When the Persians, anxious to recover Cyprus, applied to the Phoenician cities for a naval force, to transport their army from Cilica to the island, and otherwise help them in the war, their request was at once complied with.

Ships were sent to the Cilician coast without any delay;[14278] the Persian land force was conveyed in safety across the strait and landed on the opposite shore; the ships then rounded Cape St.Andreas and anchored in the bay opposite Salamis, where the Ionian fleet was drawn up in defence of the town.[14279] An engagement followed--the first, so far as we know, between Phoenicians and Greeks--wholly to the advantage of the latter.[14280] No complaint, however, is made of any lukewarmness, or want of zeal, on the part of the Phoenicians, who seem to have been beaten in fair fight by an enemy whom they had perhaps despised.

Their ill fortune did not lead to any very serious result, since the Persian land force defeated the Cyprians, and thus Persia once more obtained possession of the island.
A year or two later the Phoenicians recovered their lost laurels.

In B.C.495 the Persians, having trampled out the flames of revolt in Cyprus, Caria, and Caunus, resolved on a great effort to bring the war to a close by attacking the Ionian Greeks in their own country, and crushing the head and front of the rebellion, which was the great and flourishing city of Miletus.

Miletus lay on the southern shore of a deep bay--the Sinus Latmicus--which penetrated the western coast of Asia Minor in about Lat.