaign mentioned above, on which Thales accompanied
Croesus, who was hoping to forestall the expanding power of Cyrus and the Persians. Before the battle in
which Cyrus overthrew Croesus and the Lydians, Cyrus had sent messages to the Greek cities that were
tributaries to the Lydians, requesting that they revolt from Croesus. Since they had refused to do so, they
now found themselves tributaries to Cyrus and the Persians, on terms harsher than those that they had
enjoyed under Croesus. Miletus had been independent, and so Cyrus renewed the treaty that had been in
effect between the Milesians and Croesus. Cyrus seems to have done this in part to encourage disunity
among the Greek cities.

The Agora

The Greek cities were, indeed, disturbed by this new development, because it was not at all clear what
further ambitions for expansion Cyrus and the Persians might have. Accordingly, the Spartans, who
possessed the most potent military force among the Greeks of the mainland, sent an ambassador to the
newly victorious King Cyrus with a proclamation to the effect that the Spartans would not tolerate any
aggression on Cyrus’ part against any Greek city. After learning from an adviser who exactly these
Spartans were, Cyrus replied, according to Herodotus, that he “had never been intimidated by the sort of
men who have an open space in the middle of their city in which they gather together for the purpose of
deceiving one another.” Herodotus explains that Cyrus intended a reference to the agora, a
characteristically Greek institution quite foreign to Persian practice. Among other things, the agora served
as the marketplace at the heart of every Greek polis, and as such it could symbolize the open market
economy of the Greeks in contrast to the old-fashioned, centralized economy of the Persian kingdom,
which was similar to (although on a much vaster scale) what the Greeks had been familiar with during the
Mycenaean Period. But the Greek agora served not only as a marketplace for the exchange of goods; it
was also the location where the public business of the polis was carried out and was regarded by the
Greeks as an indispensable feature of any polis worth the name. This, too, was indicative of the
difference that the Greeks perceived between themselves and the Persians: The Greeks considered that
their own institutions were public and that the policies of the polis were the product of communal
deliberation, whereas the Persian king was an authoritarian despot.

The freedom and the public nature of Greek society extended not only to political and civic matters. The
challenges to which the ideas of the earliest Milesian philosophers were subjected were equally a
product of this open, and open-air, mentality. For the agora was an intellectual and cultural institution as
well. It was often the place where athletic and equestrian contests were held in conjunction with the many
festivals that enlivened the calendar of most Greek cities. Public performances by bards and musicians,
themselves often in the form of competitions as well, will also have taken place in the agora. For this
reason, when a new overseas settlement was founded, the plan of the new city always included an open
space set aside for public meetings and for the other gatherings that were an essential feature of Greek
life. What is particularly interesting about this openness is that it is a feature of the Archaic Greek polis
regardless of the type of government. In the seventh and sixth centuries, Miletus, like many Greek cities
during the same period, alternated between an OLIGARCHIC form of government and government by a
tyrant. These alternations, which were accompanied by bitter and often bloody outbreaks of civil strife,
seem to have had no inhibiting effect on such things as the open development of science and philosophy.
This is in contrast to, for example, the nature of scientific inquiry in ancient Babylon, which attained a
remarkable level of accomplishment in the field of astronomy, but which was subsidized by the royal