page_title: Croesus
section_title: Croesus' votive offerings to Delphi
hierarchical_section_title: Croesus / Legendary biography / Croesus' votive offerings to Delphi
caption_attribution_description: English: Silver croeseid issued by King Croesus of Lydia (561–545 BC), obverse: lion and bull protomes. Français&#160;: Créséide d'argent du roi Crésus de Lydie (561-545 av. J.-C.), droit&#160;: protomés affrontées de lion et de taureau.
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: According to Herodotus, Croesus desired to discover which of the well known oracles of his time gave trustworthy omens. He sent ambassadors to the most important oracles ordering that on the 100th day from their departure from Sardis they should ask what the king of the Lydians, Croesus, son of Alyattes was doing on this exact date. 
  Then on the 100th day the envoys entered the oracle of Delphi in order to ask for the omen, the Pythia answered in verse:
  I know the sand's number and the measures of the sea.
  
  I understand the mute and hear him though he does not speak.
  
  The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise
  
  Being cooked in bronze together with lamb's meat;
  
  There is bronze beneath it and with bronze it has been covered.
  The envoys wrote down the answer and returned to Sardis. Croesus read all the answers brought by his envoys from all the oracles. As soon as he read the answer of the Pythia he bowed, because he was persuaded that it was the only real oracle, along with that of Amphiaraus. Indeed, on the specific date Croesus had put pieces of a tortoise and lamb to boil together in a bronze cauldron, covered with a bronze lid. Then, Croesus wanted to thank and take on his side the oracle of Delphi. He sacrificed three thousand of all kinds of sacrificial animals. Then he lit a bonfire and burned precious objects. After the sacrifice he melted down gold and made golden blocks, each one 2.5 talents. He ordered his artists to make the copy of a lion out of pure gold, weighing ten talents. At the time of Herodotus this was situated at the Treasury of the Corinthians in Delphi, but 3.5 talents lighter, as the priests had melted down part of it. Croesus also sent along two enormous krateres (wine-mixing bowls), one made of gold and one made of silver, situated on one side and the other of the entrance to the temple of Apollo. After the fire which destroyed the temple, these krateres were transferred elsewhere: the golden one was transferred to the treasury of the Klazomenians, whereas the silver one was placed again in the vestibule of the new temple. Within this krater took place the mixing of water and wine during the Theophania. In Delphi they used to say that this one had been made by Theodorus of Samos. The votive offerings of Croesus comprised also four silver pithoi (storage jars), situated at the Treasury of the Corinthians, and two perirrhanteria (basins for purification water) made of precious metals and a statue of a woman made of gold; they said that it depicted the woman who kneaded Croesus' bread. Finally, he dedicated the pendants and belts of his wife as well as other simpler and smaller liturgical objects and a golden shield which he offered to the Archaic temple of Athena Pronaia, later on melted by the Phocians in the course of the Third Sacred War.
caption: Silver croeseid issued by King Croesus of Lydia (561–545 BC), obverse: lion and bull protomes.
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