The period dealt with here extends from about 700 B.C. to the time of Polycrates' rule in the 530s and 520s. In the wider historical perspective it saw the rise of the Mermnad dynasty in Lydia, the aggression of Gyges and his successors against the cities of the Ionian coast and their subjection by Croesus, and finally the conquest of Croesus' realm by Cyrus and the establishment of Persian rule over the eastern Greeks of the Asiatic mainland. It does not reach so far as the organization and extension of Persian rule by Darius. As regards our sources of information, archaeology gives occasional glimpses of habitations and sanctuaries and casts light on trade movements; and the works of art that have been discovered testify to a taste and sense of form that is peculiarly East Greek. Inscriptions have little to offer; contemporary ones that are relevant from a historical point of view can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Among the literary sources Herodotus is pre-eminent. But his aim was to present the sequences of events that preceded and led up to the conquests of the kingdoms of Asia and Egypt by Cyrus and his successors and to the Persian Wars; and as far as Asia Minor is concerned the rulers of Lydia and the Medes were more central to his theme than the history of the East Greek cities, of which he tells us many things but offers no continuous narrative. Later writers provide scraps of information which can not be entirely neglected.