# Herodotus The Persian Wars (Godley)/Book I

Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA
1. What Herodotus the Halicarnassian has learnt by inquiry is here set forth: in order that so the memory of the past may not be blotted out from among men by time, and that great and marvellous deeds done by Greeks and foreigners and especially the reason why they warred against each other may not lack renown.
The Persian learned men say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the feud. These (they say) came to our seas from the sea which is called Red, and having settled in the country which they still occupy, at once began to make long voyages. Among other places to which they carried Egyptian and Assyrian merchandise, they came to Argos, which was about that time preeminent in every way among the people of what is now called Hellas. The Phoenicians then came, as I say, to Argos, and set out their cargo. On the fifth or sixth day from their coming, their wares being now well-nigh all sold, there came to the sea shore among many other women the king’s daughter, whose name (according to Persians and Greeks alike) was Io, the daughter of Inachus. They stood about the stern of the ship: and while they bargained for such wares as they fancied, the Phoenicians heartened each other to the deed, and rushed to take them. Most of the women escaped: Io with others was carried off; the men cast her into the ship and made sail away for Egypt.
2. This, say the Persians (but not the Greeks), was how Io came to Egypt, and this, according to them, was the first wrong that was done. Next, according to their tale, certain Greeks (they cannot tell who) landed at Tyre in Phoenice and carried off the king’s daughter Europe. These Greeks must, I suppose, have been Cretans. So far, then, the account between them stood balanced. But after this (say they) it was the Greeks who were guilty of the second wrong. They sailed in a long ship to Aea of the Colchians and the river Phasis: and when they had done the rest of the business for which they came, they carried off the king’s daughter Medea. When the Colchian king sent a herald to demand reparation for the robbery, and restitution of his daughter, the Greeks replied that as they had been refused reparation for the abduction of the Argive Io, neither would they make any to the Colchians.
3. Then (so the story runs) in the second generation after this Alexandrus son of Priam, having heard this tale, was minded to win himself a wife out of Hellas by ravishment; for he was well persuaded that, as the Greeks had made no reparation, so neither would he. So he carried off Helen. The Greeks first resolved to send messengers demanding that Helen should be restored and atonement made for the rape; but when this proposal was made, the Trojans pleaded the rape of Medea, and reminded the Greeks that they asked reparation of others, yet had made none themselves, nor given up the plunder at request.
4. Thus far it was a matter of mere robbery on both sides. But after this (the Persians say) the Greeks were greatly to blame; for they invaded Asia before the Persians attacked Europe. “We think,” say they, “that it is wrong to carry women off: but to be zealous to avenge the rape is foolish: wise men take no account of such things: for plainly the women would never have been carried away, had not they themselves wished it. We of Asia regarded the rape of our women not at all; but the Greeks, all for the sake of a Lacedaemonian woman, mustered a great host, came to Asia, and destroyed the power of Priam. Ever since then we have regarded Greeks as our enemies.” The Persians claim Asia for their own, and the foreign nations that dwell in it; Europe and the Greek race they hold to be separate from them.
5. Such is the Persian account of the matter: in their opinion, it was the taking of Troy which began their feud with the Greeks. But the Phoenicians do not tell the same story about Io as the Persians. They say that they did not carry her off to Egypt by force: she had intercourse in Argos with the captain of the ship: then, perceiving herself to be with child, she was ashamed that her parents should know it, and so, lest they should discover her condition, she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own accord.
These are the stories of the Persians and the Phoenicians. For my own part, I will not say that this or that story is true, but I will name him whom I myself know to have done unprovoked wrong to the Greeks, and so go forward with my history, and speak of small and great cities alike. For many states that were once great have now become small: and those that were great in my time were small formerly. Knowing therefore that human prosperity never continues in one stay, I will make mention alike of both kinds.
6. Croesus was by birth a Lydian, son of Alyattes, and monarch of all the nations west of the river Halys, which flows from the south between Syria and Paphlagonia, and issues northward into the sea called Euxinus. This Croesus was as far as we know the first foreigner who subdued Greeks and took tribute of them, and won the friendship of others,—the former being the Ionians, the Aeolians, and the Dorians of Asia, and the latter the Lacedaemonians. Before the reign of Croesus all Greeks were free: for the Cimmerian host which invaded Ionia before his time did not subdue the cities but rather raided and robbed them.
7. Now the sovereign power, which belonged to the descendants of Heracles, fell to the family of Croesus—the Mermnadae as they were called—in the following way. Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, was the ruler of Sardis; he was descended from Alcaeus, son of Heracles; Agron, son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Alcaeus, was the first Heraclid king of Sardis, and Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. The kings of this country before Agron were descendants of Lydus, son of Atys, from whom all this Lydian district took its name; before that it was called the land of the Meii. From these the Heraclidae, descendants of Heracles and a female slave of Iardanus, received the sovereignty and held it in charge, by reason of an oracle; and they ruled for two and twenty generations, or 50 years, son succeeding father, down to Candaules, son of Myrsus.
8. This Candaules, then, fell in love with his own wife, so much that he supposed her to be by far the fairest woman in the world; and being persuaded of this, he raved of her beauty to Gyges, son of Dascylus, who was his favourite among his bodyguard; for it was to Gyges that he entrusted all his weightiest secrets. Then after a little while Candaules, being doomed to ill-fortune, spoke thus to Gyges: “I think, Gyges, that you do not believe what I tell you of the beauty of my wife; men trust their ears less than their eyes; do you, then, so contrive that you may see her naked.” Gyges exclaimed loudly at this. “Master,” said he, “what a pestilent command is this that you lay upon me! that I should see her who is my mistress naked! with the stripping off of her tunic a woman is stripped of the honour due to her. Men have long ago made wise rules for our learning; one of these is, that we, and none other, should see what is our own. As for me, I fully believe that your queen is the fairest of all women; ask not lawless acts of me, I entreat you.”
9. Thus speaking Gyges sought to turn the king’s purpose, for he feared lest some ill to himself should come of it: but this was Candaules’ answer: “Take courage, Gyges: fear not that I say this to put you to the proof, nor that my wife will do you any harm. I will so contrive the whole business that she shall never know that you have seen her. I will bring you into the chamber where she and I lie and set you behind the open door; and after I have entered, my wife too will come to her bed. There is a chair set near the entrance of the room: on this she will lay each part of her raiment as she takes it off, and you will be able to gaze upon her at your leisure. Then, when she goes from the chair to the bed, turning her back upon you, do you look to it that she does not see you going out through the doorway.”
10. As Gyges could not escape, he consented. Candaules, when he judged it to be bed time, brought Gyges into the chamber, his wife presently followed, and when she had come in and was laying aside her garments Gyges beheld her; and when she turned her back upon him, going to her bed, he slipped privily from the room. The woman saw him as he passed out, and perceived what her husband had done. But shamed though she was she never cried out nor let it be seen that she had perceived aught, for she had it in mind to punish Candaules; seeing that among the Lydians and most of the foreign peoples it is held great shame that even a man should be seen naked.
11. For the nonce she made no sign and held her peace. But as soon as it was day, she assured herself of those of her household whom she perceived to be most faithful to her, and called Gyges: who, supposing that she knew nothing of what had been done, came at call; for he had always been wont to attend the queen whenever she bade him. So when he came, the lady thus addressed him: “Now, Gyges, you have two roads before you; choose which you will follow. You must either kill Candaules and take me for your own and the throne of Lydia, or yourself be killed now without more ado; that will prevent you from obeying all Candaules’ commands in the future and seeing what you should not see. One of you must die: either he, the contriver of this plot, or you, who have outraged all usage by looking on me unclad.” At this Gyges stood awhile astonished: presently he entreated her not to compel him to such a choice; but when he could not move her, and saw that dire necessity was in very truth upon him either to kill his master or himself be killed by others, he chose his own life. Then he asked the queen to tell him, since she forced him against his will to slay his master, how they were to attack the king: and she replied, “You shall come at him from the same place whence he made you see me naked; attack him in his sleep.”
12. So when they had made ready this plot, and night had fallen, Gyges followed the lady into the chamber (for he could not get free or by any means escape, but either he or Candaules must die), and she gave him a dagger and hid him behind the same door; and presently he stole out and slew Candaules as he slept, and thus made himself master of the king’s wife and sovereignty. He is mentioned in the iambic verses of Archilochus of Parus who lived about the same time.
13. So he took possession of the sovereign power, and was confirmed therein by the Delphic oracle. For when the Lydians were much angered by the fate of Candaules, and took up arms, the faction of Gyges and the rest of the people came to an agreement that if the oracle should ordain him to be king of the Lydians, then he should reign: but if not, then he should render back the kingship to the Heraclidae. The oracle did so ordain: and Gyges thus became king. Howbeit the Pythian priestess declared that the Heraclidae should have vengeance on Gyges’ posterity in the fifth generation: an utterance of which the Lydians and their kings took no account, till it was fulfilled.
14. Thus did the Mermnadae rob the Heraclidae of the sovereignty and take it for themselves. Having gained it, Gyges sent not a few offerings to Delphi: there are very many silver offerings of his there: and besides the silver, he dedicated great store of gold: among which six golden bowls are the offerings chiefly worthy of record. These weigh 30 talents and stand in the treasury of the Corinthians: though in very truth it is the treasury not of the Corinthian people but of Cypselus son of Eetion. This Gyges then was the first foreigner (of our knowledge) who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias. For Midas too made an offering, to wit, the royal seat whereon he sat to give judgment, and a marvellous seat it is; it is set in the same place as the bowls of Gyges. This gold and the silver offered by Gyges is called by the Delphians “Gygian” after its dedicator.
15. As soon as Gyges came to the throne, he too, like others, led an army into the lands of Miletus and Smyrna; and he took the city of Colophon. But he did nothing else great in his reign of thirty-eight years; I will therefore say no more of him, and will speak rather of Ardys the son of Gyges, who succeeded him. He took Priene and invaded the country of Miletus; and it was while he was monarch of Sardis that the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomad Scythians, came into Asia, and took Sardis, all but the citadel.
16. Ardys reigned for forty-nine years, and was succeeded by his son Sadyattes, who reigned for twelve years; and after Sadyattes came Alyattes, who waged war against Deioces’ descendant Cyaxares and the Medes, drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, took Smyrna (which was a colony from Colophon), and invaded the lands of Clazomenae. But here he came off not at all as he wished, but with great disaster. Of other deeds done by him in his reign these were most notable:
17. He continued the war against the Milesians which his father had begun. This was the manner in which he attacked and laid siege to Miletus: he sent his invading army, marching to the sound of pipes and harps and flutes bass and treble, when the crops in the land were ripe: and whenever he came to the Milesian territory, the country dwellings he neither demolished nor burnt nor tore off their doors, but let them stand unharmed; but the trees and the crops of the land he destroyed, and so returned whence he came; for as the Milesians had command of the sea, it was of no avail for his army to besiege their city. The reason why the Lydian did not destroy the houses was this—that the Milesians might have homes whence to plant and cultivate their land, and that there might be the fruit of their toil for his invading army to lay waste.
18. In this manner he waged war for eleven years, and in these years two great disasters befel the Milesians, one at the battle of Limeneion in their own territory, and the other in the valley of the Maeander. For six of these eleven years Sadyattes son of Ardys was still ruler of Lydia, and he it was who invaded the lands of Miletus, for it was he who had begun the war; for the following five the war was waged by Sadyattes’ son Alyattes, who, as I have before shown, inherited the war from his father and carried it on vigorously. None of the Ionians helped to lighten this war for the Milesians, except only the Chians: these lent their aid for a like service done to themselves; for the Milesians had formerly helped the Chians in their war against the Erythraeans.
19. In the twelfth year, when the Lydian army was burning the crops, it so happened that the fire set to the crops and blown by a strong wind caught the temple of Athene called Athene of Assesos1: and the temple was burnt to the ground. For the nonce no account Was taken of this. But presently after the army had returned to Sardis Alyattes fell sick; and, his sickness lasting longer than it should, he sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle, either by someone’s counsel or by his own wish to question the god about his sickness: but when the messengers came to Delphi the Pythian priestess would not reply to them before they should restore the temple of Athene at Assesos in the Milesian territory, which they had burnt.
20. Thus far I know the truth, for the Delphians told me. The Milesians add to the story, that Periander son of Cypselus, being a close friend of Thrasybulus who then was sovereign of Miletus, learnt what reply the oracle had given to Alyattes and sent a despatch to tell Thrasybulus, so that thereby his friend should be forewarned and make his plans accordingly.
21. Such is the Milesian story. Then, when the Delphic reply was brought to Alyattes, straightway he sent a herald to Miletus, offering to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians during his building of the temple. So the envoy went to Miletus. But Thrasybulus, being exactly forewarned of the whole matter, and knowing what Alyattes meant to do, devised the following plan: he brought together into the market place all the food in the city, from private stores and his own, and bade the men of Miletus all drink and revel together when he should give the word.
22. The intent of his so doing and commanding was, that when the herald from Sardis saw a great heap of food piled up, and the citizens making merry, he might bring word of it to Alyattes: and so it befell. The herald saw all this, gave Thrasybulus the message he was charged by the Lydian to deliver, and returned to Sardis; and this, as far as I can learn, was the single reason of the reconciliation. For Alyattes had supposed that there was great scarcity in Miletus and that the people were reduced to the last extremity of misery; but now on his herald’s return from the town he heard an account contrary to his expectations; so presently the Lydians and Milesians ended the war and agreed to be friends and allies, and Alyattes built not one but two temples of Athene at Assesos, and recovered of his sickness. Such is the story of Alyattes’ war against Thrasybulus and the Milesians.
23. Periander, who disclosed the oracle’s answer to Thrasybulus, was the son of Cypselus, and sovereign lord of Corinth. As the Corinthians and Lesbians agree in relating, there happened to him a thing which was the most marvellous in his life, namely, the landing of Arion of Methymna on Taenarus, borne thither by a dolphin. This Arion was a lyre-player second to none in that age; he was the first man, as far as we know, to compose and name the dithyramb which he afterwards taught at Corinth.
24. Thus then, the story runs: for the most part he lived at the court of Periander; then he formed the plan of voyaging to Italy and Sicily, whence, after earning much money, he was minded to return to Corinth. Having especial trust in men of that city, he hired a Corinthian ship to carry him from Taras. But when they were out at sea, the crew plotted to cast Arion overboard and take his money. Discovering the plot, he earnestly entreated them, offering them all his money if they would but spare his life; but the sailors would not listen to him; he must, they said, either kill himself and so receive burial on land, or straightway cast himself into the sea. In this extremity Arion besought them, seeing that such was their will, that they would suffer him to stand on the poop with all his singing robes about him and sing; and after his song, so he promised, he would make away with himself. The men, well pleased at the thought of hearing the best singer in the world, drew away from the stern amidships; Arion, putting on all his adornment and taking his lyre, stood up on the poop and sang the “Shrill Strain,” and at its close threw himself without more ado into the sea, clad in his robes. So the crew sailed away to Corinth; but a dolphin (so the story goes) took Arion on his back and bore him to Taenarus. There he landed, went to Corinth in his singing robes, and when he came told all that had befallen him. Periander, not believing the tale, put him in close ward and kept careful watch for the coming of the sailors. When they came they were called and questioned, what news they brought of Arion, and they replied that he was safe in the parts of Italy, and that they had left him sound and well at Taras: when, behold, they were confronted with Arion, just as he was when he leapt from the ship; whereat they were amazed, and could no more deny what was proved against them. Such is the story told by the Corinthians and Lesbians. There is moreover a little bronze monument to Arion on Taenarus, the figure of a man riding upon a dolphin.
25. So Alyattes the Lydian, having finished his war with the Milesians, died after a reign of fifty-seven years. He was the second of his family to make an offering to Delphi—and this was a thank-offering for his recovery—of a great silver bowl on a stand of welded iron. This is the most notable among all the offerings at Delphi, and is the work of Glaucus the Chian, the only man of that age who discovered how to weld iron.
26. After the death of Alyattes Croesus his son came to the throne, being then thirty-five years of age. The first Greeks whom he attacked were the Ephesians. These, being besieged by him, dedicated their city to Artemis; this they did by attaching a rope to the city wall from the temple of the goddess, standing seven furlongs away from the ancient city, which was then being besieged. These were the first whom Croesus attacked; afterwards he made war on the Ionian and Aeolian cities in turn, each on its separate indictment: he found graver charges where he could, but sometimes alleged very paltry grounds of offence.
27. Then, when he had subdued and made tributary to himself all the Asiatic Greeks of the mainland, he planned to build ships and attack the islanders; but when his preparations for shipbuilding were ready, either Bias of Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene (the story is told of both) came to Sardis, and being asked by Croesus for news about Hellas, put an end to the shipbuilding by giving the following answer: “King, the islanders are buying ten thousand horse, with intent to march against you to Sardis.” Croesus, thinking that he spoke the truth, said: “Would that the gods may put it in the minds of the island men to come on horseback against the sons of the Lydians!” Then the other answered and said: “King, I see that you earnestly pray that you may catch the islanders riding horses on the mainland, and what you expect is but natural. And the islanders, now they have heard that you are building ships to attack them therewith, think you that they pray for aught else than that they may catch Lydians on the seas, and thereby be avenged on you for having enslaved the Greeks who dwell on the mainland?” Croesus was well pleased with this conclusion, for it seemed to him that the man spoke but reasonably; so he took the advice and built no more ships. Thus it came about that he made friends of the Ionian islanders.
28. As time went on, Croesus subdued well-nigh all the nations west of the Halys and held them in subjection, except only the Cilicians and Lycians: the rest, Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, Thymians and Bithynians (who are Thracians), Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, Pamphylians, were subdued and became subjects of Croesus like the Lydians, and Sardis was at the height of its wealth.
29. There came to the city all the teachers from Hellas who then lived, in this or that manner; and among them came Solon of Athens: he, having made laws for the Athenians at their request, left his home for ten years and set out on a voyage to see the world, as he said. This he did, lest he should be compelled to repeal any of the laws he had made, since the Athenians themselves could not repeal them, for they were bound by solemn oaths to abide for ten years by such laws as Solon should make.
30. For this reason, and to see the world, Solon left Athens and visited Amasis in Egypt and Croesus at Sardis: and when he had come, Croesus entertained him in his palace. Now on the third or fourth day after his coming Croesus bade his servants lead Solon round among his treasures, and they showed him all that was there, the greatness and the prosperous state of it; and when he had seen and considered all, Croesus when occasion served thus questioned him: “Our Athenian guest, we have heard much of you, by reason of your wisdom and your wanderings, how that you have travelled far to seek knowledge and to see the world. Now therefore I am fain to ask you, if you have ever seen a man more blest than all his fellows.” So Croesus inquired, supposing himself to be blest beyond all men. But Solon spoke the truth without flattery: “Such an one, O King,” he said, “I have seen—Tellus of Athens.” Croesus wondered at this, and sharply asked Solon “How do you judge Tellus to be most blest?” Solon replied: “Tellus’ city was prosperous, and he was the father of noble sons, and he saw children born to all of them and their state well stablished; moreover, having then as much wealth as a man may among us, he crowned his life with a most glorious death: for in a battle between the Athenians and their neighbours at Eleusis he attacked and routed the enemy and most nobly there died; and the Athenians gave him public burial where he fell and paid him great honour.”
31. Now when Solon had roused the curiosity of Croesus by recounting the many ways in which Tellus was blest, the king further asked him whom he placed second after Tellus, thinking that assuredly the second prize at least would be his. Solon answered: “Cleobis and Biton. These were Argives, and besides sufficient wealth they had such strength of body as I will show. Both were prize winners; and this story too is related of them. There was a festival of Here toward among the Argives, and their mother must by all means be drawn to the temple by a yoke of oxen. But the oxen did not come in time from the fields; so the young men, being thus thwarted by lack of time, put themselves to the yoke and drew the carriage with their mother sitting thereon: for five and forty furlongs they drew it till they came to the temple. Having done this, and been seen by the assembly, they made a most excellent end of their lives, and the god showed by these men how that it was better for a man to die than to live. For the men of Argos came round and gave the youths joy of their strength, and so likewise did the women to their mother, for the excellence of her sons. She then in her joy at what was done and said, came before the image of the goddess and prayed that her sons Cleobis and Biton, who had done such great honour to the goddess, should be given the best boon that a man may receive. After the prayer the young men sacrificed and ate of the feast; then they lay down to sleep in the temple itself and never rose up more, but here ended their lives. Then the Argives made and set up at Delphi images of them because of their excellence.”
32. So Solon gave to Cleobis and Biton the second prize of happiness. But Croesus said in anger, “Guest from Athens! is our prosperity, then, held by you so worthless that you match us not even with common men?” “Croesus,” said Solon, “you ask me concerning the lot of man; well I know how jealous is Heaven and how it loves to trouble us. In a man’s length of days he may see and suffer many things that he much mislikes. For I set the limit of man’s life at seventy years; in these seventy are days twenty-five thousand and two hundred, if we count not the intercalary month. But if every second year be lengthened by a month so that the seasons and the calendar may rightly accord, then the intercalary months are five and thirty, over and above the seventy years: and the days of these months are one thousand and fifty; so then all the days together of the seventy years are seen to be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty; and one may well say that no one of all these days is like another in that which it brings. Thus then, Croesus, the whole of man is but chance. Now if I am to speak of you, I say that I see you very rich and the king of many men. But I cannot yet answer your question, before I hear that you have ended your life well. For he who is very rich is not more blest than he who has but enough for the day, unless fortune so attend him that he ends his life well, having all good things about him. Many men of great wealth are unblest, and many that have no great substance are fortunate. Now the very rich man who is yet unblest has but two advantages over the fortunate man, but the fortunate man has many advantages over the rich but unblest: for this latter is the stronger to accomplish his desire and to bear the stroke of great calamity; but these are the advantages of the fortunate man, that though he be not so strong as the other to deal with calamity and desire, yet these are kept far from him by his good fortune, and he is free from deformity, sickness, and all evil, and happy in his children and his comeliness. If then such a man besides all this shall also end his life well, then he is the man whom you seek, and is worthy to be called blest; but we must wait till he be dead, and call him not yet blest, but fortunate. Now no one (who is but man) can have all these good things together, just as no land is altogether self-sufficing in what it produces: one thing it has, another it lacks, and the best land is that which has most; so too no single person is sufficient for himself: one thing he has, another he lacks; but whoever continues in the possession of most things, and at last makes a gracious end of his life, such a man, O King, I deem worthy of this title. We must look to the conclusion of every matter, and see how it shall end, for there are many to whom heaven has given a vision of blessedness, and yet afterwards brought them to utter ruin.”
33. So spoke Solon: Croesus therefore gave him no largess, but sent him away as a man of no account, for he thought that man to be very foolish who disregarded present prosperity and bade him look rather to the end of every matter.
34. But after Solon’s departure, the divine anger fell heavily on Croesus: as I guess, because he supposed himself to be blest beyond all other men. Presently, as he slept, he was visited by a dream, which foretold truly to him the evil which should befall his son. He had two sons, one of whom was wholly undone, for he was deaf and dumb, but the other, whose name was Atys, was in every way far pre-eminent over all of his years. The dream then showed to Croesus that Atys should be smitten and killed by a spear of iron. So Croesus, when he woke and considered the dream with himself, was greatly affrighted by it; and first he made a marriage for his son, and moreover, whereas Atys was wont to lead the Lydian armies, Croesus now would not suffer him to go out on any such enterprise, while he took the javelins and spears and all such instruments of war from the men’s apartments and piled them up in his storehouse, lest any of them should fall upon his son from where it hung.
35. Now while Croesus was busied about the marriage of his son, there came to Sardis a Phrygian of the royal house, in great distress and with hands unclean. This man came to Croesus’ house, and entreated that he might be purified after the custom of the country; so Croesus purified him (the Lydians use the same manner of purification as do the Greeks), and when he had done all according to usage, he inquired of the Phrygian whence he came and who he was: “Friend,” said he, “who are you, and from what place in Phrygia do you come to be my suppliant? and what man or woman have you slain?” “O King,” the man answered, “I am the son of Gordias the son of Midas, and my name is Adrastus; by no will of mine, I slew my brother, and hither I am come, banished by my father and bereft of all. “Croesus answered, “All of your family are my friends, and to friends you have come, among whom you shall lack nothing but abide in my house. And for your misfortune, bear it as lightly as may be and you will be the more profited.”
36. So Adrastus lived in Croesus’ house. About this same time there appeared on the Mysian Olympus a great monster of a boar, who would issue out from that mountain and ravage the fields of the Mysians. Often had the Mysians gone out against him: but they never did him any harm and rather were themselves hurt thereby. At last they sent messengers to Croesus, with this message: “King, a great monster of a boar has appeared in the land, who destroys our fields; for all our attempts, we cannot kill him; now therefore, we beseech you, send with us your son, and chosen young men and dogs, that we may rid the country of him.” Such was their entreaty, but Croesus remembered the prophecy of his dream and thus answered them: “Say no more about my son: I will not send him with you: he is newly married, and that is his present business. But I will send chosen men of the Lydians, and all the hunt, and I will bid those who go to use all zeal in aiding you to rid the country of this beast.”
37. So he replied, and the Mysians were satisfied with this. But the son of Croesus now came in, who had heard the request of the Mysians; and when Croesus refused to send his son with them, “Father,” said the young man, “it was formerly held fairest and noblest that we princes should go constantly to war and the chase and win thereby renown; but now you have barred me from both of these, not for any sign that you have seen in me of a coward or craven spirit. With what face can I thus show myself whenever I go to and from the market-place? What will the men of the city think of me, and what my new-wedded wife? With what manner of man will she think that she dwells? Nay, do you either let me go to this hunt, or show me by reason good that what you are doing is best for me.”
38. “My son,” answered Croesus, “if I do this, it is not that I have seen cowardice or aught unseemly in you; no, but the vision of a dream stood over me in my sleep, and told me that your life should be short, for you should be slain by a spear of iron. It is for that vision that I was careful to make your marriage, and send you on no enterprise that I have in hand, but keep guard over you, so that haply I may trick death of you through my lifetime. You are my only son: for that other, since his hearing is lost to him, I count no son of mine.”
39. “Father,” the youth replied, “none can blame you for keeping guard over me, when you have seen such a vision; but it is my right to show you this which you do not perceive, and wherein you mistake the meaning of the dream. You say that the dream told you that I should be killed by a spear of iron; but has a boar hands? Has it that iron spear which you dread? Had the dream said I should be slain by a tusk or some other thing belonging to a boar, you had been right in acting as you act; but no, it was to be a spear. Therefore, since it is not against men that we are to fight, suffer me to go.”
40. Croesus answered, “My son, your judgment concerning the dream does somewhat overpersuade me; and being so convinced by you I change my purpose and permit you to go to the chase.”
41. Having said this, Croesus sent for Adrastus the Phrygian and when he came thus addressed him: “Adrastus, when you were smitten by grievous misfortune, for which I blame you not, it was I who cleansed you, and received and still keep you in my house, defraying all your charges. Now therefore (as you owe me a return of good service for the benefits which I have done you) I ask you to watch over my son as he goes out to the chase. See to it that no ruffian robbers meet you on the way, to do you harm. Moreover it is but right that you too should go where you can win renown by your deeds. That is fitting for your father’s son; and you are strong enough withal.”
42. “O King,” Adrastus answered, “had it been otherwise, I would not have gone forth on this enterprise. One so unfortunate as I should not consort with the prosperous among his peers; nor have I the wish so to do, and for many reasons I would have held back. But now, since you so desire and I must do your pleasure (owing you as I do a requital of good service), I am ready to obey you in this; and for your son, in so far as I can protect him, look for his coming back unharmed.”
43. So when Adrastus had thus answered Croesus they went out presently equipped with a company of chosen young men and dogs. When they had come to Mount Olympus they hunted for the beast, and having found him they made a ring and threw their spears at him: then the guest called Adrastus, the man who had been cleansed of the deed of blood, missed the boar with his spear and hit the son of Croesus. So Atys was smitten by the spear and fulfilled the utterance of the dream. One ran to bring Croesus word of what had been done, and came to Sardis, where he told the king of the fight and the manner of his son’s end.
44. Croesus, distraught by the death of his son, cried out the more vehemently because the slayer was one whom he himself had cleansed of a bloody deed, and in his great and terrible grief at this mischance he called on Zeus by three names—Zeus the Purifier, Zeus of the Hearth, Zeus of Comrades: the first, because he would have the god know what evil his guest had wrought him; the second, because he had received the guest into his house and thus unwittingly entertained the slayer of his son; and the third, because he had found his worst foe in the man whom he sent as a protector.
45. Soon came the Lydians, bearing the dead corpse, with the slayer following after. He then came and stood before the body and gave himself wholly into Croesus’ power, holding out his hands and praying the king to slay him where he stood by the dead man: “Remember,” he said, “my former mischance, and see how besides that I have undone him who purified me; indeed, it is not fit that I should live.” On hearing this Croesus, though his own sorrow was so great, took pity on Adrastus and said to him, “Friend, I have from you all that justice asks, since you deem yourself worthy of death. But it is not you that I hold the cause of this evil, save in so far as you were the unwilling doer of it: rather it is the work of a god, the same who told me long ago what was to be.” So Croesus buried his own son in such manner as was fitting. But Adrastus, son of Gordias who was son of Midas, this Adrastus, the slayer of his own brother and of the man who purified him, when the tomb was undisturbed by the presence of men, slew himself there by the sepulchre, seeing now clearly that he was the most ill-fated wretch of all men whom he knew.
46. Croesus, after the loss of his son, sat in deep sorrow for two years. After this time, the destruction by Cyrus son of Cambyses of the sovereignty of Astyages son of Cyaxares, and the growth of the power of the Persians, caused him to cease from his mourning; and he resolved, if he could, to forestall the increase of the Persian power before they grew to greatness. Having thus determined, he straightway made trial of the Greek and Libyan oracles, sending messengers separately to Delphi, to Abae in Phocia, and to Dodona, while others again were despatched to Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and others to Branchidae in the Milesian country. These are the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent for divination: and he bade others go to inquire of Ammon in Libya. His intent in sending was to test the knowledge of the oracles, so that, if they should be found to know the truth, he might send again and ask if he should take in hand an expedition against the Persians.
47. And when he sent to make trial of these shrines he gave the Lydians this charge: they were to keep count of the time from the day of their leaving Sardis, and on the hundredth day inquire of the oracles what Croesus, king of Lydia, son of Alyattes, was then doing; then they were to write down whatever were the oracular answers and bring them back to him. Now none relate what answer was given by the rest of the oracles. But at Delphi, no sooner had the Lydians entered the hall to inquire of the god and asked the question with which they were charged, than the Pythian priestess uttered the following hexameter verses:
48. Having written down this inspired utterance of the Pythian priestess, the Lydians went away back to Sardis. When the others as well who had been sent to divers places came bringing their oracles, Croesus then unfolded and surveyed all the writings. Some of them in no wise satisfied him. But when he heard the Delphian message, he acknowledged it with worship and welcome, considering that Delphi was the only true place of divination, because it had discovered what he himself had done. For after sending his envoys to the oracles, he bethought him of a device which no conjecture could discover, and carried it out on the appointed day: namely, he cut up a tortoise and a lamb, and then himself boiled them in a caldron of bronze covered with a lid of the same.
49. Such then was the answer from Delphi delivered to Croesus. As to the reply which the Lydians received from the oracle of Amphiaraus when they had followed the due custom of the temple, I cannot say what it was, for nothing is recorded of it, saving that Croesus held that from this oracle too he had obtained a true answer.
50. After this, he strove to win the favour of the Delphian god with great sacrifices. He offered up three thousand beasts from each kind fit for sacrifice, and he burnt on a great pyre couches covered with gold and silver, golden goblets, and purple cloaks and tunics; by these means he hoped the better to win the aid of the god, to whom he also commanded that every Lydian should sacrifice what he could. When the sacrifice was over, he melted down a vast store of gold and made of it ingots of which the longer sides were of six and the shorter of three palms’ length, and the height was one palm. These were an hundred and seventeen in number. Four of them were of refined gold, each weighing two talents and a half; the rest were of gold with silver alloy, each of two talents’ weight. He bade also to be made a figure of a lion of refined gold, weighing ten talents. When the temple of Delphi was burnt, this lion fell from the ingots which were the base whereon it stood; and now it lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, but weighs only six talents and a half, for the fire melted away three and a half talents.
51. When these offerings were fully made, Croesus sent them to Delphi, with other gifts besides, namely, two very great bowls, one of gold and one of silver. The golden bowl stood to the right, the silvern to the left, of the temple entrance. These too were removed about the time of the temple’s burning, and now the golden bowl, which weighs eight talents and a half, and twelve minae, lies in the treasury of the Clazomenians, and the silver bowl at the corner of the forecourt of the temple. This bowl holds six hundred nine-gallon measures: for the Delphians use it for a mixing-bowl at the feast of the Divine Appearance. It is said by the Delphians to be the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I believe them, for it seems to me to be of no common workmanship. Moreover, Croesus sent four silver casks, which stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, and dedicated two sprinkling-vessels, one of gold, one of silver. The golden vessel bears the inscription “Given by the Lacedaemonians,” who claim it as their offering. But they are wrong, for this, too, is Croesus’ gift. The inscription was made by a certain Delphian, whose name I know but will not reveal, out of his desire to please the Lacedaemonians. The figure of a boy, through whose hand the water runs, is indeed a Lacedaemonian gift; but they did not give either of the sprinkling-vessels. Along with these Croesus sent, besides many other offerings of no great mark, certain round basins of silver, and a golden female figure three cubits high, which the Delphians assert to be the statue of the woman who was Croésus’ baker. Moreover he dedicated his own wife’s necklaces and girdles.
52. Such were the gifts which he sent to Delphi. To Amphiaraus, having learnt of his valour and his fate, he dedicated a shield made entirely of gold and a spear all of solid gold, point and shaft alike. Both of these lay till my time at Thebes, in the Theban temple of Ismenian Apollo.
53. The Lydians who were to bring these gifts to the temples were charged by Croesus to inquire of the oracles, “Shall Croesus send an army against the Persians: and shall he take to himself any allied host?” When the Lydians came to the places whither they were sent, they made present of the offerings, and inquired of the oracles, in these words: “Croesus, king of Lydia and other nations, seeing that he deems that here are the only true places of divination among men, endows you with such gifts as your wisdom merits. And now he would ask you, if he shall send an army against the Persians, and if he shall take to himself any allied host.” Such was their inquiry; and the judgment given to Croesus by each of the two oracles was the same, to wit, that if he should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire. And they counselled him to discover the mightiest of the Greeks and make them his friends.
54. When the divine answers had been brought back and Croesus learnt of them, he was greatly pleased with the oracles. So, being fully persuaded that he would destroy the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent once again to Pytho and endowed the Delphians with two gold staters apiece, according to his knowledge of their number. The Delphians, in return, gave Croesus and all Lydians the right of first consulting the oracle, freedom from all charges, the chief seats at festivals, and perpetual right of Delphian citizenship to whosoever should wish.
55. Then Croesus after his gifts to the Delphians made a third inquiry of the oracle, for he would use it to the full, having received true answers from it; and the question which he asked in his inquest was whether his sovereignty should be of long duration. To this the Pythian priestess answered as follows:
56. When he heard these verses Croesus was pleased with them above all, for he thought that a mule would never be king of the Medians in place of a man, and so that he and his posterity would never lose his empire. Then he sought very carefully to discover who were the mightiest of the Greeks whom he should make his friends. He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock. These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second an Hellenic people. The Pelasgian stock has never yet left its habitation, the Hellenic has wandered often and afar. For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then in the time of Dorus son of Hellen the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by the Cadmeans from this Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macednian; thence again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took the name of Dorian.
57. What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot accurately say. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwell above the Tyrrheni in the city of Creston—who were once neighbours of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessalian—and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who came to dwell among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name:—if (I say) one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek. If then all the Pelasgian stock so spoke, then the Attic nation, being of Pelasgian blood, must have changed its language too at the time when it became part of the Hellenes. For the people of Creston and Placia have a language of their own in common, which is not the language of their neighbours; and it is plain that they still preserve the fashion of speech which they brought with them in their migration into the places where they dwell.
58. But the Hellenic stock, as to me seems clear, has ever used the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, but few in number, they have grown from a small beginning to comprise a multitude of nations, chiefly because the Pelasgians and many other foreign peoples united themselves with them. Before that, as I think, the Pelasgic stock nowhere increased greatly in number while it was of foreign speech.
59. Now, of these two peoples, Croesus learned that the Attic was held in subjection and divided into factions by Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, who at that time was sovereign over the Athenians. This Hippocrates was but a private man when a great marvel happened to him as he was at Olympia to see the games: when he had offered the sacrifice, the vessels, standing there full of meat and water, boiled without fire till they overflowed. Chilon the Lacedaemonian, who chanced to be there and saw this marvel, counselled Hippocrates not to take into his house a childbearing wife, if so might be: but if he had one already, then at least to send her away, and if he had a son, to disown him. Hippocrates refused to follow the counsel of Chilon, and presently there was born to him this Pisistratus aforesaid. In course of time there was a feud between the Athenians of the coast under Megacles son of Alcmeon and the Athenians of the plain under Lycurgus son of Aristolaïdes. Pisistratus then, having an eye to the sovereign power, raised up a third faction. He collected partisans and pretended to champion the hillmen; and this was his plan. Wounding himself and his mules, he drove his carriage into the market place with a tale that he had escaped from his enemies, who would have slain him (so he said) as he was driving into the country. So he besought the people that he might have a guard from them: and indeed he had won himself reputation in his command of the army against the Megarians, when he had taken Nisaea and performed other great exploits. Thus deceived, the Athenian people gave him a chosen guard of citizens, of whom Pisistratus made not spearmen but clubmen: for the retinue that followed him bore wooden clubs. These with Pisistratus rose and took the Acropolis; and Pisistratus ruled the Athenians, disturbing in no way the order of offices nor changing the laws, but governing the city according to its established constitution and ordering all things fairly and well.
60. But after no long time the faction of Megacles and Lycurgus made common cause and drove him out. Thus did Pisistratus first win Athens, and thus did he lose his sovereignty, which was not yet firmly rooted. Presently his enemies who had driven him out began once more to be at feud together. Megacles then, being buffeted about by faction, sent a message to Pisistratus offering him his daughter to wife and the sovereign power besides. This offer being accepted by Pisistratus, who agreed on these terms with Megacles, they devised a plan to bring Pisistratus back, which, to my mind, was so exceeding foolish that it is strange (seeing that from old times the Hellenic has ever been distinguished from the foreign stock by its greater cleverness and its freedom from silly foolishness) that these men should devise such a plan to deceive Athenians, said to be the cunningest of the Greeks. There was in the Paeanian deme a woman called Phya, three fingers short of four cubits in stature, and for the rest fair to look upon. This woman they equipped in full armour, and put her in a chariot, giving her all such appurtenances as would make the seemliest show, and so drove into the city; heralds ran before them, and when they came into the town made proclamation as they were charged, bidding the Athenians “to give a hearty welcome to Pisistratus, whom Athene herself honoured beyond all men and was bringing back to her own citadel.” So the heralds went about and spoke thus: immediately it was reported in the demes that Athene was bringing Pisistratus back, and the townsfolk, persuaded that the woman was indeed the goddess, worshipped this human creature and welcomed Pisistratus.
61. Having won back his sovereignty in the manner which I have shown, Pisistratus married Megacles’ daughter according to his agreement with Megacles. But as he had already young sons, and the Alcmeonid family were said to be under a curse, he had no wish that his newly wed wife should bear him children, and therefore had wrongful intercourse with her. At first the woman hid the matter: presently she told her mother (whether being asked or not, I know not) and the mother told her husband. Megacles was very angry that Pisistratus should do him dishonour: and in his wrath he made up his quarrel with the other faction. Pisistratus, learning what was afoot, went by himself altogether away from the country, and came to Eretria, where he took counsel with his sons. The counsel of Hippias prevailing, that they should recover the sovereignty, they set to collecting gifts from all cities which owed them some requital. Many of these gave great sums, the Thebans more than any, and in course of time, not to make a long story, all was ready for their return: for they brought Argive mercenaries from Peloponnesus, and there came also of his own free will a man of Naxos called Lygdamis, who was most zealous in their cause and brought them money and men.
62. So after ten years they set out from Eretria and returned home. The first place in Attica which they took and held was Marathon: and while encamped there they were joined by their partisans from the city, and by others who flocked to them from the country demes—men who loved the rule of one more than freedom. These, then, assembled; but the Athenians in the city, who, while Pisistratus was collecting money and afterwards when he had taken Marathon, made no account of it, did now, when they learnt that he was marching from Marathon against Athens, set out to attack him. They came out with all their force to meet the returning exiles. Pisistratus’ men, in their march from Marathon towards the city, encountered the enemy when they had reached the temple of Pallenian Athene, and encamped face to face with them. There (by the providence of heaven) Pisistratus met Amphilytus the Acarnanian, a diviner, who came to him and prophesied as follows in hexameter verses:
63. So spoke Amphilytus, being inspired; Pisistratus understood him, and, saying that he received the prophecy, led his army against the enemy. The Athenians of the city had at this time gone to their breakfast, and after breakfast some betook themselves to dicing and some to sleep: they were attacked by Pisistratus’ men and put to flight. So they fled, and Pisistratus devised a very subtle plan to keep them scattered and prevent their assembling again: he mounted his sons and bade them ride forward: they overtook the fugitives and spoke to them as they were charged by Pisistratus, bidding them take heart and depart each man to his home.
64. This the Athenians did; and by this means Pisistratus gained Athens for the third time, where, that his sovereignty might be well rooted, he made himself a strong guard and collected revenue both from Athens and from the district of the river Strymon, and took as hostages the sons of the Athenians who remained and did not at once leave the city, and placed these in Naxos. (He had conquered Naxos too and given it in charge to Lygdamis.) Moreover, he purified the island of Delos according to the bidding of the oracles, and this is how he did it: he removed all the dead that were buried in ground within sight of the temple and carried them to another part of Delos. So Pisistratus was sovereign of Athens: and as for the Athenians, some had fallen in the battle, and some, with the Alcmeonids, were exiles from their native land.
65. Croesus learnt, then, that such at this time was the plight of the Athenians: the Lacedaemonians, as he heard, had escaped from great calamities, and had by this time got the upper hand of the men of Tegea in their war; for in the kingship of Leon and Hegesicles at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians were victorious in their other wars, but against Tegea alone they met with no success. And not only so, but before this they were the worst governed of well nigh all the Greeks, having little intercourse among themselves or with strangers. Thus then they changed their laws for the better:—Lycurgus, a notable Spartan, visited the oracle at Delphi, and when he entered the temple hall, straightway the priestess gave him this response:
Some say that the priestess moreover declared to him the whole governance of Sparta which is now established; but the Lacedaemonians themselves relate that it was from Crete that Lycurgus brought these changes, he being then guardian of Leobotes his nephew, king of Sparta. As soon as he became guardian he changed all the laws of the country and was careful that none should transgress his ordinances, and afterwards it was Lycurgus who established all that related to war, the sworn companies, and the bands of thirty, and the common meals: and besides these, the ephors, and the council of elders.
66. So they changed their bad laws for good ones, and when Lycurgus died they built him a shrine and now greatly revere him. Then, since their land was good and their men were many, very soon they began to flourish and prosper. Nor were they satisfied to remain at peace: but being assured that they were stronger than the Arcadians, they inquired of the oracle at Delphi, with their minds set on the whole of Arcadia. The Pythian priestess gave them this reply:
When this was brought back to the ears of the Lacedaemonians, they let the rest of the Arcadians be, and marched against the men of Tegea carrying fetters with them; for they trusted in the quibbling oracle and thought they would enslave the Tegeans. But they were worsted in the encounter, and those of them who were taken captive were made to till the Tegean plain, wearing the fetters which they themselves had brought and measuring the land with a line. These fetters, in which they were bound, were still in my time kept safe at Tegea, where they were hung round the temple of Athene Alea.
67. In the former war, then, the Lacedaemonians were unceasingly defeated in their contest with Tegea; but in the time of Croesus, and the kingship of Anaxandrides and Ariston at Sparta, the Spartans had now gained the upper hand; and this is how it came about. Being always worsted by the Tegeatae, they sent inquirers to Delphi and asked what god they should propitiate so as to gain the mastery over Tegea in war. The Pythian priestess declared that they must bring home the bones of Orestes son of Agamemnon. Being unable to discover Orestes’ tomb, they sent their messengers again to the god to ask of the place where Orestes lay: and the priestess said in answer to their question:
When the Lacedaemonians heard this too, they were no nearer finding what they sought, though they made search everywhere, till at last Lichas, one of the Spartans who are called Benefactors, discovered it. These Benefactors are the Spartan citizens who pass out of the ranks of the knights, the five oldest in each year; for the year in which they pass out from the knights they are sent on divers errands by the Spartan state, and must use all despatch.
68. Lichas, then, one of these men, by good luck and cleverness found the tomb at Tegea. At that time there was free intercourse with Tegea; so, entering a smithy, he watched the forging of iron and marvelled at the work which he saw. When the smith perceived that he was much astonished, he ceased from working, and said, “Laconian, you wonder at the working of iron, but had you seen what I have seen you would have indeed had somewhat to marvel at. For I was making me a well in this courtyard, when in my digging I chanced upon a coffin seven cubits long. As I could not believe that there had ever been men taller than those of our time, I opened the coffin, and found within it the corpse as long as itself; I measured it, and buried it in earth again.” So the smith told what he had seen; Lichas marked what he said, and argued from the oracle that this must be Orestes, reasoning that the Smith’s two bellows which he saw were the winds, the anvil and hammer the shock and counter-shock, and the forged iron the anguish laid upon anguish. What led him so to guess was that the discovery of iron has been to men’s hurt. Thus he reasoned, and returning to Sparta told all the matter to the Lacedaemonians. They made pretence of bringing a charge against him and banishing him; so he went to Tegea, where he told the smith of his misfortune, and tried to hire the courtyard from him. The smith would not consent, but at last Lichas over-persuaded him, and taking up his abode there, opened the tomb and collected the bones and went away with them to Sparta. Ever after this time the Lacedaemonians got much the better of the men of Tegea in all their battles; and they had already subdued the greater part of the Peloponnesus.
69. Croesus, then, being made aware of all this sent messengers to Sparta with gifts, to ask an alliance in words with which he charged them. They came, and said: “Croesus, King of Lydia and other nations, has sent us with this message: ‘Lacedaemonians! the god has declared that I should make the Greek my friend; now, therefore, as I learn that you are the leaders of Hellas, I do so invite you, as the oracle bids; I would fain be your friend and ally, without deceit or guile.’” Thus Croesus proposed by the mouth of his messengers: and the Lacedaemonians, who had already heard of the oracle given to Croesus, welcomed the coming of the Lydians and swore to be his friends and allies; and indeed they were bound by certain benefits which they had before received from the king. For the Lacedaemonians had sent to Sardis to buy gold, with intent to use it for the statue of Apollo which now stands on Thornax in Laconia; and Croesus, when they would buy it, made a free gift of it to them.
70. For this cause, and because he had chosen them as his friends before all other Greeks, the Lacedaemonians accepted the alliance. So they declared themselves ready to serve him when he should require, and moreover they made a bowl of bronze, graven outside round the rim with figures, and large enough to hold twenty-seven hundred gallons, and brought it with the intent to make a gift of requital to Croesus. This bowl never came to Sardis, and for this two reasons are given: the Lacedaemonians say that when the bowl was near Samos on its way to Sardis, the Samians descended upon them in warships and carried it off; but the Samians themselves say that the Lacedaemonians who were bringing the bowl, being too late, and learning that Sardis and Croesus were taken, sold it in Samos to certain private men, who set it up in the the temple of Here. And it may be that the sellers of the bowl, when they returned to Sparta, said that they had been robbed of it by the Samians. Such are the tales about the bowl.
71. Croesus, mistaking the meaning of the oracle, invaded Cappadocia, thinking to destroy Cyrus and the Persian power. But while he was preparing to march against the Persians, a certain Lydian, who was already held to be a wise man, and from the advice which he now gave won great renown among the Lydians, thus counselled him (his name was Sandanis): “O King, you are making ready to march against men who wear breeches of leather and their other garments of the same, and whose fare is not what they desire but what they have; for their land is stony. Further they use no wine, but are water-drinkers, nor have they figs to eat, nor aught else that is good. Now if you conquer them, of what will you deprive them, seeing that they have nothing? But if on the other hand you are conquered, then see how many good things you will lose; for once they have tasted of our blessings they will cling so close to them that nothing will thrust them away. For myself, then, I thank the gods that they do not put it in the hearts of the Persians to march against the Lydians.” Thus spoke Sandanis; for the Persians, before they subdued the Lydians, had no luxury and no comforts; but he did not move Croesus.
72. Now the Cappadocians are called by the Greeks Syrians, and these Syrians before the Persian rule were subjects of the Medes, and, at this time, of Cyrus. For the boundary of the Median and Lydian empires was the river Halys; which flows from the Armenian mountains first through Cilicia and afterwards between the Matieni on the right and the Phrygians on the other hand; then passing these and flowing still northwards it separates the Cappadocian Syrians on the right from the Paphlagonians on the left. Thus the Halys river cuts off wellnigh the whole of the lower part of Asia, from the Cyprian to the Euxine sea. Here is the narrowest neck of all this land; the length of the journey across is five days, for a man going unburdened.
73. The reasons of Croesus’ expedition against Cappadocia were these: he desired to gain territory in addition to his own share, and (these were the chief causes) he trusted the oracle, and wished to avenge Astyages on Cyrus; for Cyrus, son of Cambyses, had subdued Astyages and held him in subjection. Now Astyages, king of Media, son of Cyaxares, was Croesus’ brother-in-law: and this is how he came to be so. A tribe of wandering Scythians separated itself from the rest, and escaped into Median territory. This was then ruled by Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, son of Deioces. Cyaxares at first treated the Scythians kindly, as being suppliants for his mercy; and as he held them in high regard he entrusted boys to their charge to be taught their language and the craft of archery. As time went on, it chanced that the Scythians, who were wont to go hunting and ever to bring something back, once had taken nothing, and when they returned empty-handed, Cyaxares (being, as hereby appeared, prone to anger) treated them very roughly and despitefully. The Scythians, deeming themselves wronged by the usage they had from Cyaxares, plotted to take one of the boys who were their pupils and cut him in pieces, then, dressing the flesh as they were wont to dress the animals which they killed, to bring and give it to Cyaxares as if it were the spoils of the chase; and after that, to make their way with all speed to Alyattes son of Sadyattes at Sardis. All this they did. Cyaxares and the guests who feasted with him ate of the boy’s flesh, and the Scythians, having done as they planned, fled to Alyattes for protection.
74. After this, seeing that Alyattes would not give up the Scythians to Cyaxares at his demand, there was war between the Lydians and the Medes for five years; each won many victories over the other, and once they fought a battle by night. They were still warring with equal success, when it chanced, at an encounter which happened in the sixth year, that during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year in which the change did indeed happen. So when the Lydians and Medes saw the day turned to night they ceased from fighting, and both were the more zealous to make peace. Those who reconciled them were Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian; they it was who brought it about that there should be a sworn agreement and an exchange of wedlock between them: they adjudged that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, son of Cyaxares; for without a strong bond agreements will not keep their strength. These nations make sworn compacts as do the Greeks; moreover, they cut the skin of their arms and lick each other’s blood.
75. This Astyages then was Cyrus’ mother’s father, and was by him subdued and held subject for the reason which I shall presently declare. Having this cause of quarrel with Cyrus, Croesus sent to ask the oracles if he should march against the Persians; and when a quibbling answer came he thought it to be favourable to him, and so led his army to the Persian territory. When he came to the river Halys, he transported his army across it,—by the bridges, as I hold, which then were there; but the general belief of the Greeks is that the army was carried across by Thales of Miletus. This is the story: As the bridges aforesaid did not then yet exist, Croesus knew not how his army should pass the river: then Thales, being in the encampment, made the river, which flowed on the left hand, flow also on the right of the army in the following way. Starting from a point on the river higher up than the camp, he dug a deep semicircular trench, so that the stream, turned from its ancient course, should flow in the trench to the rear of the camp, and, again passing it, should issue into its former bed, so that, as soon as the river was thus divided into two, both channels could be forded. Some even say that the ancient channel was altogether dried up. But I do not believe this; for how then did they pass the river when they were returning?
76. Croesus then passing over with his army came to the part of Cappadocia called Pteria (it is the strongest part of this country and lies nearest to the city of Sinope on the Euxine sea), where he encamped, and laid waste the farms of the Syrians; and he took and enslaved the city of the Pterians, and took also all the places about it, and drove the Syrians from their homes, though they had done him no harm. Cyrus, mustering his army, and gathering to him all those who dwelt upon his way, went to meet Croesus. But before beginning his march he sent heralds to the Ionians to try to draw them away from Croesus. The Ionians would not be persuaded; but when Cyrus had come, and encamped face to face with Croesus, the armies made trial of each other’s strength with might and main in the Pterian country. The battle was stubborn; many on both sides fell, and when they were parted at nightfall neither had the advantage. With such fortune did the two armies contend.
77. Croesus was not content with the number of his force, for his army which had fought was by far smaller than that of Cyrus; therefore, seeing that on the day after the battle Cyrus essayed no second attack, he marched away to Sardis, intending to invite help from the Egyptians in fulfilment of their pledge (for before making an alliance with the Lacedaemonians he had made one also with Amasis king of Egypt), and to send for the Babylonians also (for with these too he had made an alliance, Labynetus being at this time their sovereign), and to summon the Lacedaemonians to join him at a fixed time. It was in his mind to muster all these forces and assemble his own army, then to wait till the winter was over and march against the Persians at the beginning of spring. With such intent, as soon as he returned to Sardis, he sent heralds to all his allies, summoning them to assemble at Sardis in five months’ time; and as for the soldiers whom he had with him, who had fought with the Persians, all of them who were not of his nation he disbanded, never thinking that after so equal an issue of the contest Cyrus would march against Sardis.
78. Thus Croesus reasoned. Meantime it chanced that snakes began to swarm in the outer part of the city; and when they appeared the horses would ever leave their accustomed pasture and devour them. When Croesus saw this he thought it to be a portent, and so it was. Forthwith he sent to the abodes of the Telmessian interpreters, to inquire concerning it; but though his messengers came and learnt from the Telmessians what the portent should signify, they could never bring back word to Croesus, for he was a prisoner before they could make their voyage back to Sardis. Howbeit, this was the judgment of the Telmessians—that Croesus must expect a foreign army to attack his country, and that when it came it would subdue the dwellers in the land: for the snake, they said, was the child of the earth, but the horse was a foe and a foreigner. Such was the answer which the Telmessians gave Croesus, knowing as yet nothing of the fate of Sardis and the king himself; but when they gave it Croesus was already taken.
79. When Croesus marched away after the battle in the Pterian country, Cyrus, learning that Croesus had gone with intent to disband his army, took counsel and perceived thereby that it was his business to march with all speed against Sardis, before the power of the Lydians could again be assembled. So he resolved and so he did speedily; he marched his army into Lydia and so himself came to bring the news of it to Croesus. All had turned out contrariwise to Croesus’ expectation, and he was in a great quandary; nevertheless, he led out the Lydians to battle. Now at this time there was no nation in Asia more valiant or warlike than the Lydian. It was their custom to fight on horseback, carrying long spears, and they were skilled in the management of horses.
80. So the armies met in the plain, wide and bare, which is before the city of Sardis: the Hyllus and other rivers flow across it and rush violently together into the greatest of them, which is called Hermus (this flows from the mountain sacred to the Mother Dindymene and issues into the sea near the city of Phocaea). Here when Cyrus saw the Lydians arraying their battle, he was afraid of their horse, and therefore did as I will show by the counsel of one Harpagus, a Mede. Assembling all the camels that followed his army bearing food and baggage, he took off their burdens and set men upon them equipped like cavalrymen; having so equipped them he ordered them to advance before his army against Croesus’ horse; he charged the infantry to follow the camels, and set all his horse behind the infantry. When they were all arrayed, he commanded them to kill all other Lydians who came in their way, and spare none, but not to kill Croesus himself, even if he should defend himself against capture. Such was his command. The reason of his posting the camels to face the cavalry was this: horses fear camels and can endure neither the sight nor the smell of them; this then was the intent of his device, that Croesus’ cavalry, on which the Lydian relied for the winning of some glory, might be of no use. So when battle was joined, as soon as the horses smelt and saw the camels they turned to flight, and all Croesus’ hope was lost. Nevertheless the Lydians were no cowards; when they saw what was happening they leaped from their horses and fought the Persians on foot. Many of both armies fell; at length the Lydians were routed and driven within their city wall, where they were besieged by the Persians.
81. So then they were beleaguered. But Croesus, supposing that the siege would last a long time, sent messengers again from the city to his allies; whereas the former envoys had been sent to summon them to muster at Sardis in five months’ time, these were to announce that Croesus was besieged and to entreat help with all speed.
82. So he sent to the Lacedaemonians as well as the rest of the allies. Now at this very time the Spartans themselves had a feud on hand with the Argives, in respect of the country called Thyrea; for this was a part of the Argive territory which the Lacedaemonians had cut off and occupied. (All the land towards the west, as far as Malea, belonged then to the Argives, and not the mainland only, but the island of Cythera and the other islands.) The Argives came out to save their territory from being cut off; then after debate the two armies agreed that three hundred of each side should fight, and whichever party won should possess the land. The rest of each army was to go away to its own country and not be present at the battle; for it was feared that if the armies remained on the field, the men of either party would render help to their comrades if they saw them losing. Having thus agreed, the armies drew off, and picked men of each side were left and fought. Neither could gain advantage in the battle; at last, of six hundred there were left only three, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these three were left alive at nightfall. Then the two Argives, deeming themselves victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades, the Lacedaemonian, spoiled the Argive dead, bore the armour to his own army’s camp and remained in his place. On the next day both armies came to learn the issue. For a while both claimed the victory, the Argives pleading that more of their men had survived, the Lacedaemonians showing that the Argives had fled, while their man had stood his ground and despoiled the enemy dead. At last the dispute so ended that they joined battle and fought; many of both sides fell, but the Lacedaemonians had the victory. Ever after this the Argives, who before had worn their hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads, and made a law, with a curse added thereto, that no Argive should grow his hair, and no Argive woman should wear gold, till they should recover Thyreae; and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that ever after they should wear their hair long; for till now they had not so worn it. Othryades, the one survivor of the three hundred, was ashamed, it is said, to return to Sparta after all the men of his company had been slain, and killed himself on the spot at Thyreae.
83. All this had befallen the Spartans when the Sardian herald came to entreat their help for Croesus, now besieged; yet for all that, when they heard the herald they prepared to send help; but when they were already equipped and their ships ready, there came a second message which told that the fortress of the Lydians was taken and Croesus held a prisoner. Then indeed, though greatly grieved, they ceased from their enterprise.
84. Now this is how Sardis was taken. When Croesus had been besieged for fourteen days, Cyrus sent horsemen about in his army to promise rewards to him who should first mount the wall. After this the army made an assault, but with no success. Then, all the rest being at a stand, a certain Mardian called Hyroeades essayed to mount by a part of the citadel where no guard had been set; for here the height on which the citadel stood was sheer and hardly to be assaulted, and none feared that it could be taken by an attack made here. This was the only place where Meles the former king of Sardis had not carried the lion which his concubine had borne him, the Telmessians having declared that if this lion were carried round the walls Sardis could never be taken. Meles then carried the lion round the rest of the wall of the acropolis where it could be assaulted, but neglected this place, because the height was sheer and defied attack. It is on the side of the city which faces towards Tmolus. So then it chanced that on the day before this Mardian, Hyroeades, had seen one of the Lydians descend by this part of the citadel after a helmet that had fallen down, and fetch it; he took note of this and considered it, and now he himself climbed up, and other Persians after him. Many ascended, and thus was Sardis taken and all the city like to be sacked.
85. I will now tell what befell Croesus himself. He had a son, of whom I have already spoken, a likely youth enough save that he was dumb. Now in his past days of prosperity Croesus had done all that he could for his son; and besides resorting to other plans he had sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle concerning him. The Pythian priestess thus answered him:
So at the taking of the fortress a certain Persian, not knowing who Croesus was, came at him with intent to kill him. Croesus saw him coming, but by stress of misfortune he was past caring, and would as soon be smitten to death as not; but this dumb son, seeing the Persian coming, in his fear and his grief broke into speech and cried, “Man, do not kill Croesus!” This was the first word he uttered; and after that for all the days of his life he had power of speech.
86. So the Persians took Sardis and made Croesus himself prisoner, he having reigned fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days, and, as the oracle foretold, brought his own great empire to an end. Having then taken him they led him to Cyrus. Cyrus had a great pyre built, on which he set Croesus, bound in chains, and twice seven Lydian boys beside him: either his intent was to sacrifice these firstfruits to some one of his gods, or he desired to fulfil a vow, or it may be that, learning that Croesus was a god-fearing man, he set him for this cause on the pyre, because he would fain know if any deity would save him from being burnt alive. It is related then that he did this; but Croesus, as he stood on the pyre, remembered even in his evil plight how divinely inspired was that saying of Solon, that no living man was blest. When this came to his mind, having till now spoken no word, he sighed deeply and groaned, and thrice uttered the name of Solon. Cyrus heard it, and bade his interpreters ask Croesus who was this on whom he called; they came near and asked him; Croesus at first would say nothing in answer, but presently, being compelled, he said, “It is one with whom I would have given much wealth that all sovereigns should hold converse.” This was a dark saying to them, and again they questioned him of the words which he spoke. As they were instant, and troubled him, he told them then how Solon, an Athenian, had first come, and how he had seen all his royal state and made light of it (saying thus and thus), and how all had happened to Croesus as Solon said, though he spoke with less regard to Croesus than to mankind in general and chiefly those who deemed themselves blest. While Croesus thus told his story, the pyre had already been kindled and the outer parts of it were burning. Then Cyrus, when he heard from the interpreters what Croesus said, repented of his purpose. He bethought him that he, being also a man, was burning alive another man who had once been as fortunate as himself; moreover, he feared the retribution, and it came to his mind that there was no stability in human affairs; wherefore he gave command to quench the burning fire with all speed and bring Croesus and those with him down from the pyre. But his servants could not for all their endeavour now master the fire.
87. Then (so the Lydians relate), when Croesus was aware of Cyrus’ repentance and saw all men striving to quench the fire but no longer able to check it, he cried aloud to Apollo, praying that if the god had ever been pleased with any gift of his offering he would now come to his aid and save him from present destruction. Thus with weeping he invoked the god: and suddenly in a clear and windless sky clouds gathered and a storm burs and there was a most violent rain, so that the pyre was quenched. Then indeed Cyrus perceived that Croesus was a good man and one beloved of the gods; and bringing him down from the pyre, he questioned him, saying, “What man persuaded you, Croesus, to attack my country with an army, and be my enemy instead of my friend?” “O King,” said Croesus, “it was I who did it, and brought thereby good fortune to you and ill to myself: but the cause of all was the god of the Greeks, in that he encouraged me to send my army. No man is so foolish as to desire war more than peace: for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons. But I must believe that heaven willed all this so to be.”
88. So said Croesus. Then Cyrus loosed him and set him near to himself and took much thought for him, and both he and all that were with him were astonished when they looked upon Croesus. He for his part was silent, deep in thought. Presently he turned and said (for he saw the Persians sacking the city of the Lydians), “O King, am I to say to you now what is in my mind, or keep silence?” Cyrus bidding him to say boldly what he would, Croesus asked, “Yonder multitude, what is this whereon they are so busily engaged?” “They are plundering,” said Cyrus, “your city and carrying off your possessions.” “Nay,” Croesus answered, “not my city, nor my possessions; for I have no longer any share of all this; it is your wealth that they are ravishing.”
89. Cyrus thought upon what Croesus said, and bidding the rest withdraw he asked Croesus what fault he saw in what was being done. “Since the gods,” replied the Lydian, “have given me to be your slave, it is right that if I have any clearer sight of wrong done I should declare it to you. The Persians are violent men by nature, and poor withal; if then you suffer them to seize and hold great possessions, you may expect that he who has won most will rise in revolt against you. Now therefore do this, if what I say finds favour with you. Set men of your guard to watch all the gates; let them take the spoil from those who are carrying it out, and say that it must be paid as tithe to Zeus. Thus shall you not be hated by them for taking their wealth by force, and they for their part will acknowledge that you act justly, and will give up the spoil willingly.”
90. When Cyrus heard this he was exceedingly pleased, for he deemed the counsel good; and praising him greatly, and bidding his guards to act as Croesus had counselled, he said: “Croesus, now that you, a king, are resolved to act and to speak aright, ask me now for whatever boon you desire forthwith.” “Master,” said Croesus, “you will best please me if you suffer me to send these my chains to that god of the Greeks whom I chiefly honoured, and to ask him if it be his custom to deceive those who serve him well.” Cyrus then asking him what charge he brought against the god that he made this request, Croesus repeated to him the tale of all his own intent, and the answers of the oracles, and more especially his offerings, and how it was the oracle that had heartened him to attack the Persians; and so saying he once more instantly entreated that he might be suffered to reproach the god for this. At this Cyrus smiled, and replied, “This I will grant you, Croesus, and what other boon soever you may at any time ask me.” When Croesus heard this, he sent men of the Lydians to Delphi, charging them to lay his chains on the threshold of the temple, and to ask if the god were not ashamed that he had persuaded Croesus to attack the Persians, telling him that he would destroy Cyrus’ power; of which power (they should say, showing the chains) these were the first-fruits. Thus they should inquire; and further, if it were the manner of the Greek gods to be thankless.
91. When the Lydians came, and spoke as they were charged, the priestess (it is said) thus replied: “None may escape his destined lot, not even a god. Croesus hath paid for the sin of his ancestor of the fifth generation: who, being of the guard of the Heraclidae, was led by the guile of a woman to slay his master, and took to himself the royal state of that master, whereto he had no right. And it was the desire of Loxias that the evil hap of Sardis should fall in the lifetime of Croesus’ sons, not his own, but he could not turn the Fates from their purpose; yet did he accomplish his will and favour Croesus in so far as they would yield to him: for he delayed the taking of Sardis for three years, and this let Croesus know, that though he be now taken it is by so many years later than the destined hour. And further, Loxias saved Croesus from the burning. But as to the oracle that was given him, Croesus doth not right to complain concerning it. For Loxias declared to him that if he should lead an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire. Therefore it behoved him, if he would take right counsel, to send and ask whether the god spoke of Croesus’ or of Cyrus’ empire. But he understood not that which was spoken, nor made further inquiry: wherefore now let him blame himself. Nay, when he asked that last question of the oracle and Loxias gave him that answer concerning the mule, even that Croesus understood not. For that mule was in truth Cyrus; who was the son of two persons not of the same nation, of whom the mother was the nobler and the father of lesser estate; for she was a Median, daughter of Astyages king of the Medians: but he was a Persian and under the rule of the Medians, and was wedded, albeit in all regards lower than she, to one that should be his sovereign lady.” Such was the answer of the priestess to the Lydians; they carried it to Sardis and told it to Croesus; and when he heard it, he confessed that the sin was not the god’s, but his own. And this is the story of Croesus’ rule, and of the first overthrow of Ionia.
92. Now there are many offerings of Croesus in Hellas, and not only those whereof I have spoken. There is a golden tripod at Thebes in Boeotia, which he dedicated to Apollo of Ismenus; at Ephesus there are the oxen of gold and the greater part of the pillars; and in the temple of Proneïa at Delphi, a golden shield. All these yet remained till my lifetime; but some other of the offerings have perished. And the offerings of Croesus at Branchidae of the Milesians, as I have heard, are equal in weight and like to those at Delphi. Those which he dedicated at Delphi and the shrine of Amphiaraus were his own, the firstfruits of the wealth inherited from his father; the rest came from the estate of an enemy who had headed a faction against Croesus before he became king, and conspired to win the throne of Lydia for Pantaleon. This Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes, and half-brother of Croesus: Croesus was Alyattes’ son by a Carian and Pantaleon by an Ionian mother. So when Croesus gained the sovereignty by his father’s gift, he put the man who had conspired against him to death by drawing him across a carding-comb, and first confiscated his estate, then dedicated it as and where I have said. This is all that I shall say of Croesus’ offerings.
93. There are not in Lydia many marvellous things for me to tell of, if it be compared with other countries, except the gold dust that comes down from Tmolus. But there is one building to be seen there which is more notable than any, saving those of Egypt and Babylon. There is in Lydia the tomb of Alyattes the father of Croesus, the base whereof is made of great stones and the rest of it of mounded earth. It was built by the men of the market and the artificers and the prostitutes. There remained till my time five corner-stones set on the top of the tomb, and on these was graven the record of the work done by each kind: and measurement showed that the prostitutes’ share of the work was the greatest. All the daughters of the common people of Lydia ply the trade of prostitutes, to collect dowries, till they can get themselves husbands; and they offer themselves in marriage. Now this tomb has a circumference of six furlongs and a third, and its breadth is above two furlongs; and there is a great lake hard by the tomb, which, say the Lydians, is fed by ever-flowing springs; it is called the Gygaean lake. Such then is this tomb.
94. The customs of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, save that they make prostitutes of their female children. They were the first men (known to us) who coined and used gold and silver currency; and they were the first to sell by retail. And, according to what they themselves say, the pastimes now in use among them and the Greeks were invented by the Lydians: these, they say, were invented among them at the time when they colonised Tyrrhenia. This is their story: In the reign of Atys son of Manes there was great scarcity of food in all Lydia. For a while the Lydians bore this with what patience they could; presently, when there was no abatement of the famine, they sought for remedies, and divers plans were devised by divers men. Then it was that they invented the games of dice and knuckle-bones and ball, and all other forms of pastime except only draughts, which the Lydians do not claim to have discovered. Then, using their discovery to lighten the famine, they would play for the whole of every other day, that they might not have to seek for food, and the next day they ceased from their play and ate. This was their manner of life for eighteen years. But the famine did not cease to plague them, and rather afflicted them yet more grievously. At last their king divided the people into two portions, and made them draw lots, so that the one part should remain and the other leave the country; he himself was to be the head of those who drew the lot to remain there, and his son, whose name was Tyrrhenus, of those who departed. Then one part of them, having drawn the lot, left the country and came down to Smyrna and built ships, whereon they set all their goods that could be carried on shipboard, and sailed away to seek a livelihood and a country; till at last, after sojourning with many nations in turn, they came to the Ombrici, where they founded cities and have dwelt ever since. They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king’s son who had led them thither.
The Lydians, then, were enslaved by the Persians.
95. But it is next the business of my history to inquire who this Cyrus was who brought down the power of Croesus, and how the Persians came to be rulers of Asia. I mean then to be guided in what I write by some of the Persians who desire not to make a fine tale of the story of Cyrus but to tell the truth, though there are no less than three other accounts of Cyrus which I could give.
When the Assyrians had ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years their subjects began to revolt from them: first of all, the Medes. These, it would seem, proved their valour in fighting for freedom against the Assyrians; they cast off their slavery and won freedom. Afterwards the other subject nations too did the same as the Medes.
96. All of those on the mainland were now free men; but they came once more to be ruled by monarchs as I will now relate. There was among the Medians a clever man called Deioces: he was the son of Phraortes. Deioces was enamoured of sovereignty, and thus he set about gaining it. Being already a notable man in his own township (one of the many townships into which Media was parcelled), he began to profess and practise justice more constantly and zealously than ever, and this he did although there was much lawlessness in all the land of Media, and though he knew that injustice is ever the foe of justice. Then the Medes of the same township, seeing his dealings, chose him to be their judge, and he (for he coveted sovereign power) was honest and just. By so acting he won no small praise from his fellow townsmen, insomuch that when the men of the other townships learned that Deioces alone gave righteous judgments (they having before suffered from unjust decisions) they, then, on hearing this, came often and gladly to plead before Deioces; and at last they would submit to no arbitrament but his.
97. The number of those who came grew ever greater, for they heard that each case ended as accorded with the truth. Then Deioces, seeing that all was now entrusted to him, would not sit in his former seat of judgment, and said he would give no more decisions; for it was of no advantage to him (he said) to leave his own business and spend all the day judging the cases of his neighbours. This caused robbery and lawlessness to increase greatly in the townships; and the Medes gathering together conferred about their present affairs, and said (here, as I suppose, the chief speakers were Deioces’ friends), “Since we cannot with our present manner of life dwell peacefully in the country, come, let us set up a king for ourselves; thus will the country be well governed, and we ourselves shall betake ourselves to our business, and cease to be undone by lawlessness” By such words they persuaded themselves to be ruled by a king.
98. The question was forthwith propounded: Whom should they make king? Then every man was loud in putting Deioces forward and praising Deioces, till they agreed that he should be their king. He bade them build him houses worthy of his royal power, and arm him with a bodyguard: the Medes did so; they built him great and strong houses at what places soever in the country he showed them, and suffered him to choose a bodyguard out of all their people. But having obtained the power, he constrained the Medes to make him one stronghold and to fortify this more strongly than all the rest. This too the Medes did for him: so he built the great and mighty circles of walls within walls which are now called Agbatana. This fortress is so planned that each circle of walls is higher than the next outer circle by no more than the height of its battlements; to which end the site itself, being on a hill in the plain, somewhat helps, but chiefly it was accomplished by art. There are seven circles in all; within the innermost circle are the king’s dwellings and the treasuries; and the longest wall is about the length of the wall that surrounds the city of Athens. The battlements of the first circle are white, of the second black, of the third circle purple, of the fourth blue, and of the fifth orange: thus the battlements of five circles are painted with colours; and the battlements of the last two circles are coated, these with silver and those with gold.
99. Deioces built these walls for himself and around his own palace; the people were to dwell without the wall. And when all was built, it was Deioces first who established the rule that no one should come into the presence of the king, but all should be dealt with by the means of messengers; that the king should be seen by no man; and moreover that it should be in particular a disgrace for any to laugh or to spit in his presence. He was careful to hedge himself with all this state in order that the men of his own age (who had been bred up with him and were as nobly born as he and his equals in manly excellence), instead of seeing him and being thereby vexed and haply moved to plot against him, might by reason of not seeing him deem him to be changed from what he had been.
100. Having ordered all these matters and strongly armed himself with sovereign power, he was a hard man in the observance of justice. They would write down their pleas and send them in to him; then would he adjudge upon what was brought him and send his judgments out. This was his manner of deciding cases at law, and he took order too about other matters; for when he heard that a man was doing violence he would send for him and punish him as befitted each offence: and he had spies and eavesdroppers everywhere in his dominions.
101. Deioces, then, united the Median nation, and no other, and ruled it. The Median tribes are these—the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, the Magi: so many are their tribes.
102. Deioces had a son, Phraortes, who inherited the throne at Deioces’ death after a reign of fifty-three years. Having so inherited, he was not content to rule the Medes alone: marching against the Persians, he attacked them first, and they were the first whom he made subject to the Medes. Then, with these two strong nations at his back, he subdued one nation of Asia after another, till he marched against the Assyrians, to wit, those of the Assyrians who held Ninus. These had formerly been rulers of all; but now their allies had dropped from them and they were left alone, yet in themselves a prosperous people: marching then against these Assyrians, Phraortes himself and the greater part of his army perished, after he had reigned twenty-two years.
103. At his death he was succeeded by his son Cyaxares. He is said to have been a much greater warrior than his fathers: it was he who first arrayed the men of Asia in companies and set each kind in bands apart, the spearmen and the archers and the horsemen: before this they were all blended alike confusedly together. This was the king who fought against the Lydians when the day was turned to night in the battle, and who united under his dominion all Asia that is beyond the river Halys. Collecting all his subjects, he marched against Ninus, wishing to avenge his father and to destroy the city. He defeated the Assyrians in battle; but while he was besieging their city there came down upon him a great army of Scythians, led by their king Madyes son of Protothyes. These had invaded Asia after they had driven the Cimmerians out of Europe: pursuing them in their flight the Scythians came to the Median country.
104. It is thirty days’ journey for an unburdened man from the Maeetian lake to the river Phasis and the land of the Colchi; from the Colchi it is an easy matter to cross into Media: there is but one nation between, the Saspires; to pass these is to be in Media, Nevertheless it was not by this way that the Scythians entered; they turned aside and came by the upper and much longer road, having on their right the Caucasian mountains. There the Medes met the Scythians, who worsted them in battle and deprived them of their rule, and made themselves masters of all Asia.
105. Thence they marched against Egypt: and when they were in the part of Syria called Palestine, Psammetichus king of Egypt met them and persuaded them with gifts and prayers to come no further. So they turned back, and when they came on their way to the city of Ascalon in Syria, most of the Scythians passed by and did no harm, but a few remained behind and plundered the temple of Heavenly Aphrodite. This temple, as I learn from what I hear, is the oldest of all the temples of the goddess, for the temple in Cyprus was founded from it, as the Cyprians themselves say: and the temple on Cythera was founded by Phoenicians from this same land of Syria. But the Scythians who pillaged the temple, and all their descendants after them, were afflicted by the goddess with the “female” sickness: insomuch that the Scythians say that this is the cause of their disease, and that those who come to Scythia can see there the plight of the men whom they call “Enareis.”
106. The Scythians, then, ruled Asia for twenty-eight years: and all the land was wasted by reason of their violence and their pride, for, besides that they exacted from each the tribute which was laid upon him, they rode about the land carrying off all men’s possessions. The greater number of them were entertained and made drunk and then slain by Cyaxares and the Medes: so thus the Medes won back their empire and all that they had formerly possessed; and they took Ninus (in what manner I will show in a later part of my history), and brought all Assyria except the province of Babylon under their rule.
107. Afterwards Cyaxares died after a reign of forty years (among which I count the years of the Scythian domination): and his son Astyages reigned in his stead.
Astyages had a daughter, whom he called Mandane: concerning whom he had a dream, that enough water flowed from her to fill his city and overflow all Asia. He imparted this vision to those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and when he heard what they told him he was terrified: and presently, Mandane being now of marriageable age, he feared the vision too much to give her to any Median worthy to mate with his family, but wedded her to a Persian called Cambyses, a man whom he knew to be well born and of a quiet temper: for Astyages held Cambyses to be much lower than a Mede of middle estate.
108. But in the first year of Mandane’s marriage to Cambyses Astyages saw a second vision. He dreamt that there grew from his daughter a vine, which covered the whole of Asia. Having seen this vision, and imparted it to the interpreters of dreams, he sent to the Persians for his daughter, then near her time, and when she came kept her guarded, desiring to kill whatever child she might bear: for the interpreters declared that the meaning of his dream was that his daughter’s offspring should rule in his place. Wishing to prevent this, Astyages on the birth of Cyrus summoned to him a man of his household called Harpagus, who was his faith fullest servant among the Medes and was steward of all his possessions: then he said, “Do not mishandle this command of mine, Harpagus, nor forsake me for the service of others, lest hereafter it be the worse for yourself. Take the boy whom Mandane has borne, and carry him to your house and kill him: and then bury him in what manner you yourself will.” “King,” Harpagus answered, “never yet have you seen me do aught unpleasing to you; and I will ever be careful not to offend against you. But if it is your will that this should so be done, then it behoves that for my part I render you fitting service.”
109. Thus answered Harpagus. The child was then given to him, adorned for its death, and he went to his house weeping. When he came in he told his wife all the command given him by Astyages. “Now, therefore,” said she to him, “what purpose you to do?” “Not,” he answered, “to obey Astyages’ behest, no, not though he lose his wits and be more frantic than now he is: even so I myself will not serve his purpose, nor be his instrument for such a murder. There are many reasons why I will not kill the child: he is akin to myself, and further, Astyages is old, and has no male issue: now if after his death the sovereignty passes to this daughter of his, whose son he is now using me to slay, what is left for me but the greatest of all dangers? Nay, for my safety I must see that the boy dies, but the deed must be done by some one of Astyages’ own men and not of mine.”
110. So saying, he sent forthwith a messenger to that one of Astyages’ cowherds whom he knew to pasture his herds in the likeliest places and where the mountains were most haunted of wild beasts. The man’s name was Mitradates, and his wife was a slave like him; her name was in the Greek language Cyno, in the Median Spako: for “spax” is the Median name for a dog. The foothills of the mountains where this cowherd pastured his kine are to the north of Agbatana, towards the Euxine sea: for the rest of Media is everywhere a level plain, but here, on the side of the Saspires, the land is very high and mountainous and covered with woods. So when the cowherd came with all speed at the summons, Harpagus said: “Astyages bids you take this child and lay it in the most desolate part of the mountains, that it may thus perish as soon as may be. And he bids me say, that if you kill not the child, but in any way save it alive, you shall die a terrible death: and it is I who am ordered to see it exposed.”
111. Hearing this, the cowherd took up the child and returned by the same way and came to his steading. Now it chanced that his wife too had been expecting her time every day, and providence so ordained that she was brought to bed while her man was away in the city. Each of them was anxious for the other, the husband being afraid about his wife’s travail, and the wife because she knew not why Harpagus had so unwontedly sent for her husband. So when he returned and came before her, she was startled by the unexpected sight and asked him before he could speak why Harpagus had so instantly summoned him. “Wife,” he said, “when I came to the city, I saw and heard what I would I had never seen, and what I would had never happened to our masters. All the house of Harpagus was full of weeping; and I was astonished, and entered in; and immediately I saw a child laid there struggling and crying, decked out with gold and many-coloured raiment. And when Harpagus saw me, he bade me take the child with all speed and bear it away and lay it where there are most wild beasts in the mountains: it was Astyages, he said, who laid this command on me, and Harpagus threatened me grievously if I did not do his will. So I took up the child and bore him away, supposing him to be the child of someone in the household; for I could never have guessed whose he was. But I was amazed at seeing him decked with gold and raiment, and at hearing moreover the manifest sound of weeping in the house of Harpagus. Very soon on the way I heard all the story from a servant who brought me out of the city and gave the child into my charge: to wit, that it was the son of Mandane the king’s daughter and Cambyses the son of Cyrus, and that Astyages bade him slay the child. And now, here is the child.”
112. And with that the cowherd uncovered it and showed it. But when the woman saw how fine and fair the child was, she fell a-weeping and laid hold of the man’s knees and entreated him by no means to expose him. But the husband said he could do no other; for, he said, there would be comings of spies from Harpagus to see what was done, and he must die a terrible death if he did not obey. So then being unable to move her husband, the woman said next: “Since I cannot move you from your purpose to expose, then do you do this, if needs must that a child be seen exposed. Know that I too have borne a child, but it was dead; take it now and lay it out, but, for the child of the daughter of Astyages, let us rear it as it were our own; so shall you escape punishment for offending against our masters, and we shall have taken no evil counsel. For the child that is dead will have royal burial, and he that is alive will not lose his life.”
113. Thinking that his wife counselled him exceeding well in his present strait, the cowherd straightway did as she said. He gave his wife the child whom he had brought to kill him, and his own dead child he put into the chest wherein he carried the other, and decked it with all the other child’s adornment and laid it out in the most desolate part of the mountains. Then on the third day after the laying out of the child, the cowherd left one of his herdsmen to guard it and went to the city, where he came to Harpagus’ house and said he was ready to show the child’s dead body. Harpagus sent the most trusty of his bodyguard, and these saw for him and buried the cowherd’s child. So it was buried: and the cowherd’s wife took and reared the boy who was afterwards named Cyrus; but she gave him not that but some other name.
114. Now when the boy was ten years old, it was revealed in some such wise as this who he was. He was playing in the village where these herdsmen’s quarters were: there he was playing in the road with others of his age. The boys in their play chose for their king that one who passed for the son of the cowherd. Then he set them severally to their tasks, some to the building of houses, some to be his bodyguard, one (as I suppose) to be the King’s Eye; to another he gave the right’ of bringing him messages; to each he gave his proper work. Now one of these boys who played with him was son to Artembares, a notable Median; as he did not obey the command Cyrus gave him, Cyrus bade the other boys seize him, and when they did so he dealt very roughly with the boy and scourged him. As soon as he was loosed, very angry at the wrong done him, he went down to his father in the city and complained of what he had met with at the hands of the son of Astyages’ cowherd,—not calling him Cyrus, for that name had not yet been given. Artembares went with his anger fresh upon him to Astyages, bringing his son and telling of the cruel usage he had had: “O King,” said he, “see the outrage done to us by the son of your slave, the son of a cowherd!” and with that he showed his son’s shoulders.
115. When Astyages heard and saw, he was ready to avenge the boy in justice to Artembares’ rank: so he sent for the cowherd and his son. When they were both present, Astyages said, fixing his eyes on Cyrus, “Is it you, then, the son of such a father, who have dared to deal so despitefully with the son of the greatest of my courtiers?” “Nay, master,” answered Cyrus, “what I did to him I did with justice. The boys of the village, of whom he was one, chose me in their play to be their king: for they thought me the fittest to rule. The other boys then did as I bid them: but this one was disobedient and cared nothing for me, till he got his deserts. So now if I deserve punishment for this, here am I to take it.”
116. While he spoke, it seemed to Astyages that he recognised Cyrus; the fashion of the boy’s countenance was like (he thought) to his own, and his manner of answering was freer than customary: and the time of the exposure seemed to agree with Cyrus’ age. Being thereby astonished, he sat awhile silent; but when at last with difficulty he could collect his wits, he said (for he desired to rid himself of Artembares and question the cowherd with none present), “I will so act, Artembares, that you and your son shall have no cause of complaint.” So he sent Artembares away, and the servants led Cyrus within at Astyages’ bidding. Then, the cowherd being left quite alone, Astyages asked him whence he had got the boy and from whose hands. The cowherd answered that Cyrus was his own son and that the mother was still in his house. “You are ill advised,” said Astyages, “desiring, as you do, to find yourself in a desperate strait,”—and with that he made a sign to the guard to seize him. Then under stress of necessity the cowherd declared to him all the story, telling all truly as it had happened from the beginning: and at the last he prayed and entreated that the king would pardon him.
117. When the truth had been so declared Astyages took thereafter less account of the cowherd, but he was very wroth with Harpagus and bade the guards summon him. Harpagus came, and Astyages asked him, “Harpagus, in what manner did you kill the boy, my daughter’s son, whom I gave you?” Harpagus saw the cowherd in the house, and did not take the way of falsehood, lest he should be caught and confuted: “O King,” he said, “when, I took the boy, I thought and considered how I should do you pleasure, and not offend against you, yet not be held a murderer by your daughter or yourself. This then I did: I called to me yonder cowherd, and gave over the child to him, telling him that it was you who gave the command to kill it. And that was the truth; for such was your command. But I gave the child with the charge that the cowherd should lay it on a desolate mountainside, and wait there and watch till it be dead; and I threatened him with all punishments if he did not accomplish this. Then, when he had done what he was bid, and the child was dead, I sent the trustiest of my eunuchs and by them I saw and buried the body. This, O king, is the tale of the matter, and such was the end of the boy.”
118. So Harpagus spoke the plain truth. Astyages hid the anger that he had against him for what had been done, and first he related the story again to Harpagus as he had heard it from the cowherd, then, after so repeating it, he made an end by saying that the boy was alive and good had come of it all. “For,” so he said in his speech, “I was greatly afflicted by what had been done to this boy, and it weighed heavily on me that I was estranged from my daughter. Now, therefore, in this lucky turn of fortune, send your own son to the boy who is newly come, and come hither to dine with me, for I am about to make sacrifice for the safety of my grandson to the gods to whom this honour is due.”
119. When Harpagus heard this he did obeisance and went to his home, greatly pleased to find that his offence had served the needful end and that he was invited to dinner in honour of this fortunate day. Coming in, he bade his only son, a boy of about thirteen years of age, to go to Astyages’ palace and do whatever the king commanded, and in his great joy he told his wife all that had happened. But when Harpagus’ son came, Astyages cut his throat and tearing him limb from limb roasted some and boiled some of the flesh, and the work being finished kept all in readiness. So when it came to the hour for dinner and Harpagus was present among the rest of the guests, dishes of sheeps’ flesh were set before Astyages and the others, but Harpagus was served with the flesh of his own son, all but the head and hands and feet, which lay apart covered up in a basket. And when Harpagus seemed to have eaten his fill, Astyages asked him, “Are you pleased with your meal, Harpagus?” “Exceeding well pleased,” Harpagus answered. Then those whose business it was brought him in the covered basket the head and hands and feet of his son, and they stood before Harpagus and bade him uncover and take of them what he would. Harpagus did so; he uncovered and saw what was left of his son: this he saw, but he mastered himself and was not dismayed. Astyages asked him, “Know you what beast’s flesh you have eaten?” “Yea,” he said, “I know, and all that the king does is pleasing to me.” With that answer he took the rest of the flesh and went to his house, purposing then, as I suppose, to collect and bury all.
120. Thus did Astyages punish Harpagus. But, to aid him to resolve about Cyrus, he called to him the same Magians who had interpreted his dream as I have said: and when they came Astyages asked them how they had interpreted his vision. They answered as before, and said that the boy must have been made king had he lived and not died first. Then said Astyages, “The boy is saved and alive, and when he was living in the country the boys of his village made him king, and he did duly all that is done by true kings: for he assigned to each severally the places of bodyguards and sentinels and messengers and all else, and so ruled. And to what, think you, does this tend?” “If the boy is alive,” said the Magians, “and has been made king without foreknowledge, then fear not for aught that he can do but keep a good heart: he will not be made king a second time. Know that even in our prophecies it is often but a small thing that has been foretold, and the perfect fulfilment of the dream is but a trifling matter,” “I too, ye Magians,” said Astyages, “am much of your mind—that the dream came true when the boy was called king, and that I have no more to fear from him. Nevertheless consider well and advise me what shall be safest both for my house and for you.” The Magians said, “King, we too are much concerned that your sovereignty should stand: for in the other case it goes away from your nation to this boy who is a Persian, and so we Medes are enslaved and deemed of no account by the Persians, being as we are of another blood, but while you are established king, who are our countryman, we have our share of power, and great honour is paid us by you. Thus, then, it behoves us by all means to take thought for you and your sovereignty. And at the present time if we saw any danger we would declare all to you: but now the dream has had but a trifling end, and we ourselves have confidence and counsel you to be like-minded. As for this boy, send him away from your sight to the Persians and to his parents.”
121. Hearing this, Astyages was glad, and calling Cyrus, “My lad,” he said, “I did you wrong by reason of the vision I had in a dream, that meant naught, but by your own destiny you still live; now therefore, get you to the Persians, and good luck go with you; I will send those that shall guide you. When you are there you shall find a father and mother of other estate than Mitradates the cowherd and his wife.”
122. So said Astyages and sent Cyrus away. When he returned to Cambyses’ house, his parents received him there, and learning who he was they welcomed him heartily, for they had supposed that long ago he had straightway been killed, and they asked him how his life had been saved. Then he told them, and said that till now he had known nothing but been greatly deceived, but that on the way he had heard all the story of his misfortune; for he had thought, he said, that Astyages’ cowherd was his father, but in his journey from the city his escort had told him all the tale. And he had been reared, he said, by the cowherd’s wife, and he was full of her praises, and in his tale he was ever speaking of Cyno. Hearing this name, his parents set about a story that Cyrus when exposed was suckled by a bitch, thinking thereby to make the story of his saving seem the more marvellous to the Persians.
123. This then was the beginning of that legend. But as Cyrus grew to man’s estate, being the manliest and best loved of his peers, Harpagus courted him and sent him gifts, wishing to be avenged on Astyages; for he saw no hope of a private man like himself punishing Astyages, but as he saw Cyrus growing up he sought to make him an ally, for he likened Cyrus’ misfortune to his own. He had already brought matters so far that—since Astyages dealt harshly with the Medians—he consorted with each of the chief Medians and persuaded them to make Cyrus their leader and depose Astyages. So much being ready and done, Harpagus desired to make known his intent to Cyrus, then dwelling among the Persians; but the roads were guarded, and he had no plan for sending a message but this—he artfully slit the belly of a hare, and then leaving it as it was without further harm he put into it a paper on which he wrote what he thought fit. Then he sewed up the hare’s belly, and sent it to Persia by the trustiest of his servants, giving him nets to carry as if he were a huntsman. The messenger was charged to give Cyrus the hare and bid him by word of mouth cut it open with his own hands, none other being present.
124. All this was done. Cyrus took the hare and slit it and read the paper which was in it; the writing was as follows: “Son of Cambyses, seeing that the gods watch over you (for else you had not so prospered) do you now avenge yourself on Astyages, your murderer; for according to his intent you are dead; it is by the gods’ doing, and mine, that you live. Methinks you have long ago heard the story of what was done concerning yourself and how Astyages entreated me because I slew you not but gave you to the cowherd. If then you will be counselled by me, you shall rule all the country which is now ruled by Astyages. Persuade the Persians to rebel, and lead their army against the Medes; then you have your desire, whether I be appointed to command the army against you or some other notable man among the Medians; for they will of themselves revolt from Astyages and join you and endeavour to pull him down. Seeing then that all here is ready, do as I say and do it quickly.”
125. When Cyrus heard this, he considered how most cunningly he might persuade the Persians to revolt; and this he thought most apt to the occasion, and this he did: writing what he would on a paper, he gathered an assembly of the Persians, and then unfolded the paper and declared that therein Astyages appointed him leader of the Persian armies. “Now,” said he in his speech, “I bid you all, men of Persia, to come each of you with a sickle.” (There are many tribes in Persia: those of them whom Cyrus assembled and persuaded to revolt from the Medes were the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, and the Maspii. On these hang all the other Persians. The chief tribe is that of the Pasargadae; to them belongs the clan of the Achaemenidae, the royal house of Persia. The other Persian tribes are the Panthialaei, the Derusiaei, and the Germanii, all tillers of the soil, and the Dai, the Mardi, the Dropici, the Sagartii, all wandering herdsmen.)
126. So when they all came with sickles as commanded, Cyrus bade them clear and make serviceable in one day a certain thorny tract of Persia, of eighteen or twenty furlongs each way in extent. The Persians accomplished the appointed task; Cyrus then commanded them to wash themselves and come on the next day; and meanwhile, gathering together his father’s goats and sheep and oxen in one place, he slew and prepared them as a feast for the Persian host, providing also wine and all foods that were most suitable. When the Persians came on the next day he made them sit and feast in a meadow. After dinner he asked them which pleased them best, their task of yesterday or their present state. They answered that the difference was great: all yesterday they had had nought but evil, to-day nought but good. Then taking their word from their mouths Cyrus laid bare all his purpose, and said: “This is your case, men of Persia: obey me and you shall have these good things and ten thousand others besides with no toil and slavery; but if you will not obey me you will have labours unnumbered, like to your toil of yesterday. Now, therefore, do as I bid you, and win your freedom. For I think that I myself was born by a marvellous providence to take this work in hand; and I deem you full as good men as the Medes in war and in all else. All this is true wherefore now revolt from Astyages with all speed!”
127. The Persians had long been ill content that the Medes should rule them, and now having got them a champion they were glad to win their freedom. But when Astyages heard that Cyrus was at this business, he sent a messenger to summon him; Cyrus bade the messenger bring back word that Astyages would see him sooner than he desired. Hearing this, Astyages armed all his Medians, and was so infatuated that he forgot what he had done to Harpagus, and appointed him to command the army. So no sooner had the Medes marched out and joined battle with the Persians than some of them deserted to the enemy, but most of them of set purpose played the coward and fled; those only fought who had not shared Harpagus’ counsels.
128. Thus the Median army was foully scattered. Astyages, hearing this, sent a threatening message to Cyrus, “that even so he should not go unpunished”; and with that he took the Magians who interpreted dreams and had persuaded him to let Cyrus go free, and impaled them; then he armed the Medes who were left in the city, the youths and old men. Leading these out, and encountering the Persians, he was worsted: Astyages himself was taken prisoner, and lost the Median army which he led.
129. He being then a captive, Harpagus came and exulted over him and taunted him, and with much other bitter mockery he brought to mind his banquet, when Astyages had fed Harpagus on his son’s flesh, and asked Astyages what it was to be a slave after having been a king. Fixing his gaze on Harpagus, Astyages asked, “Think you that this, which Cyrus has done, is your work?” “It was I,” said the other, “who wrote the letter; the accomplishment of the work is justly mine.” “Then” said Astyages, “you stand confessed the most foolish and most unjust man on earth; most foolish, in giving another the throne which you might have had for yourself, if the present business be indeed your doing most unjust, in enslaving the Medes by reason of that banquet. For if at all hazards another and not yourself must possess the royal power, then in justice some Mede should enjoy it, not a Persian: but now you have made the Medes, who did you no harm, slaves instead of masters and the Persians, who were the slaves, are now the masters of the Medes.”
130. Thus Astyages was deposed from his sovereignty after a reign of thirty-five years: and the Medians were made to bow down before the Persians by reason of Astyages’ cruelty. They had ruled all Asia beyond the Halys for one hundred and twenty-eight years, from which must be taken the time when the Scythians held sway. At a later time they repented of what they now did, and rebelled against Darius; but they were defeated in battle and brought back into subjection. But now, in Astyages’ time, Cyrus and the Persians rose in revolt against the Medes, and from this time ruled Asia. As for Astyages, Cyrus did him no further harm, and kept him in his own house till Astyages died.
This is the story of the birth and upbringing of Cyrus, and thus he became king; and afterwards, as I have already related, he subdued Croesus in punishment for the unprovoked wrong done him; and after this victory he became sovereign of all Asia.
131. As to the usages of the Persians, I know them to be these. It is not their custom to make and set up statues and temples and altars, but those who make such they deem foolish, as I suppose, because they never believed the gods, as do the Greeks, to be in the likeness of men; but they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus, and to him they offer sacrifice on the highest peaks of the mountains; they sacrifice also to the sun and moon and earth and fire and water and winds. These are the only gods to whom they have ever sacrificed from the beginning; they have learnt later, to sacrifice to the “heavenly” Aphrodite, from the Assyrians and Arabians. She is called by the Assyrians Mylitta, by the Arabians Alilat, by the Persians Mitra.
132. And this is their fashion of sacrifice to the aforesaid gods: when about to sacrifice they neither build altars nor kindle fire, they use no libations, nor music, nor fillets, nor barley meal; but to whomsoever of the gods a man will sacrifice, he leads the beast to an open space and then calls on the god, himself wearing a wreath on his cap, of myrtle for choice. To pray for blessings for himself alone is not lawful for the sacrificer; rather he prays that it may be well with the king and all the Persians for he reckons himself among them, He then cuts the victim limb from limb into portions, and having boiled the flesh spreads the softest grass, trefoil by choice, and places all of it on this. When he has so disposed it a Magian comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a Magian. Then after a little while the sacrificer carries away the flesh and uses it as he pleases.
133. The day which every man most honours is his own birthday. On this he thinks it right to serve a more abundant meal than on other days; before the rich are set oxen or horses or camels or asses, roasted whole in ovens; the poorer serve up the lesser kinds of cattle. Their courses are few, the dainties that follow are many and not all served together. This is why the Persians say of the Greeks, that they rise from table still hungry, because not much dessert is set before them: were this too given to the Greek (say the Persians) he would never cease eating. They are greatly given to wine; none may vomit or make water in another’s presence. This then is prohibited among them. Moreover it is their custom to deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk; and what they approve in their counsels is proposed to them the next day by the master of the house where they deliberate, when they are now sober and if being sober they still approve it, they act thereon, but if not, they cast it aside. And when they have taken counsel about a matter when sober, they decide upon it when they are drunk.
134. When one man meets another in the way, it is easy to see if the two are equals; for then without speaking they kiss each other on the lips if the difference in rank be but little, it is the cheek that is kissed; if it be great, the humbler bows down and does obeisance to the other. They honour most of all those who dwell nearest them, next those who are next farthest removed, and so going ever onwards they assign honour by this rule; those who dwell farthest off they hold least honourable of all; for they deem themselves to be in all regards by far the best of all men, the rest to have but a proportionate claim to merit, till those who dwell farthest away have least merit of all. Under the rule of the Medes one tribe would even govern another; the Medes held sway over all alike and specially over those who dwelt nearest to themselves; these ruled their neighbours, and the neighbours again those who came next to them, on the same plan whereby the Persians assign honour; for according as the Median nation advanced its dominion farther from home, such was the measure of its rule and suzerainty.
135. But of all men the Persians most welcome foreign customs. They wear the Median dress, deeming it more beautiful than their own, and the Egyptian cuirass in war. Their luxurious practices are of all kinds, and all borrowed; the Greeks taught them unnatural vices. Every Persian marries many lawful wives, and keeps still more concubines.
136. After valour in battle it is most reckoned as manly merit to show the greatest number of sons: the king sends gifts yearly to him who can show most. Numbers, they hold, are strength. They educate their boys from five to twenty years old, and teach them three things only, riding and archery and truth-telling. A boy is not seen by his father before he is five years old, but lives with the women: the reason of this is that, if the boy should die in the time of his rearing, the father may suffer no dolour.
137. This is a law which I praise; and it is a praiseworthy law too which suffers not the king himself to slay any man for one offence, nor any other Persian for one offence to do incurable hurt to one of his servants. Not till reckoning shows that the offender’s wrongful acts are more and greater than his services may a man give vent to his anger. They say that none has ever yet killed his father or mother; when suchlike deeds have been done, it cannot be but that on inquest made the doer is shown to be a child falsely substituted or born of a concubine for it is not to be believed (say they) that a son should kill his true parent.
138. Moreover of what they may not do neither may they speak. They hold lying to be foulest of all, and next to that debt; for which they have many other reasons, but this in especial, that the debtor must needs (so they say) speak some falsehood. The citizen who has leprosy or the white sickness may not come into a town or consort with other Persians. They say that he is so afflicted because he has sinned in some wise against the sun. Many drive every stranger, who takes such a disease, out of the country; and so they do to white doves, for the reason aforesaid. Rivers they chiefly reverence; they will neither make water nor spit nor wash their hands therein, nor suffer anyone so to do.
139. There is another thing which always happens among them; we have noted it though the Persians have not: their names, which agree with the nature of their persons and their nobility, all end in the same letter, that which the Dorians call san, and the lonians sigma; you shall find, if you search, that not some but all Persian names alike end in this letter.
140. So much I can say of them of my own certain knowledge. But there are other matters concerning the dead which are secretly and obscurely told—how the dead bodies of Persians are not buried before they have been mangled by bird or dog. That this is the way of the Magians I know for a certainty; for they do not conceal the practice. But this is certain, that before the Persians bury the body in earth they embalm it in wax. These Magians are much unlike to the priests of Egypt, as to all other men: for the priests count it sacrilege to kill aught that lives, save what they sacrifice; but the Magians kill with their own hands every creature, save only dogs and men; they kill all alike, ants and snakes, creeping and flying things, and take much pride therein. Leaving this custom to be such as it has been from the first, I return now to my former story.
141. As soon as the Lydians had been subdued by the Persians, the Ionians and Aeolians sent messengers to Cyrus, offering to be his subjects on the same terms as those which they had under Croesus, Having heard what they proposed, Cyrus told them a story. Once, he said, there was a flute-player who saw fishes in the sea and played upon his flute, thinking that so they would come out on to the land. Being disappointed of his hope, he took a net and gathered in and drew out a great multitude of the fishes; and seeing them leaping, “You had best” said he, “cease from your dancing now; you would not come out and dance then, when I played to you.” The reason why Cyrus told the story to the Ionians and Aeolians was that the Ionians, who were ready to obey him when the victory was won, had before refused when he sent a message asking them to revolt from Croesus. So he answered them in his anger. But when the message came to the Ionians in their cities, they fortified themselves severally with walls, and assembled in the Panionion, all except the Milesians, with whom alone Cyrus had made a treaty on the same terms as that which they had with the Lydians. The rest of the Ionians resolved to send envoys in the name of them all to Sparta, to ask help for the Ionians.
142. Now these Ionians, who possessed the Panionion, had set their cities in places more favoured by skies and seasons than any country known to us. For neither to the north of them nor to the south nor to the east nor to the west does the land accomplish the same effect as Ionia, being afflicted here by the cold and wet, there by the heat and drought. They use not all the same speech but four different dialects. Miletus lies farthest south among them, and next to it come Myus and Priene; these are settlements in Caria, and they use a common language; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, all of them being in Lydia, have a language in common which is wholly different from the speech of the three cities aforementioned. There are yet three Ionian cities, two of them situate on the islands of Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, on the mainland; the Chians and Erythraeans speak alike, but the Samians have a language which is their own and none other’s. It is thus seen that there are four fashions of speech.
143. Among these Ionians, the Milesians were sheltered from the danger (for they had made a treaty), and the islanders among them had nothing to fear; for the Phoenicians were not yet subjects of the Persians, nor were the Persians themselves shipmen. But they of Asia were cut off from the rest of the Ionians in no other way save as I shall show. The whole Hellenic race was then but small, and the least of all its parts, and the least regarded, was the Ionian stock; for saving Athens it had no considerable city. Now the Athenians and the rest would not be called Ionians, but spurned the name; nay, even now the greater number of them seem to me to be ashamed of it; but the twelve cities aforesaid gloried in this name, and founded a holy place for themselves which they called the Panionion, and agreed among them to allow no other Ionians to use it (nor indeed did any save the men of Smyrna ask to be admitted);
144. even as the Dorians of what is now the country of the “Five Cities”—the same being formerly called the country of the “Six Cities”—forbid the admitting of any of the neighbouring Dorians to the Triopian temple, nay, they barred from sharing the use of it even those of their own body who had broken the temple law. For long ago in the games in honour of Triopian Apollo they offered certain bronze tripods to the victors; and those who won these must not carry them away from the temple but dedicate them there to the god. Now a man of Halicarnassus called Agasicles, being a winner, disregarded this law, and carrying the tripod away nailed it to the wall of his own house. For this offence the five cities, Lindus, Ialysus, Camirus, Cos, and Cnidus, forbade the sixth city, Halicarnassus, to share in the use of the temple. Such was the penalty imposed on the Halicarnassians.
145. As for the Ionians, the reason why they made twelve cities and would admit no more was in my judgment this, that there were twelve divisions of them when they dwelt in Peloponnesus, just as there are twelve divisions of the Achaeans who drove the Ionians out, Pellene nearest to Sicyon, then Aegira and Aegae, where is the never-failing river Crathis, from which the river in Italy took its name; Bura and Helice, whither the Ionians fled when they were worsted in battle by the Achaeans; Aegion, Rhype, Patrae, Phareae, and Olenus, where is the great river Pirus; Dyme and Tritaeae, the only inland city of all these; these were the twelve divisions of the Ionians, as they are now of the Achaeans.
146. For this reason the Ionians too made twelve cities, and for no other; for it were but foolishness to say that these are more truly Ionian or better born than the other Ionians; seeing that not the least part of them are Abantes from Euboea, who are not Ionians even in name, and that there are mingled with them Minyans of Orchomenus, Cadmeans, Dryopians, Phocian seceders from their nation, Molossians, Pelasgian Arcadians, Dorians of Epidaurus, and many other tribes; and as for those who came from the very town hall of Athens and deem themselves the best born of the Ionians, these did not bring wives with them to their settlements, but married Carian women whose parents they had put to death. For this slaughter, these women made a custom and bound themselves by oath (and enjoined the same on their daughters) that none would sit at meat with her husband nor call him by his name, because the men had married them after slaying their fathers and husbands and sons.
147. This happened at Miletus. And for kings some of them chose Lycian descendants of Glaucus son of Hippolochus, and some Caucones of Pylus, descendants of Codrus son of Melanthus, and some both. Yet seeing that they set more store by the name than the rest of the Ionians, let it be granted that those of pure birth are Ionians; and all are Ionians who are of Athenian descent and keep the feast Apaturia. All do so keep it, saving the men of Ephesus and Colophon; these are the only Ionians who do not keep it, and these by reason, they say, of a certain deed of blood.
148. The Panionion is a sacred ground in Mycale, facing the north; it was set apart for Poseidon of Helicon by the joint will of the Ionians. Mycale is a western promontory of the mainland opposite to Samos; the Ionians were wont to assemble there from their cities and keep the festival to which they gave the name of Panionia. [The names of all the Greek festivals, not the Ionian alone, end alike in the same letter, just as do the names of the Persians.]
149. I have now told of the Ionian cities. The Aeolian cities are these:—Cyme (called “Phriconian”), Lerisae, “the New Fort,” Temnos, Cilia, Notium, Aegiroessa, Pitana, Aegaeae, Myrina, Grynea. These are the ancient Aeolian cities, eleven in number; these, too, the mainland cities, were once twelve; but one of them, Smyrna, was taken away by the Ionians. These Aeolians had settled where the land was better than the Ionian territory, but the climate was not so good.
150. Now this is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. Certain men of Colophon, worsted in civil strife and banished from their country, had been received by them into the town. These Colophonian exiles waited for the time when the men of Smyrna were holding a festival to Dionysus outside the walls; they then shut the gates and so won the city. Then all the Aeolians came to recover it; and an agreement was made, whereby the Aeolians should receive back their movable goods from the Ionians, and quit the city. This being done, the other eleven cities divided the Smyrnaeans among themselves and made them citizens of their own.
151. These then are the Aeolian cities of the mainland, besides those that are situate on Ida, and are separate. Among those on the islands, five divide Lesbos among them (there was a sixth on Lesobs, Arisba, but its people were enslaved by their kinsfolk of Methymna); there is one on Tenedos, and one again in the “Hundred isles” as they are called. The men of Lesbos and Tenedos, then, like the Ionian islanders, had nothing to fear. The rest of the cities took counsel together and resolved to follow whither the Ionians should lead.
152. So when the envoys of the Ionians and Aeolians came to Sparta (for this was set afoot with all speed) they chose the Phocaean, whose name was Pythermos, to speak for all. He then put on a purple cloak, that as many Spartans as possible might assemble to hear him, and stood up and made a long speech asking aid for his people. But the Lacedaemonians would not listen to him and refused to aid the Ionians. So the Ionians departed; but the Lacedaemonians, though they had rejected their envoys, did nevertheless send men in a ship of fifty oars to see (as I suppose) how it fared with Cyrus and Ionia. These, coming to Phocaea, sent Lacrines, who was the most esteemed among them, to Sardis, to repeat there to Cyrus a proclamation of the Lacedaemonians, that he must harm no city on Greek territory else the Lacedaemonians would punish him.
153. When the herald had so spoken, Cyrus (it is said) asked the Greeks that were present who and how many in number were these Lacedaemonians who made him this declaration. When he was told, he said to the Spartan herald, “I never yet feared men who have a place set apart in the midst of their city where they perjure themselves and deceive each other. These, if I keep my health, shall have their own mishaps to talk of, not those of the Ionians.” This threat he uttered against the whole Greek nation, because they have market-places and buy and sell there; for the Persians themselves use no market-places, nor have they such at all. Presently, entrusting Sardis to a Persian called Tabalus, and charging Pactyes, a Lydian, to take charge of the gold of Croesus and the Lydians, he himself marched away to Agbatana, taking with him Croesus, and at first making no account of the Ionians. For he had Babylon on his hands and the Bactrian nation and the Sacae and Egyptians; he was minded to lead an army himself against these and to send another commander against the Ionians.
154. But no sooner had Cyrus marched away from Sardis than Pactyes made the Lydians to revolt from Tabalus and Cyrus; and he went down to the sea, where, as he had all the gold of Sardis, he hired soldiers and persuaded the men of the coast to join his army. Then marching to Sardis he penned Tabalus in the citadel and besieged him there.
155. When Cyrus had news of this on his journey, he said to Croesus, “What end am I to make, Croesus, of this business? it seems that the Lydians will never cease making trouble for me and for themselves. It is in my mind that it may be best to make slaves of them; for now methinks I have done like one that should slay the father and spare the children. So likewise I have taken with me you who were more than a father to the Lydians, and handed the city over to the Lydians themselves; and then forsooth I marvel that they revolt! “So Cyrus uttered his thought; but Croesus feared that he would destroy Sardis, and thus answered him: “O King, what you say is but reasonable. Yet do not ever the former and of the latter offence. For the beginning was my work, and on my head is the penalty; but it is Pactyes, in whose charge you left Sardis, who does this present wrong; let him therefore be punished. But let the Lydians be pardoned; and lay on them this command, that they may not revolt or be dangerous to you; send, I say, and forbid them to possess weapons of war, and command them to wear tunics under their cloaks and buskins on their feet, and to teach their sons lyre-playing and song and dance and huckstering. Then, O king, you will soon see them turned to women instead of men; and thus you need not fear lest they revolt.”
156. Such counsel Croesus gave Cyrus, because he thought this was better for the Lydians than to be sold as slaves; he knew that without some reasonable plea he could not change the king’s purpose, and feared that even if the Lydians should now escape they might afterwards revolt and be destroyed by the Persians. Cyrus was pleased by this counsel; he abated his anger and said he would follow Croesus’ advice. Then calling Mazares, a Mede, he charged him to give the Lydians the commands which Croesus advised; further, to enslave all the others who had joined the Lydians in attacking Sardis; and as for Pactyes himself, to bring him by whatever means into his presence alive.
157. Having given these commands on his journey, he marched away into the Persian country. But Pactyes, learning that an army sent against him was drawing near, was affrighted and fled to Cyme. yield to anger, nor destroy an ancient city that is guiltless both of Mazares the Mede, when he came to Sardis with whatever part he had of Cyrus’ army and found Pactyes’ followers no longer there, first of all compelled the Lydians to carry out Cyrus’ commands; and by his order they changed their whole manner of life. After this, he sent messengers to Cyme demanding that Pactyes be given up. The Cymaeans resolved to make the god at Branchidae their judge as to what counsel they should take; for there was there an ancient place of divination, which all the Ionians and Aeolians were wont to consult; the place is in the land of Miletus, above the harbour of Panormus.
158. The men of Cyme then sent to Branchidae to inquire of the shrine what they should do in the matter of Pactyes that should be most pleasing to the gods; and the oracle replied that they must give Pactyes up to the Persians. When this answer came back to them, they set about giving him up. But while the greater part were for doing this, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a notable man among the citizens, stayed the men of Cyme from this deed; for he disbelieved the oracle and thought that those who had inquired of the god spoke untruly; till at last a second band of inquirers was sent to inquire concerning Pactyes, among whom was Aristodicus.
159. When they came to Branchidae Aristodicus speaking for all put this question to the oracle: “O King, Pactyes the Lydian hath fled to us for refuge to save him from a violent death at the hands of the Persians; and they demand him of us, bidding the men of Cyme to give him up. But we, for all that we fear the Persian power, have not made bold to give up this our suppliant, until thy will be clearly made known to us, whether we shall do this or not.” Thus Aristodicus questioned; and the god gave again the same answer, that Pactyes should be delivered up to the Persians. With that Aristodicus did as he had already purposed; he went round about the temple, and stole away the sparrows and all other families of nesting birds that were in it. But while he so did, a voice (they say) came out of the inner shrine calling to Aristodicus, and saying, “Thou wickedest of men, wherefore darest thou do this? wilt thou rob my temple of those that take refuge with me?” Then Aristodicus had his answer ready: “O King,” said he, “wilt thou thus save thine own suppliants, yet bid the men of Cyme deliver up theirs?” But the god made answer, “Yea, I do bid them, that ye may the sooner perish for your impiety, and never again come to inquire of my oracle concerning the giving up of them that seek refuge with you.”
160. When this answer was brought to the hearing of the Cymaeans they sent Pactyes away to Mytilene; for they desired neither to perish for delivering him up nor to be besieged for keeping him with them. Then Mazares sent a message to Mytilene demanding the surrender of Pactyes, and the Mytilenaeans prepared to give him, for a price; I cannot say with exactness how much it was, for the bargain was never fulfilled; for when the Cymaeans learnt that the Mytilenaeans had this in hand, they sent a ship to Lesbos and brought Pactyes away to Chios. Thence he was dragged out of the temple of City-guarding Athene and delivered up by the Chians, they receiving in return Atarneus, which is a district in Mysia over against Lesbos. The Persians thus received Pactyes and kept him guarded, that they might show him to Cyrus; and for a long time no Chian would offer sacrifice of barley meal from this land of Atarneus to any god, or make sacrificial cakes of what grew there; nothing that came from that country might be used for any sacred rite.
161. Pactyes being then delivered up by the Chians, Mazares presently led his army against those who had helped to besiege Tabalus, and he enslaved the people of Priene, and overran the plain of the Maeandrus, giving it up to his army to pillage, and Magnesia likewise. Immediately after this he died of a sickness.
162. After his death Harpagus came down to succeed him in his command, a Median like Mazares; this is that Harpagus who was entertained by Astyages the Median king at that unnatural feast, and who helped to win the kingship for Cyrus. This man was now made general by Cyrus. When he came to Ionia, he took the cities by building mounds; he would drive the men within their walls and then build mounds against the walls and so take the cities.
163. Phocaea was the first Ionian town that he assailed. These Phocaeans were the earliest of the Greeks to make long sea-voyages: it was they who discovered the Adriatic Sea, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus, not sailing in round freight-ships but in fifty-oared vessels. When they came to Tartessus they made friends with the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius; he ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived an hundred and twenty. The Phocaeans so won this man’s friendship that he first entreated them to leave Ionia and settle in his country where they would; and then, when he could not persuade them to that, and learnt from them how the Median power was increasing, he gave them money to build a wall round their city therewith. Without stint he gave it; for the circuit of the wall is of many furlongs, and all this is made of great stones well fitted together.
164. In such a manner was the Phocaeans’ wall fully made. Harpagus marched against the city and besieged it, but he made overtures, and said that it would suffice him if the Phocaeans would demolish one bastion of the wall and dedicate one house. But the Phocaeans, very wroth at the thought of slavery, said they desired to take counsel for one day, and then they would answer; but while they were consulting, Harpagus must, they said, withdraw his army from the walls. Harpagus said that he knew well what they purposed to do, but that nevertheless he would suffer them to take counsel. So while Harpagus withdrew his army from the walls, the Phocaeans launched their fifty-oared ships, placed in them their children and women and all movable goods, besides the statues from the temples and all things therein dedicated save bronze or stonework or painting, and then themselves embarked and set sail for Chios; and the Persians took Phocaea, thus left uninhabited.
165. The Phocaeans would have bought of the Chians the islands called Oenussae; but the Chians would not sell them, because they feared that the islands would become a market and so their own island be cut off from its trade: so the Phocaeans made ready to sail to Cyrnus, where at the command of an oracle they had twenty years before this built a city called Alalia. Arganthonius was by this time dead. While making ready for their voyage, they first sailed to Phocaea, where they slew the Persian guard to whom Harpagus had entrusted the defence of the city; and this being done, they called down mighty curses on whosoever of themselves should stay behind when the rest sailed. Not only so, but they sank in the sea a mass of iron, and swore never to return to Phocaea before the iron should again appear. But while they prepared to voyage to Cyrnus, more than half of the citizens were taken with a longing and a pitiful sorrow for the city and the life of their land, and they broke their oath and sailed back to Phocaea. Those of them who kept the oath set out to sea from the Oenussae.
166. And when they came to Cyrnus they dwelt there for five years as one body with those who had first come, and they founded temples there. But they harried and plundered all their neighbours: wherefore the Tyrrhenians and Carchedonians made common cause against them, and sailed to attack them each with sixty ships. The Phocaeans also manned their ships, sixty in number, and met the enemy in the sea called Sardonian. They joined battle, and the Phocaeans won, yet it was but a Cadmean victory; for they lost forty of their ships, and the twenty that remained were useless, their rams being twisted awry. Then sailing to Alalia they took on board their children and women and all of their possessions that their ships could hold, and leaving Cyrnus they sailed to Rhegium.
167. As for the crews of the destroyed ships, the Carchedonians and Tyrrhenians drew lots for them: and by far the greater share of them falling to the Tyrrhenian city of Agylla, the Agyllaeans led them out and stoned them to death. But after this all from Agylla, whether sheep or beasts of burden or men, that passed the place where the stoned Phocaeans lay, became distorted and crippled and palsied. The Agyllaeans sent to Delphi, desiring to heal their offence; and the Pythian priestess bade them do what the people of Agylla to this day perform: for they pay great honours to the Phocaeans, with religious rites and games, and horse-races. Such was the end of this portion of the Phocaeans. Those of them who fled to Rhegium set out from thence and gained possession of that Oenotrian city which is now called Hyele; this they founded because they learnt from a man of Posidonia that when the Pythian priestess spoke of founding a settlement and of Cyrnus, it was the hero that she signified and not the island.
168. Thus, then, it fared with the Ionian Phocaea. The Teians did in like manner with the Phocaeans: when Harpagus had taken their walled city by building a mound, they all embarked on shipboard and sailed away for Thrace. There they founded a city, Abdera, which before this had been founded by Timesius of Clazomenae; yet he got no good of it, but was driven out by the Thracians. This Timesius is now honoured as a hero by the Teians of Abdera.
169. These were the only Ionians who, being unable to endure slavery, left their native lands. The rest of the Ionians, except the Milesians, though they faced Harpagus in battle as did the exiles, and bore themselves gallantly, each fighting for his own country, yet, when they were worsted and their cities taken, remained each where he was and did as they were commanded. The Milesians, as I have already said, made a treaty with Cyrus himself and struck no blow. Thus was Ionia for the second time enslaved: and when Harpagus had conquered the Ionians of the mainland, the Ionians of the islands, fearing the same fate, surrendered themselves to Cyrus.
170. When the Ionians, despite their evil plight, did nevertheless assemble at the Panionion, Bias of Priene, as I have heard, gave them very useful advice, which had they followed they might have been the most prosperous of all Greeks: for he counselled them to put out to sea and sail all together to Sardo and then found one city for all Ionians: thus, possessing the greatest island in the world and bearing rule over others, they would be rid of slavery and win prosperity; but if they stayed in Ionia he could see (he said) no hope of freedom for them. Such was the counsel which Bias of Priene gave after the destruction of the Ionians; and good also was that given before the destruction by Thales of Miletus, a Phoenician by descent; he would have had the Ionians make one common place of counsel, which should be in Teos, for that was the centre of Ionia; and the state of the other cities should be held to be no other than if they were but townships. Thus Bias and Thales advised.
171. Harpagus, after subduing Ionia, made an expedition against the Carians, Caunians, and Lycians, taking with him Ionians and Aeolians. Now among these the Carians were a people who had come to the mainland from the islands; for in old time they were islanders, called Leleges and under the rule of Minos, not (as far as I can learn by hearsay) paying him tribute, but manning ships for him when he needed them. Seeing then that Minos had subdued much territory to himself and was victorious in war, this made the Carians too at that time to be very far the most regarded of all nations. Three things they invented in which they were followed by the Greeks: it was the Carians who first taught the wearing of crests on their helmets and devices on their shields, and who first made for their shields holders; till then all who used shields carried them without these holders, and guided them with leathern baldrics which they slung round the neck and over the left shoulder. Then, a long time afterwards, the Carians were driven from the islands by Dorians and Ionians and so came to the mainland. This is the Cretan story about the Carians; but they themselves do not consent to it, but hold that they are aboriginal dwellers on the mainland and ever bore the name which they bear now; and they point to an ancient shrine of Carian Zeus at Mylasa, whereto Mysians and Lydians, as brethren of the Carians (for Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car), are admitted, but none of any other nation, though they learned to speak the same language as the Carians.
172. The Caunians, to my mind, are aborigines of the soil; but they themselves say that they came from Crete. Their speech has grown like to the Carian, or the Carian to theirs (for that I cannot clearly determine), but in their customs they are widely severed from the Carians, as from all other men. Their chief pleasure is to assemble for drinking-bouts in such companies as accord with their ages and friendships—men, women, and children. Certain foreign rites of worship were established among them; but presently when they were otherwise minded, and would worship only the gods of their fathers, all Caunian men of full age put on their armour and went together as far as the boundaries of Calynda, smiting the air with their spears and saying that they were casting out the stranger gods.
173. Such are their fashions. The Lycians were of Crete in ancient times (for of old none that dwelt in Crete were Greek). Now there was a dispute in Crete about the royal power between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europe; Minos prevailed in this division and drove out Sarpedon and his partisans; who, being thrust out, came to the Milyan land in Asia. What is now possessed by the Lycians was of old Milyan, and the Milyans were then called Solymi. For a while Sarpedon ruled them, and the people were called Termilae, which was the name that they had brought with them and that is still given to the Lycians by their neighbours; but after the coming from Athens of Lycus son of Pandion—another exile, another exile, banished by his brother Aegeus—to join Sarpedon in the land of the Termilae, they came in time to be called Lycians after Lycus. Their customs are in part Cretan and in part Carian. But they have one which is their own and shared by no other men; they take their names not from their fathers but from their mothers; and when one is asked by his neighbour who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and recount the mothers of his mother. Nay, if a woman of full rights marry a slave, her children are deemed pure-born; and if a true-born Lycian man take a stranger wife or concubine, the children are dishonoured, though he be the first in the land.
174. Neither then the Carians nor any Greeks who dwell in this country did any deed of note before they were all enslaved by Harpagus. Among those who inhabit it are certain Cnidians, colonists from Lacedaemon. Their country (it is called the Triopion) lies between the sea and that part of the peninsula which belongs to Bubassus, and all but a little part of the Cnidian territory is sea-girt; for it is bounded on the north by the gulf of Ceramicus, and on the south by the sea off Syme and Rhodes. Now while Harpagus was conquering Ionia, the Cnidians dug a trench across this little space, which is about five furlongs wide, in order that so their country might be an island. So they brought it all within the entrenchment; for the frontier between the Cnidian country and the mainland is on the isthmus across which they dug. Many of them were at this work; and seeing that the workers were more often hurt and less naturally than ordinary, some in other parts, but most in the eyes, by the breaking of stones, the Cnidians sent envoys to Delphi to inquire what it was that so hindered them. Then, as they themselves say, the priestess gave them this answer in iambic verse:
At this answer from the priestess the Cnidians ceased from their digging, and when Harpagus came against them with his army they surrendered to him without resistance.
175. There were also certain folk of Pedasa, dwelling inland of Halicarnassus; when any misfortune was coming upon them or their neighbours, the priestess of Athene grew a great beard. This had happened to them thrice. These were the only men near Caria who held out for long against Harpagus, and they gave him the most trouble; they fortified a hill called Lide.
176. The Pedasian stronghold being at length taken, and Harpagus having led his army into the plain of Xanthus, the Lycians came out to meet him, and did valorous deeds in their battle against odds; but being worsted and driven into the city they gathered into the citadel their wives and children and goods and servants, and then set the whole citadel on fire. Then they swore each other great oaths, and sallying out they fell fighting, all the men of Xanthus. Of the Xanthians who claim now to be Lycians the greater number—all saving eighty households—are of foreign descent; these eighty families as it chanced were at that time away from the city, and thus they survived. Thus Harpagus gained Xanthus, and Caunus too in somewhat like manner, the Caunians following for the most part the example of the Lycians.
177. Harpagus then made havoc of lower Asia; in the upper country Cyrus himself subdued every nation, leaving none untouched. Of the greater part of these I will say nothing, but will speak only of those which gave Cyrus most trouble and are worthiest to be described.
178. When Cyrus had brought all the mainland under his sway, he attacked the Assyrians. There are in Assyria many other great cities; but the most famous and the strongest was Babylon, where the royal dwelling had been set after the destruction of Ninus. Babylon was a city such as I will now describe. It lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side an hundred and twenty furlongs in length; thus four hundred and eighty furlongs make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was planned like no other city whereof we know. Round it runs first a fosse deep and wide and full of water, and then a wall of fifty royal cubits’ thickness and two hundred cubits’ height. The royal cubit is greater by three fingers’ breadth than the common cubit.
179. Further, I must show where the earth was used as it was taken from the fosse and in what manner the wall was wrought. As they dug the fosse, they made bricks of the earth which was carried out of the place they dug, and when they had moulded bricks enough they baked them in ovens; then using hot bitumen for cement and interposing layers of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the border of the fosse and then the wall itself in the same fashion. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they built houses of a single chamber, facing each other, with space enough between for the driving of a four-horse chariot. There are an hundred gates in the circle of the wall, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of the same. There is another city, called Is, eight days’ journey from Babylon, where is a little river, also named Is, a tributary stream of the river Euphrates; from the source of this river Is rise with the water many gouts of bitumen; and from thence the bitumen was brought for the wall of Babylon.
180. Thus then was this wall built; the city is divided into two parts; for it is cut in half by a river named Euphrates, a wide, deep, and swift river, flowing from Armenia and issuing into the Red Sea. The ends of the wall, then, on either side are built quite down to the river; here they turn, and hence a fence of baked bricks runs along each bank of the stream. The city itself is full of houses three and four stories high; and the ways which traverse it—those that run crosswise towards the river, and the rest—are all straight. Further, at the end of each road there was a gate in the riverside fence, one gate for each alley; these gates also were of bronze, and these too opened on the river.
181. These walls are the city’s outer armour; within them there is another encircling wall, well-nigh as strong as the other, but narrower. In the midmost of one division of the city stands the royal palace, surrounded by a high and strong wall; and in the midmost of the other is still to this day the sacred enclosure of Zeus Belus, a square of two furlongs each way, with gates of bronze. In the centre of this enclosure a solid tower has been built, of one furlong’s length and breadth; a second tower rises from this, and from it yet another, till at last there are eight. The way up to them mounts spirally outside all the towers; about halfway in the ascent is a halting place, with seats for repose, where those who ascend sit down and rest. In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it a great and well-covered couch is laid, and a golden table set hard by. But no image has been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie therein for the night, except one native woman, chosen from all women by the god, as say the Chaldaeans, who are priests of this god.
182. These same Chaldaeans say (but I do not believe them) that the god himself is wont to visit the shrine and rest upon the couch, even as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say (for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men), and as it is likewise with the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever she be appointed; for there is not always a place of divination there; but when she is appointed she is shut up in the temple during the night.
183. In the Babylonian temple there is another shrine below, where is a great golden image of Zeus, sitting at a great golden table, and the footstool and the chair are also of gold; the gold of the whole was said by the Chaldeans to be of eight hundred talents’ weight. Outside of the temple is a golden altar. There is also another great altar, whereon are sacrificed the full-grown of the flocks; only sucklings may be sacrificed on the golden altar, but on the greater altar the Chaldeans even offer a thousand talents’ weight of frankincense yearly, when they keep the festival of this god; and in the days of Cyrus there was still in this sacred demesne a statue of solid gold twelve cubits high. I myself have not seen it, but I tell what is told by the Chaldeans. Darius son of Hystaspes purposed to take this statue but dared not; Xerxes his son took it, and slew the priest who warned him not to move the statue. Such is the adornment of this temple, and there are many private offerings besides.
184. Now among the many rulers of this city of Babylon (of whom I shall make mention in my Assyrian history), who finished the building of the walls and the temples, there were two that were women. The first of these lived five generations earlier than the second, and her name was Semiramis: it was she who built dykes on the plain, a notable work; before that the whole plain was wont to be flooded by the river.
185. The second queen, whose name was Nitocris, was a wiser woman than the first. She left such monuments as I shall record; and moreover, seeing that the rulers of Media were powerful and unresting, insomuch that Ninus itself among other cities had fallen before them, she took such care as she could for her protection. First she dealt with the river Euphrates, which flows through the middle of her city; this had before been straight; but by digging canals higher up she made the river so crooked that its course now passes thrice by one of the Assyrian villages; the village which is so approached by the Euphrates is called Ardericca. And now those who travel from our seas to Babylon must as they float down the Euphrates spend three days in coming thrice to the same village. Such was this work; and she built an embankment along either shore of the river, marvellous for its greatness and height. Then a long way above Babylon she dug the basin of a lake, a little way aside from the river, digging always deep enough to find water, and making the circuit of the lake a distance of four hundred and twenty furlongs; all that was dug out of the basin she used to embank either edge of the river; and when she had it all dug, she brought stones and made therewith a coping all round the basin. Her purpose in making the river to wind and turning the basin into a marsh was this—that the current might be slower by reason of the many windings that broke its force, and that the passages to Babylon might be crooked, and that next after them should come also the long circuit of the lake. All this work was done in that part of the country where are the passes and the shortest road from Media, that the Medes might not mix with her people and learn of her affairs.
186. So she made the deep river her protection; and from this work grew another which she added to it. Her city was divided into two portions by the river which flowed through the centre. Whenever in the days of the former rulers one would pass over from one part to the other, he must cross in a boat; and this, as I suppose, was troublesome. But the queen provided also for this; when the digging of the basin of the lake was done, she made another monument of her reign out of this same work. She had very long blocks of stone hewn; and when these were ready and the place was dug, she turned the course of the river wholly into it, and while it was filling, the former channel being now dry, she bricked with baked bricks, like those of the wall, the borders of the river in the city and the descents from the gates leading down to the river; also about the middle of the city she built a bridge with the stones which had been dug up, binding them together with iron and lead. She laid across it square-hewn logs each morning, whereon the Babylonians crossed; but these logs were taken away for the night, lest folk should be ever crossing over and stealing from each other. Then, when the basin she had made for a lake was filled by the river and the bridge was finished, Nitocris brought the Euphrates back to its former channel out of the lake; thus she had served her purpose, as she thought, by making a swamp of the basin, and her citizens had a bridge ready for them.
187. There was a trick, moreover, which this same queen contrived. She had a tomb made for herself and set high over the very gate of that entrance or the city which was most used, with a writing graven on the tomb, which was this: “If any king of Babylon in future time lack money, let him open this tomb and take what so money he desires: but let him not open it except he lack; for it will be the worse for him.” This tomb remained untouched till the kingship fell to Darius. He thought it a very strange thing that he should never use this gate, nor take the money when it lay there and the writing itself invited him to the deed. The cause of his not using the gate was that the dead body must be over his head as he passed through. Having opened the tomb, he found there no money, but only the dead body, with this writing: “Wert thou not insatiate of wealth and basely desirous of gain, thou hadst not opened the coffins of the dead.” Such a woman, it is recorded, was this queen.
188. Cyrus, then, marched against Nitocris’ son, who inherited the name of his father Labynetus and the sovereignty of Assyria. Now when the Great King marches he goes well provided with food and flocks from home; and water from the Choaspes which flows past Susa is carried with him, whereof alone, and of none other, the king drinks. This water of the Choaspes is boiled, and very many four wheeled waggons drawn by mules carry it in silver vessels, following the king whithersoever he goes at any time.
189. When Cyrus on his way to Babylon came to the river Gyndes, which rises in the mountains of the Matieni and flows through the Dardanean country into another river, the Tigris, which again passes the city of Opis and issues into the Red Sea—when Cyrus, I say, essayed to cross the Gyndes, it being there navigable, one of his sacred white horses dashed recklessly into the river that he might win through it, but the stream whelmed him and swept him under and away. At this violent deed of the river Cyrus was very wroth, and he threatened it that he would make it so weak that women should ever after cross it easily without wetting their knees. Having so threatened he ceased from his march against Babylon, and dividing his army into two parts he drew lines planning out a hundred and eighty canals running every way from either bank of the Gyndes; then he arrayed his army along the lines and bade them dig. Since a great multitude was at the work it went with all speed; yet they spent the whole summer there before it was finished.
190. Then at the opening of the second spring, when Cyrus had punished the Gyndes by parting it among the three hundred and sixty canals, he marched at last against Babylon. The Babylonians sallied out and awaited him; and when in his march he came near to their city, they joined battle, but they were worsted and driven within the city. There, because they knew already that Cyrus was no man of peace, and saw that he attacked all nations alike, they had stored provision enough for very many years; so now they cared nothing for the siege; and Cyrus knew not what to do, being so long delayed and gaining no advantage.
191. Whether, then, someone advised him in his difficulty, or he perceived for himself what to do, I know not, but this he did: he posted his army at the place where the river enters the city, and another part of it where the stream issues from the city, and bade his men enter the city by the channel of the Euphrates when they should see it to be fordable. Having so arrayed them and given this command, he himself marched away with those of his army who could not fight; and when he came to the lake, Cyrus dealt with it and with the river just as had the Babylonian queen; drawing off the river by a canal into the lake, which was till now a marsh, he made the stream to sink till its former channel could be forded. When this happened, the Persians who were posted with this intent made their way into Babylon by the channel of the Euphrates, which had now sunk about to the height of the middle of a man’s thigh. Now if the Babylonians had known beforehand or learnt what Cyrus was planning, they would have suffered the Persians to enter the city and brought them to a miserable end; for then they would have shut all the gates that opened on the river and themselves mounted up on to the walls that ran along the river banks, and so caught their enemies as in a trap. But as it was, the Persians were upon them unawares, and by reason of the great size of the city—so say those who dwell there—those in the outer parts of it were overcome, yet the dwellers in the middle part knew nothing of it; all this time they were dancing and making merry at a festival which chanced to be toward, till they learnt the truth but too well.
192. Thus was Babylon then for the first time taken. There are many proofs of the wealth of Babylon, but this in especial. All the land ruled by the great King is parcelled out for the provisioning of himself and his army, besides that it pays tribute: now the territory of Babylon feeds him for four out of the twelve months in the year, the whole of the rest of Asia providing for the other eight. Thus the wealth of Assyria is one third of the whole wealth of Asia. The governorship, which the Persians call “satrapy,” of this land is by far the greatest of all the governorships; seeing that the daily revenue of Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus, governing this province by the king’s will, was an artaba full of silver (the artaba is a Persian measure, containing more by three Attic choenixes than an Attic medimnus), and besides war chargers he had in his stables eight hundred stallions, and sixteen thousand brood mares, each stallion serving twenty mares. Moreover he kept so great a number of Indian dogs that four great villages of the plain were appointed to provide food for the dogs and eased from all other burdens. Such were the riches of the governor of Babylon.
193. There is but little rain in Assyria. It is this which nourishes the roots of the corn; but it is irrigation from the river that ripens the crop and brings the grain to fulness: it is not as in Egypt, where the river itself rises and floods the fields: in Assyria they are watered by hand and by swinging beams. For the whole land of Babylon, like Egypt, is cut across by canals. The greatest of these is navigable: it runs towards where the sun rises in winter, from the Euphrates to another river, the Tigris, by which stood the city of Ninus. This land is of all known to us by far the most fertile in corn. Trees it does not even essay to grow, fig, vine, or olive, but its corn is so abundant that it yields for the most part two hundred fold, and even three hundred fold when the harvest is best. The blades of the wheat and barley there are easily four fingers broad; and for millet and sesame, I will not say, though it is known to me, to what a height they grow; for I am well aware that even what I have said respecting corn is wholly disbelieved by those who have never visited Babylonia. They use no oil save what they make from sesame. There are palm trees there growing all over the plain, most of them yielding fruit, from which food is made and wine and honey. The Assyrians tend these like figs, and chiefly in this respect, that they tie the fruit of the palm called male by the Greeks to the date-bearing palm, that so the gall-fly may enter the dates and cause them to ripen, and that the fruit of the palm may not fall; for the male palms, like unripened figs, have gall-flies in their fruit.
194. I will now show what seems to me to be the most marvellous thing in the country, next to the city itself. Their boats which ply on the river and go to Babylon are all of skins, and round. They make these in Armenia, higher up the stream than Assyria. First they cut frames of willow, then they stretch hides over these for a covering, making as it were a hold; they neither broaden the stern nor narrow the prow, but the boat is round, like a shield. They then fill it with reeds and send it floating down the river with a cargo; and it is for the most part palm wood casks of wine that they carry down. Two men standing upright steer the boat, each with a paddle, one drawing it to him, the other thrusting it from him. These boats are of all sizes, some small, some very great; the greatest of them are even of five thousand talents burden. There is a live ass in each boat, or more than one in the larger. So when they have floated down to Babylon and disposed of their cargo, they sell the framework of the boat and all the reeds; the hides are set on the backs of asses, which are then driven back to Armenia, for it is not by any means possible to go up stream by water, by reason of the swiftness of the current; it is for this reason that they make their boats of hides and not of wood. When they have driven their asses back into Armenia they make more boats in the same way.
195. Such then are their boats. For clothing, they wear a linen tunic, reaching to the feet; over this the Babylonian puts on another tunic, of wool, and wraps himself in a white mantle; he wears the shoes of his country, which are like Boeotian sandals. Their hair is worn long, and covered by caps; the whole body is perfumed. Every man has a seal and a carven staff, and on every staff is some image, such as that of an apple or a rose or a lily or an eagle: no one carries a staff without a device.
196. Such is the equipment of their persons. I will now speak of their established customs. The wisest of these, in my judgment, is one which as I have heard is also a custom of the Eneti in Illyria. It is this: once a year in every village all the maidens as they came to marriageable age were collected and brought together into one place, with a crowd of men standing round. Then a crier would display and offer them for sale one by one, first the fairest of all; and then when she had fetched a great price he put up for sale the next comeliest, selling all the maidens as lawful wives. Rich men of Assyria who desired to marry would outbid each other for the fairest; the commonalty, who desired to marry and cared nothing for beauty, could take the ill-favoured damsels and money therewith; for when the crier had sold all the comeliest, he would put up her that was least beautiful, or crippled, and offer her to whosoever would take her to wife for the least sum, till she fell to him who promised to accept least; the money came from the sale of the comely damsels, and so they paid the dowry of the ill-favoured and the cripples. But a man might not give his daughter in marriage to whomsoever he would, nor might he that bought the girl take her away without giving security that he would indeed make her his wife. And if the two could not agree, it was a law that the money be returned. Men might also come from other villages to buy if they so desired. This then was their best custom; but it does not continue at this time; they have invented a new one lately [that the woman might not be wronged or taken to another city]; since the conquest of Babylon made them afflicted and poor, everyone of the commonalty that lacks a livelihood makes prostitutes of his daughters.
197. I come now to the next wisest of their customs: having no use for physicians, they carry the sick into the market-place; then those who have been afflicted themselves by the same ill as the sick man’s, or seen others in like case, come near and advise him about his disease and comfort him, telling him by what means they have themselves recovered of it or seen others so recover. None may pass by the sick man without speaking and asking what is his sickness.
198. The dead are embalmed in honey for burial, and their dirges are like to the dirges of Egypt. Whenever a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, they both sit before a burnt offering of incense, and at dawn they wash themselves; they will touch no vessel before this is done. This is the custom also in Arabia.
199. The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land once in her life to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to consort with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and there stand with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the stranger men pass and make their choice. When a woman has once taken her place there she goes not away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I demand thee in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It matters not what be the sum of the money; the woman will never refuse, for that were a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects none. After their intercourse she has made herself holy in the goddess’s sight and goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like to this in some parts of Cyprus.
200. These are established customs among the Babylonians. Moreover, there are in the country three tribes that eat nothing but fish, which they catch and dry in the sun; then after casting them into a mortar they bray them with pestles and strain all through linen. Then whoever so desires kneads as it were a cake of it and eats it; others bake it like bread.
201. When Cyrus had conquered this nation also, he desired to subdue the Massagetae. These are said to be a great people and a mighty, dwelling towards the east and the sunrise, beyond the Araxes and over against the Issedones; and some say that they are a Scythian people.
202. The Araxes is by some said to be greater and by some less than the Ister. It is reported that there are many islands in it as big as Lesbos, and men thereon who in summer live on roots of all kinds that they dig up, and in winter on fruit that they get from trees and store when it is ripe for food; and they know (it is said) of trees which have a fruit whereof this is the effect: assembling in companies and kindling a fire, the people sit round it and throw the fruit into the flames, then the smell of it as it burns makes them drunk as the Greeks are with wine, and more and more drunk as more fruit is thrown on the fire, till at last they rise up to dance and even sing. Such is said to be their way of life. The Araxes flows from the country of the Matieni—as does the Gyndes, which Cyrus divided into the three hundred and sixty channels—and empties itself through forty mouths, whereof all except one issue into bogs and swamps, where men are said to live whose food is raw fish, and their customary dress sealskins. The one remaining stream of the Araxes flows in a clear channel into the Caspian sea.
203. This is a sea by itself, not joined to the other sea. For that whereon the Greeks sail, and the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which they call Atlantic, and the Red Sea, are all one: but the Caspian is separate and by itself. Its length is what a ship rowed by oars can traverse in fifteen days, and its breadth, where it is broadest, is an eight days’ journey. Along its western shore stretches the range of Caucasus, which has more and higher mountains than any other range. Many and all manner of nations dwell in the Caucasus, and the most of them live on the fruits of the wild wood. Here, it is said, are trees growing leaves that men crush and mix with water and use for the painting of figures on their clothing; these figures cannot be washed out, but last as long as the wool, as if they had been woven into it from the first. Men and women here (they say) have intercourse openly, like beasts of the flock.
204. This sea called Caspian is hemmed in to the west by the Caucasus: towards the east and the sunrise there stretches from its shores a boundless plain as far as sight can reach. The greater part of this wide plain is the country of the Massagetae, against whom Cyrus was eager to lead his army. For there were many reasons of weight that heartened and encouraged him so to do: first, his birth, whereby he seemed to be something more than mortal man, and next, his victories in his wars; for no nation that Cyrus undertook to attack could escape from him.
205. Now at this time the Massagetae were ruled by a queen, called Tomyris, whose husband was dead. Cyrus sent a message with a pretence of wooing her for his wife, but Tomyris would have none of this advance, well understanding that he wooed not her but the kingdom of the Massagetae. So when guile availed him nothing Cyrus marched to the Araxes and openly prepared to attack the Massagetae; he bridged the river that his army might cross, and built towers on the pontoons that should carry his men over.
206. But while he was at this work Tomyris sent a herald to him with this message: “Cease, king of the Medes, from that on which you are intent; for you cannot know if the completion of this work will be for your advantage. Cease, and be king of your own country; and be patient to see us ruling those whom we rule. But if you will not take this counsel, and will do all rather than remain at peace, then if you so greatly desire to essay the strength of the Massagetae, do you quit your present labour of bridging the river, and suffer us to draw off three days’ journey from the Araxes; and when that is done, cross into our country. Or if you desire rather to receive us into your country, do you then yourself withdraw as I have said.” Hearing this, Cyrus assembled the chief among the Persians and laid the matter before them, asking them to advise him which he should do. They all spoke to the same purpose, urging him to suffer Tomyris and her army to enter his country.
207. But Croesus the Lydian, who was present, was displeased by their counsel and spoke against it. “Sire,” said he, “you have ere now heard from me that since Zeus has given me to you I will to the best of my power turn aside whatever mischance I see threatening your house. And disaster has been my teacher. Now if you deem yourself and the army that you lead to be immortal, it is not for me to give you advice; but if you know that you and those whom you rule are but men, then I must first teach you this: men’s fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever. Then, if that be true, I am not of the same mind on the business in hand as these your other counsellors. This is the danger if we agree to suffer the enemy to enter your country: if you lose the battle you lose your empire also, for it is plain that if the Massagetae win they will not retreat back but will march against your provinces. And if you conquer them it is a lesser victory than if you crossed into their country and routed the Massagetae and pursued them; for I balance your chances against theirs, and suppose that when you have worsted your adversaries you will march for the seat of Tomyris’ power. And besides what I have shown, it were a thing shameful and not to be borne that Cyrus the son of Cambyses should yield and give ground before a woman. Now therefore it is in my mind that we should cross and go forward as far as they go back, and that then we should endeavour to overcome them by doing as I shall show. As I learn, the Massagetae have no experience of the good things of Persia, nor have they ever fared well in respect of what is gr I counsel you to cut up the flesh of many of your sheep and goats into portions unstintingly, and to cook it and serve it as a feast in our camp, providing many bowls of unmixed wine withal and all manner of food. Then let your army withdraw to the river again, leaving behind that part of it which is of least account. For if I err not in my judgment, when the Massagetae see so many good things they will betake them to feasting thereon; and it will be for us then to achieve mighty deeds.”
208. So these opinions contended; and Cyrus set aside his former plan and chose that of Croesus; wherefore he bade Tomyris draw her army off, for he would cross (he said) and attack her; so she withdrew as she had promised before. Then he gave Croesus to the care of his own son Cambyses, to whom he purposed to leave his sovereignty, charging Cambyses to honour Croesus and entreat him well, if the crossing of the river against the Massagetae should not prosper. With this charge he sent the two back to Persia, and crossed the river, he and his army.
209. Then, being now across the Araxes, he dreamt at night while sleeping in the country of the Massagetae, that he saw the eldest of the sons of Hystaspes wearing wings on his shoulders, the one wing overshadowing Asia and the other Europe. (Hystaspes son of Arsames was an Achaemenid, and Darius was the eldest of his sons, being then about twenty years old; this Darius had been left behind in Persia, being not yet of an age to follow the army.) So when eatly desirable. For these men, therefore, Cyrus awoke he considered his vision, and because it seemed to him to be of great import, he sent for Hystaspes and said to him privately, “I find, Hystaspes, that your son is guilty of plotting against me and my sovereignty; and I will tell you how I know this for a certainty. I am a man for whom the gods take thought, and show me beforehand all that is coming. Now this being so, I have seen in a dream in the past night your eldest son with wings on his shoulders, overshadowing Asia with the one and Europe with the other; wherefore it is from this vision most certain that he is plotting against me. Do you therefore go with all speed back to Persia, and so act that when I come thither after subduing this country you shall bring your son before me to be questioned of this.”
210. So spoke Cyrus, thinking that Darius was plotting against him; but in truth heaven was showing him that he himself was to die in the land where he was, and Darius to inherit his kingdom. So then Hystaspes answered him thus:—“Sire, the gods forbid that any Persian born should plot against you! but if such there be, may he speedily perish; for you have made the Persians freemen instead of slaves and rulers of all instead of subjects. But if your vision does indeed tell that my son is planning aught to your hurt, take him; he is yours to use as pleases you.”
211. Having so answered, Hystaspes returned across the Araxes to Persia to watch Darius for Cyrus; and Cyrus, going forward a day’s journey from the Araxes, did according to Croesus’ advice. After this Cyrus and the sound part of the Persian army marched away back to the Araxes, leaving behind those that were useless; whereupon a third part of the host of the Massagetae attacked those of the army who were left behind and slew them despite resistance; then, seeing the banquet spread, when they had overcome their enemies they sat down and feasted, and after they had taken their fill of food and wine they fell asleep. Then the Persians came upon them and slew many and took many more alive, among whom was the son of Tomyris the queen, Spargapises by name, the leader of the Massagetae.
212. When Tomyris heard what had befallen her army and her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus with this message:—“Bloodthirsty Cyrus, be not uplifted by this that you have done; it is no matter for pride if the fruit of the vine—that fruit whereof you Persians drink even to madness, so that the wine passing into your bodies makes evil words to rise in a flood to your lips—has served you as a drug to master my son withal, by guile and not in fair fight. Now therefore take this word of good counsel from me: give me back my son and depart unpunished from this country; it is enough that you have done despite to a third part of the host of the Massagetae. But if you will not do this, then I swear by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that for all you are so insatiate of blood, I will give you your fill thereof.”
213. This message was brought to Cyrus, who cared nothing for it. But Spargapises, the son of the queen Tomyris, when his drunkenness left him and he knew his evil plight, entreated Cyrus that he might be loosed from his bonds; and this was granted him; but no sooner was he loosed and had the use of his hands, than he made away with himself.
214. Such was the end of Spargapises. Tomyris, when Cyrus would not listen to her, collected all her power and joined battle with him. This fight I judge to have been the stubbornest of all fights that were ever fought by men that were not Greek; and indeed I have learnt that this was so. For first (it is said) they shot at each other from a distance with arrows; presently, their arrows being all shot away, they rushed upon each other and fought at grips with their spears and their daggers; and for a long time they battled foot to foot and neither would give ground; but at last the Massagetae had the mastery. There perished the greater part of the Persian army, and there fell Cyrus himself, having reigned thirty years in all save one. Tomyris filled a skin with human blood, and sought for Cyrus’ body among the Persian dead; when she found it, she put his head into the skin, and spoke these words of insult to the dead man: “Though I live and conquer thee, thou hast undone me, overcoming my son by guile; but even as I threatened, so will I do, and give thee thy fill of blood.” Many stories are related of Cyrus’ death; this, that I have told, is the worthiest of credence.
215. These Massagetae are like the Scythians in their dress and manner of life. They are both horsemen and footmen (having some of each kind), and spearmen and bowmen; and it is their custom to carry battle-axes. They ever use gold and bronze; all their spear-points and arrow-heads and battle-axes are of bronze, and gold is the adornment of their headgear and belts and girdles. They treat their horses in like manner, arming their forehands with bronze breastplates and putting gold on reins, bits, and cheekplates. But iron and silver they never use; for there is none at all in their country, but gold and bronze abounds.
216. Now, for their customs: each man marries a wife, but the wives are common to all. The Greeks say this is a Scythian custom; it is not so, but a custom of the Massagetae. There, when a man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver before her waggon, and has intercourse with her, none hindering. Though they set no certain term to life, yet when a man is very old all his kin meet together and kill him, with beasts of the flock besides, then boil the flesh and feast on it. This is held to be the happiest death; when a man dies of a sickness they do not eat him, but bury him in the earth, and lament that he would not live to be killed. They never sow; their fare is their live-stock and the fish which they have in abundance from the Araxes. Their drink is milk. The sun is the only god whom they worship; to him they sacrifice horses; the reason of it is that he is the swiftest of the gods and therefore they give him the swiftest of mortal things.