page_title: Croesus
section_title: Campaign against Persia and testing of oracle
hierarchical_section_title: Croesus / Legendary biography / Campaign against Persia and testing of oracle
caption_attribution_description: English: Defeat of Croesus 546 BCE
context_page_description: Croesus was the king of Lydia who, according to Herodotus, reigned for 14 years: from 560 BC until his defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 546 BC.
  Croesus was renowned for his wealth; Herodotus and Pausanias noted that his gifts were preserved at Delphi. The fall of Croesus had a profound effect on the Greeks, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least," J. A. S. Evans has remarked, "Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology."
  The name of Croesus was not attested in contemporary inscriptions in Lydian language. In 2019, D. Sasseville and K. Euler published a research of Lydian coins apparently minted during his rule, where the name of the ruler was rendered as Qλdãns.
context_section_description: Croesus' uneasy relations with the Ionian Greeks obscures the larger fact that he was the last bastion of the Ionian cities against the increasing Persian power in Anatolia. He began preparing a campaign against Cyrus the Great of Persia.
  Before setting out, he turned to the Delphic oracle and the oracle of Amphiaraus to inquire whether he should pursue this campaign and whether he should also seek an alliance. The oracles answered, with typical ambiguity, that if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire (ἢν στρατεύηται ἐπὶ Πέρσας, μεγάλην ἀρχὴν μιν καταλύσειν) – this would become one of the most famous oracular statements from Delphi.
  The oracles also advised Croesus to find out which Greek state was most powerful and to ally himself with it. Croesus, now feeling secure, formed an alliance with Sparta in addition to those he had with Amasis II of Egypt and Nabonidus of Babylonia, and launched his campaign against the Persian Empire in 547 BC. (The scholar Evans in 1978 examines the conflicting dates implied in Herodotus.) Croesus was intercepted near the Halys River in central Anatolia and an inconclusive battle was fought at Pteria. It was the usual practice in those days for the armies to disband for winter and Croesus did so accordingly. Cyrus did not, however, and he attacked and defeated Croesus in Thymbria and later in Sardis, eventually capturing him. It became clear that the powerful empire destroyed by the war was Croesus's own.
caption: Defeat of Croesus at the Battle of Thymbra, 546 BC.
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