Book 1: Clio

Chapter 1

Herodotus of Halicarnassus here sets forth the fruit of his inquiry, so that human achievements may not fade with time, and the great and marvelous deeds—some wrought by Greeks, others by foreigners—may not go unrenowned, and above all the cause for which they went to war with one another.

1The learned among the Persians say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the quarrel. These, they say, came from the sea called the Erythraean Sea to this sea here, and settled in the place where they live even now; and presently they took to long voyages, carrying Egyptian and Assyrian wares, and among other places they came also to Argos.

2Now at that time Argos stood preeminent above everything in the land that is now called Hellas. When the Phoenicians reached this Argos, they set out their cargo for sale.

3Then on the fifth or sixth day after their arrival, when they had sold off nearly everything, women came down to the shore, many others besides and among them the king's daughter; and her name, as the Greeks also tell it, was Io, daughter of Inachus.

4These women stood by the stern of the ship and bought of the wares whatever pleased them most; and the Phoenicians, calling out to one another, rushed upon them. Most of the women escaped, but Io was seized along with others; and bundling them aboard the ship, the Phoenicians sailed away for Egypt.

Chapter 2

1Such, the Persians say, was how Io came to Egypt—not as the Greeks tell it—and that this was the first wrong committed. After this, certain Greeks (for they cannot tell the name) put in at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa. These, I would guess, were Cretans. So it was matched wrong for wrong; but after that, the Greeks were the ones to blame for the second wrong.

2For sailing in a long ship to Aea in Colchis and to the river Phasis, they accomplished the rest of the business for which they had come, and carried off the king's daughter Medea.

3Then the king of the Colchians sent a herald to Hellas to demand satisfaction for the abduction and to ask for his daughter back. But the Greeks replied that they had never given satisfaction for the carrying off of Io of Argos; and so neither would they give any to the Colchians.

Chapter 3

1Then, in the next generation after this, so they say, Alexander, son of Priam, hearing of these things, desired to win himself a wife from Hellas by force, knowing full well that he would pay no price—for those others had paid none either.

2And so, when he had carried off Helen, the Greeks first resolved to send messengers to demand Helen and to ask satisfaction for the abduction. But when these demands were put to them, the Trojans threw back at them the seizure of Medea—how they had neither paid the price themselves nor given her up on demand, and now wished satisfaction to be exacted from others.

Chapter 4

1Up to that point, then, there had been only abductions on both sides; but from then on it was the Greeks who were greatly to blame, for they were the first to march an army into Asia, before the others came into Europe.

2Now to my mind, to carry off women is the act of unjust men, but to make a great to-do about avenging their seizure is the act of fools; the sensible man pays no heed at all to women who have been carried off—for it is plain that had they not been willing, they would not have been seized.

3The Persians say that those of Asia, when their women were carried off, took no account of it at all; but the Greeks, for the sake of one woman from Lacedaemon, gathered a great armament, and then crossed into Asia and destroyed the power of Priam.

4From that time on they have always held the Greek people to be their enemy. For the Persians claim Asia and the peoples who dwell in it as their own, while Europe and the Greeks they hold to be a world apart.

Chapter 5

1Such, then, the Persians say was how it happened, and in the taking of Ilium they find the beginning of their enmity toward the Greeks.

2About Io, however, the Phoenicians do not tell the same story as the Persians. They say it was not by force that they carried her off to Egypt; rather, at Argos she was sleeping with the master of the ship, and when she learned she was with child, ashamed to face her parents, she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own free will, so that her condition would not come to light.

3So much the Persians and the Phoenicians say. For my part, I am not going to declare that these things happened thus or in some other way; rather, having pointed out the man I know myself to have first committed wrongs against the Greeks, I will go forward with my account, passing over alike the small and the great cities of mankind.

4For of the things that were great long ago, most have grown small, and those that were great in my own time were small before. Knowing, then, that human happiness never stays in the same place, I will make mention of both alike.

Chapter 6

1Croesus was a Lydian by birth, son of Alyattes, and ruler of the peoples this side of the river Halys, which, flowing from the south between the Syrians and the Paphlagonians, empties toward the north into the sea called the Euxine.

2This Croesus was the first of the barbarians whom we know to have subdued some of the Greeks to the payment of tribute and made others his friends. He subdued the Ionians and the Aeolians and the Dorians in Asia, and made the Lacedaemonians his friends.

3Before the rule of Croesus all Greeks were free; for the Cimmerian army that came into Ionia, being older than Croesus, did not conquer the cities but only raided and plundered them.

Chapter 7

1The sovereignty passed in this way, out of the house of the Heracleidae to the family of Croesus, who are called Mermnadae.

2There was Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, ruler of Sardis, a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Heracles. For Agron, son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Alcaeus, was the first of the Heracleidae to be king of Sardis, and Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last.

3Those who ruled this land before Agron were descendants of Lydus, son of Atys, from whom the whole people took the name Lydians, though they were called Maeonians before.

4From these the Heracleidae received the power by an oracle, being born of the slave woman of Iardanus and of Heracles; and they held it for twenty-two generations of men, five hundred and five years, son taking the power from father, until Candaules, son of Myrsus.

Chapter 8

1This Candaules, then, fell in love with his own wife, and in his passion believed her to be far more beautiful than any other woman. And since he thought so—and he had among his spearmen one Gyges, son of Dascylus, who pleased him above all others—Candaules entrusted to this Gyges even the weightiest of his affairs, and went so far as to praise his wife's beauty beyond measure.

2Not long afterward (for Candaules was destined to come to a bad end), he spoke to Gyges as follows: "Gyges, I do not think you believe me when I speak of my wife's beauty—for men's ears, as it happens, are less trustworthy than their eyes. Arrange, then, to look upon her naked."

3But Gyges cried out and said: "Master, what an ill-judged command is this you lay upon me—to look upon my mistress naked? For along with her tunic a woman strips off her modesty as well."

4"Long ago the things that are good have been found out for men, and from these we must learn; among them is this one: look to your own. For my part, I believe that she is the most beautiful of all women, and I beg you not to ask me for what is against all law."

Chapter 9

1So he spoke, resisting as best he could, fearing that some harm would come to him from it. But the other answered him thus: "Take heart, Gyges, and fear neither me—that I say this to put you to the test—nor my wife, that any hurt should come to you from her. For I will so contrive matters that she will not even know she has been seen by you."

2"I will stand you in the chamber where we sleep, behind the door as it opens; and after I have gone in, my wife also will come to bed. A chair stands near the entrance; upon this she will lay her garments down one by one as she takes them off, and at her leisure she will give you a fine chance to look at her."

3"Then, when she steps from the chair toward the bed and her back is turned to you, take care from that moment that she does not see you leaving through the doors."

Chapter 10

1When he saw that he could not escape, he was ready. And Candaules, when the hour of bed seemed to be at hand, brought Gyges into the chamber; and presently the woman too came in. As she entered and laid aside her garments, Gyges looked on.

2But when the woman had turned her back and was going toward the bed, he slipped out and made for the door—and the woman saw him going out. Realizing what her husband had done, she did not cry out in her shame, nor did she show that she had noticed, keeping it in her mind to make Candaules pay.

3For among the Lydians, and indeed among the other barbarians as well, for a man to be seen naked is a matter of the deepest shame.

Chapter 11

1At the time, then, she showed nothing and kept her peace. But as soon as it was day, she made ready those of her servants whom she saw to be most loyal to her, and summoned Gyges. He came at her call, thinking she knew nothing of what had been done; for it was his custom even before to come whenever the queen sent for him.

2When Gyges had come, the woman spoke as follows: "Now, Gyges, with two courses before you, I give you the choice of which you would turn to. Either kill Candaules and have me and the kingdom of the Lydians, or you yourself must die here and now—so that no longer, obeying Candaules in everything, you may see what you have no right to see."

3"Either the man who contrived this must perish, or you, who looked upon me naked and did what is not the custom." Gyges for a while stood amazed at what was said, and then besought her not to compel him to decide between such a choice.

4But when he could not persuade her, and saw that a real necessity lay before him—either to destroy his master or to be destroyed himself by others—he chose to survive. He questioned her then, saying: "Since you compel me to kill my master against my will, come now—let me hear in what way and by what means we shall set upon him."

5She took him up and said: "The attack will come from the same place where he showed me naked, and it will be made upon him as he sleeps."

Chapter 12

1When they had made their plan, night fell—and Gyges did not draw back, nor was there any escape for him at all; either he must perish, or Candaules. So he followed the woman into the chamber, and she gave him a dagger and hid him behind that same door.

2And afterward, as Candaules lay at rest, Gyges slipped out and killed him, and so took both the woman and the kingdom—this Gyges, whom Archilochus of Paros, who lived about the same time, mentioned in a poem of iambic trimeters.

Chapter 13

1He took the kingdom and made it secure by the oracle at Delphi. For when the Lydians took Candaules' fate hard and were up in arms, the partisans of Gyges and the rest of the Lydians made this agreement: if the oracle declared him to be king of the Lydians, he would be king; if not, the power would be given back to the house of the Heracleidae.

2The oracle did declare him, and so Gyges became king. The Pythia did say this much, though: that vengeance would come upon the Heracleidae in the fifth generation from Gyges. Of this saying the Lydians and their kings took no account at all, until it was fulfilled.

Chapter 14

1This, then, is how the Mermnadae took the tyranny, wresting it from the Heracleidae. And once he was established as tyrant, Gyges sent offerings to Delphi—not a few; of silver offerings his are the most numerous at Delphi, and besides the silver he dedicated a vast amount of gold, the most worthy of mention being the gold mixing bowls, six in number, that lie there.

2These stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing thirty talents; but if one follows the strict truth, the treasury is not public property of the Corinthians, but belongs to Cypselus, son of Eetion. This Gyges was the first of the barbarians whom we know to have dedicated offerings at Delphi, after Midas, son of Gordias, king of Phrygia.

3For Midas too dedicated the royal throne on which he used to sit and give judgment—a sight worth seeing; and this throne stands in the very place where the mixing bowls of Gyges are. And this gold and silver that Gyges dedicated is called by the Delphians the Gygad, after the name of the man who dedicated it.

Chapter 15

1He too, once he had come to power, sent an army against Miletus and Smyrna, and captured the city of Colophon; but since no other great achievement came from him, though he reigned thirty-eight years, we will pass him by with only so much as this said, and I will make mention of Ardys, son of Gyges, who reigned after Gyges. He captured Priene and invaded Miletus; and in his reign the Cimmerians, driven from their homeland by the Scythian nomads, came to Asia and took Sardis, all except the citadel.

Chapter 16

1When Ardys had reigned forty-nine years, he was succeeded by Sadyattes, son of Ardys, who reigned twelve years; and after Sadyattes, Alyattes.

2This Alyattes made war on Cyaxares, descendant of Deioces, and on the Medes; he drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, captured Smyrna, the city founded from Colophon, and invaded Clazomenae. But in these enterprises he did not come off as he wished—rather he stumbled and suffered grievously. The following are the most notable deeds he performed in the course of his reign.

Chapter 17

1He made war on the Milesians, having taken over the war from his father. Marching against them, he besieged Miletus in this fashion: whenever the crop in the land was ripe, at that moment he would invade with his army; and he marched to the music of pipes and harps and flutes, both women's and men's.

2And when he reached the Milesian territory, he neither pulled down nor burned the buildings out in the fields, nor tore off their doors, but let them stand where they were; the trees and the crop in the land he destroyed as he could, and then marched home again.

3For the Milesians held control of the sea, so that the army had no chance to blockade them. And the reason the Lydian did not pull down the houses was this: that the Milesians would have a base from which to go on sowing and tilling the land, while he himself, each time he invaded, would still find something of theirs to damage.

Chapter 18

1Waging the war in this way he fought for eleven years, in which time two great disasters befell the Milesians—one when they gave battle at Limenium in their own territory, and one in the plain of the Maeander.

2Of those eleven years, for the first six it was Sadyattes, son of Ardys, who still ruled the Lydians, and he it was who at that time kept invading the Milesian territory—for Sadyattes was the one who had begun the war. The five years that followed the six were fought by Alyattes, son of Sadyattes, who took over the war from his father, as I have shown already, and pressed it with all his might.

3Of the Ionians, none would help the Milesians lighten the burden of this war except the Chians alone. These took their part in return for like service; for before that, the Milesians had helped the Chians carry on their war against the Erythraeans.

Chapter 19

1In the twelfth year of the war, as the standing grain was being set alight by the army, an accident of the following kind came about: as soon as the grain caught fire, the wind drove the flame against the temple of Athena surnamed Assessia, and the temple caught fire and burned to the ground.

2At the time no account was taken of it; but when the army reached Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. And as his illness grew long, he sent envoys to Delphi—whether on someone's advice, or because he had himself resolved to send and ask the god about his malady.

3When these men came to Delphi, the Pythia declared she would give them no answer until they had rebuilt the temple of Athena that they had burned in the territory of Miletus, at Assessus.

Chapter 20

1This, I know, is what happened, as I heard it from the Delphians. But the Milesians add this: that Periander, son of Cypselus, who was the closest of friends with Thrasybulus, then ruler of Miletus, learned of the oracle that had come to Alyattes and sent a messenger to tell him, so that with foreknowledge he might take thought for the present need.

Chapter 21

1This, then, is what the Milesians say happened. But Alyattes, when it was reported to him, at once sent a herald to Miletus, wishing to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for as long as he would be building the temple. While the envoy was on his way to Miletus, Thrasybulus—who had learned the whole story precisely, and knew what Alyattes meant to do—devised the following plan.

2All the grain that was in the city, both his own and that of private men, he gathered together into the marketplace, and proclaimed to the Milesians that, when he himself gave the signal, they were all to drink and to hold revel with one another.

Chapter 22

1Thrasybulus did and proclaimed these things for this reason: so that when the herald from Sardis saw the great heap of grain poured out and the people living in comfort, he would report it to Alyattes.

2And this is exactly what happened. For when the herald had seen those things and, after delivering the Lydian's message to Thrasybulus, departed for Sardis, the reconciliation came about, as I learn, for no other reason.

3For Alyattes expected that there was a severe famine in Miletus and that the people were worn down to the last extremity of misery; but when the herald returned from Miletus he heard a report opposite to what he himself had supposed.

4After this a reconciliation was made between them on condition that they be guest-friends and allies, and Alyattes built two temples to Athena at Assesus in place of one, and he himself recovered from his disease. Such was the outcome of Alyattes' war against the Milesians and Thrasybulus.

Chapter 23

1This Periander, son of Cypselus, was the man who had revealed the oracle to Thrasybulus, and he was tyrant of Corinth. To him, the Corinthians say—and the Lesbians agree with them—the greatest marvel of his life befell: Arion of Methymna was carried to Taenarum on a dolphin, a citharode second to none of those living in his time, and the first of all men we know to have composed a dithyramb, given it its name, and taught it at Corinth.

Chapter 24

1They say that this Arion, who spent most of his time with Periander, longed to sail to Italy and Sicily, and having made a great deal of money there he wished to return to Corinth.

2He set sail from Tarentum then, and trusting no men more than the Corinthians he hired a boat with a crew of Corinthians. But out at sea they plotted to throw Arion overboard and keep his money. Perceiving this he begged them, offering them his money but pleading for his life.

3He could not persuade them, and the boatmen told him either to kill himself, so that he might meet with burial on land, or to leap into the sea as fast as he could.

4Cornered and at a loss, Arion asked them, since they were resolved on it, to allow him to stand on the rowing benches in full regalia and sing; and when he had sung, he promised, he would make an end of himself.

5They were pleased at the thought of hearing the best singer in the world, and they withdrew from the stern to the middle of the ship. He put on all his regalia and took up his cithara, and standing on the benches he went through the orthian nome; and when the nome was ending he threw himself into the sea just as he was, with all his regalia.

6So they sailed on to Corinth, while a dolphin, they say, took Arion up and carried him to Taenarum. Going ashore he made his way to Corinth with his regalia, and on his arrival related everything that had happened.

7Periander, in disbelief, kept Arion under guard and let him go nowhere, while keeping watch for the boatmen. When they arrived, they were summoned and questioned as to whether they had any news of Arion. They said that he was alive and well in Italy and that they had left him prospering at Tarentum; whereupon Arion appeared before them just as he had leapt overboard; and they, dumbfounded, could no longer deny it when the proof was put to them.

8This is the story the Corinthians and Lesbians tell, and there is a small bronze offering of Arion's at Taenarum, a man riding on a dolphin.

Chapter 25

1Alyattes the Lydian, after bringing to an end his war against the Milesians, died, having reigned fifty-seven years.

2Having recovered from his disease he dedicated at Delphi—second of his house to do so—a great silver mixing bowl and a wrought iron stand for it, a marvel worth seeing among all the offerings at Delphi, the work of Glaucus of Chios, who alone of all men discovered the art of welding iron.

Chapter 26

1On the death of Alyattes his son Croesus succeeded to the kingship at the age of thirty-five; and he was the first to attack the Greeks, beginning with the Ephesians.

2When the Ephesians were besieged by him they dedicated their city to Artemis, fastening a rope from the temple to the city wall. There are seven stades between the old city, which was then under siege, and the temple.

3These were the first he attacked; after that he fell upon each of the Ionians and Aeolians in turn, bringing different charges against different states—where he could find more serious grounds he made more serious accusations, and against some even trivial ones.

Chapter 27

1When the Greeks in Asia had been reduced to the payment of tribute, from then on he planned to build ships and attack the islanders.

2When everything was ready for the building, some say that Bias of Priene, others that Pittacus of Mytilene, came to Sardis and, being asked by Croesus whether there was any news from Greece, said what follows and put a stop to the shipbuilding:

3"O king, the islanders are buying ten thousand horses, with the intention of marching against Sardis and you." Croesus, believing that he was speaking the truth, said: "Would that the gods might put this into the minds of the islanders, to come against the sons of the Lydians with horses!"

4He took him up and said: "O king, you seem to me to have prayed earnestly to catch the islanders mounted on horseback on the mainland, and you hope for what is reasonable. But what do you think the islanders are praying for except that, as soon as they learned you meant to build ships against them, they might catch the Lydians at sea, to take vengeance on you for the Greeks on the mainland whom you have enslaved?"

5Croesus was delighted with this conclusion, and since the man's words seemed to fit the case, he took his advice and gave up the shipbuilding. And in this way he made a guest-friendship with the Ionians who live in the islands.

Chapter 28

1As time went on nearly all the peoples dwelling within the river Halys were subdued—for Croesus had conquered and held under him everyone except the Cilicians and the Lycians. And these are they: Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, Thracians of the coast, that is, Thyni and Bithynians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Pamphylians. When these had been subdued and Croesus had added them to the Lydians,

Chapter 29

1There came to Sardis, then at the height of its wealth, all the wise men of Greece alive at that time, each arriving in his own turn, and among them Solon, an Athenian, who had made laws for the Athenians at their bidding and then left home for ten years, sailing abroad on the pretext of seeing the world, so that he would not be forced to repeal any of the laws he had made.

2For the Athenians themselves could not do this; they were bound by great oaths to use for ten years whatever laws Solon should give them.

Chapter 30

1It was for these reasons and to see the world that Solon traveled abroad, and he came to Egypt to Amasis and to Sardis to Croesus as well. On his arrival he was entertained as a guest in Croesus' palace; and on the third or fourth day, at Croesus' bidding, the servants led Solon around the treasuries, showing him that everything was grand and prosperous.

2When he had seen it all and taken it in at his leisure, Croesus asked him this: "Athenian stranger, a great report has reached us about you, both for your wisdom and for your travels—how in your love of learning you have gone over much of the world for the sake of seeing it. So now the desire has come upon me to ask you whether you have yet seen anyone the most fortunate of all men."

3He asked this expecting to be the most fortunate of men; but Solon, flattering him not at all but speaking the truth, said: "O king, Tellus of Athens."

4Croesus, astonished at this answer, asked him pointedly: "On what grounds do you judge Tellus to be the most fortunate?" And he said: "First, while the city prospered, Tellus had sons who were fine and good, and he saw children born to all of them and surviving; and second, when his life was prosperous—at least by our standards—he met with a most glorious end."

5For when a battle arose between the Athenians and their neighbors at Eleusis, he came to the aid of his city, routed the enemy, and died most nobly; and the Athenians buried him at public expense where he fell and honored him greatly.

Chapter 31

1When Solon had drawn Croesus on by speaking of Tellus in so many words of good fortune, he asked whom he had seen second after that man, thinking that he would surely carry off the second prize at least. And he said: "Cleobis and Biton."

2For these men, Argives by birth, had a sufficient livelihood and besides this such strength of body that both were prize-winning athletes alike. And this story is told of them. When the Argives were holding a festival for Hera, their mother had of necessity to be carried to the temple in a cart; but their oxen did not come in from the field in time. Pressed by the hour, the young men put themselves under the yoke and drew the cart themselves, and their mother rode on the cart; and drawing it forty-five stades they came to the temple.

3When they had done this and been seen by the whole assembly, the best end of life came upon them, and in this the god showed that it is better for a man to die than to live. For the Argives gathered round and called the young men blessed for their strength, and the Argive women called their mother blessed for the sons she had borne;

4and the mother, overjoyed at the deed and the praise, stood before the image and prayed that the goddess would grant to Cleobis and Biton, her own children, who had honored her so greatly, what is best for a man to obtain.

5After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted, and the young men lay down to sleep in the temple itself and never rose again, but ended their lives there. And the Argives made likenesses of them and dedicated them at Delphi, as men who had proved themselves most valiant.

Chapter 32

1So Solon assigned the second place in happiness to these; but Croesus broke in and said: "Athenian stranger, is our happiness then set so low by you that you have not even judged us equal to private citizens?" And he said: "Croesus, you ask about human affairs a man who knows that the divine is wholly envious and full of trouble."

2For in a long stretch of time one may see much one would not wish to see and suffer much one would not wish to suffer. I set the span of a man's life at seventy years.

3These seventy years amount to twenty-five thousand two hundred days, leaving out the intercalary month; but if you wish to make every other year a month longer, so that the seasons may come round in due time, then in the seventy years there are thirty-five intercalary months, and the days that come from these months are one thousand and fifty.

4Of all these days that make up the seventy years—twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty in number—no single day ever brings anything like what another brings. So you see, Croesus, a man is altogether a thing of chance.

5Now in my eyes you seem to be very rich and to be king of many men; but as for the question you asked me, I cannot call you fortunate yet, not until I learn that you have ended your life well. For the very rich man is no more fortunate than the man who has enough for the day, unless good fortune attends him to the end and he ends his life in prosperity with everything good. For many of the very rich are unfortunate, and many who have only a moderate living are fortunate.

6The very rich but unfortunate man surpasses the fortunate man in only two respects, while the fortunate man surpasses the rich and unfortunate one in many. The former is the more able to satisfy his desires and to endure a great calamity when it falls upon him; but the other surpasses him in these ways: though he is not equally able to endure calamity and desire, his good fortune keeps these from him, and he is unmaimed, untroubled by disease, untouched by misfortunes, blessed with fine children and good looks.

7If in addition to all this he ends his life well, he is the man you are looking for, the one worthy to be called fortunate; but before he ends it, hold back—do not yet call him fortunate, but lucky.

8For one man to gather all these things together is impossible; just as no single land is self-sufficient, providing everything for itself, but has one thing and lacks another—and the land that has the most is the best. So too no single human body is self-sufficient: it has one thing and is in need of another.

9Whoever keeps the greatest share of these things to the end and then meets his end to his own satisfaction—he, O king, in my judgment rightly bears that name. But one must look to the outcome of every matter, how it will turn out; for to many the god has held out prosperity and then uprooted them utterly.

Chapter 33

1Saying this to Croesus he by no means pleased him; Croesus made nothing of him and dismissed him, holding him to be completely ignorant, in that he passed over the good things at hand and bade him look to the end of everything.

Chapter 34

1After Solon had gone, a great retribution from the god seized Croesus, as I suppose, because he thought himself the most fortunate of all men. Straightway a dream came to him in his sleep and showed him the truth of the troubles that were coming upon him through his son.

2Croesus had two sons, of whom one was bereft—deaf, in fact—while the other far surpassed all his peers in everything, and his name was Atys. It was this Atys, then, that the dream pointed out to Croesus, telling how he would lose him, struck by an iron spear-point.

3When he woke and took thought to himself, fearing the dream he took a wife for his son; and although the young man was accustomed to command the Lydians, he no longer sent him out on any such business. The javelins and spears and all such weapons as men use in war he had carried out of the men's apartments and piled up in the women's chambers, in case any of them should fall on the boy where it hung.

Chapter 35

1While the wedding of his son was in his hands, there came to Sardis a man overtaken by misfortune, with blood on his hands, a Phrygian by birth and of the royal house. This man came into Croesus' house and, following the customs of the land, asked to obtain purification, and Croesus purified him.

2The rite of purification is much the same among the Lydians as among the Greeks. When Croesus had performed the customary rites he asked the man where he came from and who he was, speaking as follows:

3"My good man, who are you and from where in Phrygia have you come to be my suppliant? Whom of men or women have you killed?" And he answered: "O king, I am the son of Gordias son of Midas, and my name is Adrastus. I killed my own brother against my will, and I am here driven out by my father and stripped of everything."

4Croesus answered him thus: "You are of the blood of my friends, and you have come to friends, where you will lack nothing while you stay in my house; and by bearing this misfortune as lightly as possible you will gain the most."

Chapter 36

1So he took up his abode in the house of Croesus. At this same time a monstrous boar appeared on Mount Olympus in Mysia; issuing from this mountain it laid waste the Mysians' crops. Often the Mysians went out against it, but they did it no harm and suffered at its hands.

2At last envoys of the Mysians came to Croesus and spoke as follows: "O king, a monstrous boar has appeared in our country and lays waste the crops. We are eager to take it but cannot. So now we ask you to send us your son and chosen young men and dogs, so that we may drive it out of the country."

3This was their request; and Croesus, remembering the words of the dream, spoke to them thus: "Say nothing more about my son; I could not send him with you. For he is newly married, and that is what occupies him now. But chosen Lydians and the whole hunting pack I will send, and I will charge those who go to do their utmost to help you drive the beast out of the country."

Chapter 37

1This was his answer. When the Mysians had accepted it, Croesus' son came in, having heard what the Mysians were asking. And when Croesus said he would not send his son with them, the young man spoke to him thus:

2"Father, the finest and noblest thing we had in the past was to win distinction by going to wars and hunts; but now you have shut me out of both, without seeing any cowardice in me or any loss of spirit. With what eyes must I now show myself coming and going to the marketplace?"

3"What shall I seem to my fellow citizens, and what to my new-wedded wife? And what sort of husband will she seem to have? So either let me go to the hunt, or persuade me by argument that this is better for me as it is."

Chapter 38

1Croesus answered: "My son, it is not that I see any cowardice or anything else displeasing in you that I do this, but a vision that came to me in my sleep told me that your life would be short—that you would be destroyed by an iron spear-point."

2"So it is because of this vision that I hastened this marriage for you and do not send you out on the tasks you take up, keeping watch over you, in hope that I might somehow steal you safe through my lifetime. For you happen to be my only son; the other, whose hearing is destroyed, I do not count as mine."

Chapter 39

1The young man answered: "It is pardonable in you, father, seeing such a vision, to keep watch over me; but what you do not understand, what the dream has kept from you, it is right that I should explain."

2"You say the dream declared that I would end my life by an iron spear-point. But what hands has a boar, and what iron spear-point is it you fear? If it had told you that I would die by a tusk, or by anything else of that sort, then you would be right to do as you do; but as it is, it is by a spear-point. Since, then, our fight is not against men, let me go."

Chapter 40

1Croesus answered: "My son, you are the better judge of the dream and have the better of me. Since I am overcome by you, I change my mind and let you go to the hunt."

Chapter 41

1Having said this, Croesus sent for the Phrygian Adrastus, and when he arrived he spoke to him thus: "Adrastus, I cleansed you when you were struck by a misfortune that I do not reproach you for, and I have taken you into my house and keep you here, providing every expense."

2"So now—since it is your part to repay with kindnesses the man who first showed you kindness—I need you to be the guard of my son as he sets out for the hunt, in case any murderous robbers appear on the road to do you harm."

3"Besides this, it is right for you to go where you can win glory by your deeds; for it is in your blood, and you have strength besides."

Chapter 42

1Adrastus answered: "O king, in other circumstances I would not have gone to such a contest; for it is not fitting for a man overtaken by such misfortune to go among his prospering peers, nor is the will there, and in many ways I would hold myself back."

2"But now, since you are eager and it is my part to repay you with kindnesses, I am ready to do this; and expect your son, whom you bid me guard, to return unharmed, so far as his guardian can ensure it."

Chapter 43

1With this answer to Croesus they set out, equipped with chosen young men and dogs. Coming to Mount Olympus they searched for the beast; and finding it and standing round it in a ring they threw their javelins at it.

2There the stranger—this man who had been cleansed of bloodshed and was called Adrastus—threw at the boar and missed it, but hit Croesus' son.

3Struck by the spear-point he fulfilled the word of the dream; and someone ran to tell Croesus what had happened, and coming to Sardis he announced the hunt and the death of his son.

Chapter 44

1Croesus, thrown into turmoil by the death of his son, lamented the more bitterly because the man whose bloodguilt he himself had cleansed had killed him.

2In his anguish over the misfortune he called aloud on Zeus the Cleanser, bearing witness to what he had suffered at his guest's hands; and he called also on the god of the hearth and the god of companionship, naming this same god in both—for the god of the hearth, because in taking the stranger into his house he had unwittingly been feeding his son's killer; and the god of companionship, because when he sent him as a guardian he had found him the bitterest of enemies.

Chapter 45

1After this the Lydians came bearing the corpse, and behind it followed the killer. Standing before the corpse he gave himself up to Croesus, stretching out his hands and bidding him kill him over the corpse; and he told of his former misfortune, and how on top of that he had destroyed the very man who had cleansed him, and that his life was no longer livable.

2When Croesus heard this he took pity on Adrastus, though he was himself in so great a trouble, and said to him: "Stranger, I have from you full satisfaction, since you pass sentence of death on yourself. You are not the cause of this evil—save insofar as you did it against your will—but some one of the gods is, who long ago signaled to me what was to come."

3Croesus then buried his son as was fitting; and Adrastus son of Gordias son of Midas, the man who had been the killer of his own brother and the killer of the man who had cleansed him, when the people had left the tomb, judging himself to be the most ill-fated of all men he knew, cut his own throat over the grave.

Chapter 46

1Croesus sat in deep mourning for two years, deprived of his son. Then the rule of Astyages son of Cyaxares was overthrown by Cyrus son of Cambyses, and the affairs of the Persians, as they grew, brought Croesus' mourning to an end but threw him into anxiety as to how he might, before the Persians became great, check their growing power.

2With this in mind he immediately put to the test the oracles in Greece and the one in Libya, sending different men to different places: some to Delphi, some to Abae in Phocis, some to Dodona; some were sent to Amphiaraus and to Trophonius, and others to Branchidae in the Milesian land.

3These, then, were the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent to inquire; to Libya he sent others to consult Ammon. He sent to all of them to test what they had in mind, so that if they were found to have the truth in mind, he might send again and ask whether he should undertake to march against Persia.

Chapter 47

1He gave the Lydians these instructions for testing the oracles: from the day on which they set out from Sardis, counting from that day, on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles, asking what the Lydian king Croesus son of Alyattes was doing at that moment; and whatever each of the oracles declared they were to write down and bring back to him.

2What the rest of the oracles declared is not reported by anyone; but at Delphi, as soon as the Lydians entered the great hall to consult the god and asked what they had been instructed to ask, the Pythia spoke in hexameter verse as follows:

3"I know the number of the sand and the measure of the sea, / I understand the mute and hear the one who does not speak. / A smell came to my mind of a strong-shelled tortoise / boiling in bronze together with lambs' flesh; / bronze is spread beneath and bronze lies over it."

Chapter 48

1When the Pythia had declared this, the Lydians wrote it down and departed for Sardis. And when the others who had been sent out also arrived bringing the oracles, Croesus unfolded each of the written answers and examined them; none of the others pleased him. But as soon as he heard the one from Delphi he at once accepted it and prayed to the god, holding the oracle at Delphi to be the only true one, because it had discovered what he himself had done.

2For when he had sent his envoys to the oracles, he kept watch for the appointed day and contrived the following: devising something impossible to discover or guess, he cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together himself in a bronze cauldron, putting on a bronze lid.

Chapter 49

1This was the answer given to Croesus from Delphi; but what the oracle of Amphiaraus declared to the Lydians when they had performed the customary rites at the shrine, I cannot say (for neither is this reported), except that he judged he possessed in this too an oracle that does not lie.

Chapter 50

1After this he propitiated the god at Delphi with great sacrifices; for he sacrificed three thousand victims of every kind that may be sacrificed, and heaping up a great pyre he burned on it couches overlaid with gold and with silver, and golden bowls, and purple robes and tunics, in the hope of winning the god over even more by these; and he proclaimed to all the Lydians that each of them should sacrifice whatever he had.

2When the sacrifice was done he melted down a vast quantity of gold and hammered out ingots from it: making them six palms along the longer sides, three palms along the shorter, and a palm in height. In number they were a hundred and seventeen, and of these four were of refined gold, each weighing two and a half talents, while the rest of the ingots were of pale gold, weighing two talents.

3He also made an image of a lion of refined gold, weighing ten talents. This lion, when the temple at Delphi was burned, fell from the ingots (for it had been set upon them), and now lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing six and a half talents; for three and a half talents melted off it.

Chapter 51

1When Croesus had finished these things he sent to Delphi these other offerings along with them: two mixing bowls of great size, one of gold and one of silver. The golden one stood to the right as you enter the temple, the silver one to the left.

2These too were moved when the temple was burned; and the golden one now lies in the treasury of the Clazomenians, weighing eight and a half talents and twelve minas besides; the silver one stands in a corner of the forecourt, holding six hundred amphorae—for the Delphians mix wine in it at the Theophania.

3The Delphians say it is the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I think so too; for it does not seem to me an ordinary piece of work. He also sent four silver jars, which stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, and he dedicated two lustral basins, one of gold and one of silver. On the golden one is an inscription saying that it is an offering of the Lacedaemonians—which is not true;

4for this too is Croesus'. But one of the Delphians inscribed it, wishing to gratify the Lacedaemonians; his name I know but will not mention. The boy, however, through whose hand the water flows, is the Lacedaemonians'—but neither of the basins is.

5Many other offerings, not distinguished by name, Croesus sent along with these, and round silver basins, and also a golden image of a woman three cubits high, which the Delphians say is a likeness of Croesus' breadmaker. Croesus also dedicated his wife's necklaces and her girdles.

Chapter 52

1These he sent to Delphi; and to Amphiaraus, having learned of his valor and his fate, he dedicated a shield all of gold and a spear all of solid gold, the shaft and the point alike of gold; both of these were still to be seen in my day at Thebes, in the temple of the Ismenian Apollo.

Chapter 53

1To the Lydians who were to carry these gifts to the shrines Croesus gave orders to ask the oracles whether Croesus should march against the Persians and whether he should take to himself an allied army.

2Coming to the places they had been sent to, the Lydians dedicated the offerings and consulted the oracles, saying: "Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other peoples, believing these to be the only oracles among men, has given you gifts worthy of your discoveries, and now asks you whether he should march against the Persians and whether he should take to himself an allied army."

3This they asked; and the judgments of both oracles agreed, foretelling to Croesus that if he marched against the Persians he would destroy a great empire; and they advised him to find out who were the most powerful of the Greeks and make them his allies.

Chapter 54

1When Croesus learned the answers that were brought back he was overjoyed at the oracles, and fully expecting to destroy the kingship of Cyrus he sent again to Pytho and rewarded the Delphians, having learned their number, with two gold staters apiece.

2In return the Delphians granted to Croesus and the Lydians the right of first consultation, immunity from taxes, and the seat of honor, and the right for any of them who wished to become Delphian for all time to come.

Chapter 55

1Having rewarded the Delphians, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time; for once he had learned the truth of the oracle he never had enough of it. And he asked this question: whether his rule would be long-lasting.

2The Pythia answered him thus: "But when a mule becomes king of the Medes, / then, soft-footed Lydian, flee by the pebbly Hermus and do not stay, / nor be ashamed to be a coward."

Chapter 56

1When these verses came, Croesus was delighted above all things, believing that a mule would never rule the Medes in place of a man, and that therefore he and his descendants would never lose their rule. After this he set himself to find out which of the Greeks he could win as the most powerful friends;

2and inquiring he found that the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians were the foremost, the one of the Dorian race, the other of the Ionian. For these were the preeminent peoples, the one Pelasgian in origin, the other Hellenic. The one has never moved from its place; the other has wandered very greatly.

3For in the reign of King Deucalion it dwelt in the land of Phthia; in the time of Dorus son of Hellen it dwelt in the country under Ossa and Olympus, called Histiaeotis; and when it was driven out of Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans it dwelt in Pindus, where it was called Macednus. From there it moved again into Dryopis, and from Dryopis it came to the Peloponnese, where it was called Dorian.

Chapter 57

1What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say for certain. But if one must judge by inference from those Pelasgians who still exist today—the people of Creston, who live above the Tyrrhenians, and who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians (they dwelt then in the land now called Thessaliotis),

2and from those Pelasgians who settled Placia and Scylace in the Hellespont and became the neighbors of the Athenians, and from any other Pelasgian towns that changed their names—if one must judge by inference from these, then the Pelasgians spoke a foreign language.

3If, then, the Pelasgian stock was in every part of this kind, the Attic nation, being Pelasgian, changed its language too at the same time as it changed over to the Greeks. For neither do the people of Creston speak the same language as any of their present neighbors, nor do the people of Placia—but they speak like each other; and this shows that they keep safe the character of the language they brought with them when they moved into these regions.

Chapter 58

1The Hellenic stock, on the other hand, has always used the same language, as it seems to me, from the time it came into being. Yet it split off from the Pelasgian when it was weak and, starting from a small beginning, has grown into a multitude of peoples, chiefly because many Pelasgians and many other foreign peoples have joined it. And earlier still, it seems to me, the Pelasgian stock too, being foreign, never grew greatly.

Chapter 59

1Of these peoples Croesus learned that the Attic nation was held down and torn by factions under Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, who at this time was tyrant of the Athenians. For Hippocrates, when he was a private citizen and was watching the Olympic games, saw a great portent: as he was sacrificing, the cauldrons set over the fire, full of meat and water, boiled over without any fire.

2Chilon the Lacedaemonian, who happened to be present and saw the portent, advised Hippocrates first not to take into his house a wife who could bear him children; and if he happened to have one, to send his wife away; and if any son had been born to him, to disown him.

3Hippocrates, however, would not be persuaded to follow Chilon's advice; and there was born to him this Pisistratus, who, when the men of the coast and the men of the plain were in faction—the one led by Megacles son of Alcmeon, the men of the plain by Lycurgus son of Aristolaus—despising the odds set up a third faction. Gathering his partisans and styling himself the champion of the men of the hills, he contrived the following.

4Wounding himself and his mules he drove into the marketplace as though he had escaped enemies who had tried to kill him on his way to his farm, and he asked the people to grant him some guard—he who had already won distinction in the command against the Megarians, in which he took Nisaea and performed other great deeds.

5The Athenian people, deceived, granted him men chosen from the citizens; these became not spear-bearers of Pisistratus but club-bearers—for carrying wooden clubs they followed behind him.

6These rose with him and seized the Acropolis. So Pisistratus became ruler of the Athenians, neither disturbing the offices that existed nor changing the laws, but administering the city on the established basis, well and in good order.

Chapter 60

1Not long afterward, the factions of Megacles and of Lycurgus came to one mind again and drove him out. So Pisistratus held Athens for the first time, and then lost his tyranny, which had not yet rooted itself in any depth; but once they had driven Pisistratus out, the two factions fell to quarreling with each other again.

2Pressed hard in the struggle, Megacles sent overtures to Pisistratus by a herald, offering him his daughter in marriage in return for the tyranny.

3Pisistratus accepted the offer and agreed to these terms; and then, for his return, they contrived what is by far the silliest trick I have ever found—seeing that the Hellenic stock has from ancient times been marked off from the barbarian as both shrewder and much freer from foolish simplicity—for even then these men, Athenians, the people called the first of the Greeks, turned their cleverness to work like this.

4In the deme of Paeania there was a woman named Phye, in stature four cubits lacking three fingers, and otherwise beautiful. They equipped this woman in a full suit of armor, set her on a chariot, and, arranging her pose in whatever way promised to show her most nobly, drove her into the city, sending heralds ahead of her; and these, on their arrival in the city, proclaimed the message they had been given, saying as follows:

5"Athenians, receive Pisistratus with good will; it is Athena herself who, after honoring him before all men, brings him back to her own acropolis." The heralds went about through the city repeating these words, and at once the rumor reached the demes that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back; and the people in the city, believing the woman to be the goddess herself, offered prayers to the human being and welcomed Pisistratus.

Chapter 61

1Having recovered his tyranny in the manner described, Pisistratus married the daughter of Megacles, in accordance with the agreement made with Megacles. But because he already had sons grown to young manhood, and because the Alcmaeonids were said to be accursed, he had no wish for children to be born from his new wife; and he had intercourse with her not according to law.

2At first the wife kept these things secret; later, whether she asked her mother or not, she told her mother, and the mother told her husband. Megacles, in his anger, made his peace with the opposing faction. When Pisistratus learned what was being done against him, he withdrew from the country altogether, and coming to Eretria he took counsel with his sons.

3The counsel of Hippias prevailed, that they should win back the tyranny; and so they began raising money from the cities that felt any obligation toward them. Many cities furnished large sums, but the Thebans surpassed them all in the size of their gift.

4Afterward—to put it briefly—time passed, and everything was made ready for the return: Argive mercenaries came to them from the Peloponnese, and there arrived from Naxos a man who came as a volunteer, Lygdamis by name, who showed the greatest eagerness, bringing both money and men.

Chapter 62

1Setting out from Eretria, they returned in the eleventh year, and first of the country they held Marathon in Attica. While they were encamped in this region, the partisans from the city came to them, and others came streaming in from the demes, men to whom tyranny was more welcome than freedom.

2These men were gathering to them; but the Athenians of the city, so long as Pisistratus was collecting his money, and later, when he had taken Marathon, paid no heed at all; but when they learned that he was marching from Marathon upon the city, only then did they go out to the rescue against him.

3The Athenians marched out with their whole levy against the men coming down, and the partisans of Pisistratus, setting out from Marathon for the city, met them; and coming together in one place they arrived at the sanctuary of Athena Pallenis, and there set their arms facing one another.

4There a man of Acarnania, Amphilytus, a diviner, came and stood before Pisistratus, moved by a divine leading; and approaching him he gave an oracle in hexameter verse, saying: "The cast is thrown and the net is spread wide; / through the moonlit night the tunny-fish will wail."

Chapter 63

1This was the oracle he uttered, filled with the god; and Pisistratus, taking up the omen and saying that he accepted the prophecy, led his army forward. The Athenians of the city had just then turned to their midday meal, and after the meal some of them turned to dice and others to sleep; and the men of Pisistratus fell upon them and put them to rout.

2As the Athenians fled, Pisistratus here devised a plan of the greatest cunning, so that the Athenians, once scattered, might never again be caught: he mounted his sons on horses and sent them ahead; and these, overtaking the fugitives, delivered the message Pisistratus had given them, telling them to take heart and to go each man to his own home.

Chapter 64

1Thus the Athenians were won over; and so Pisistratus, holding Athens for the third time, set the roots of his tyranny deep, with many auxiliaries to aid him and with revenues of money, some collected on the spot and some flowing in from the river Strymon. He took as hostages the children of the Athenians who remained behind and did not flee at once, and placed them in Naxos.

2(for this island too Pisistratus had subdued by war and handed over to Lygdamis); and besides all this he purified the island of Delos, in accordance with the oracles; and he purified it in this way: all the graves within sight of the sanctuary he dug up, and carried the dead away to another part of Delos.

3So Pisistratus ruled as tyrant over the Athenians; of the Athenians, some had fallen in the battle, and others had fled their native country with the Alcmaeonids.

Chapter 65

1The Athenians, then, Croesus learned to be in this condition at this time; the Lacedaemonians he learned to have escaped from great troubles and to be already superior to the Tegeans in war. For in the reign of Leon and Hegesicles at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians, fortunate in all their other wars, stumbled against the Tegeans alone.

2Yet before this they had been the worst-governed of nearly all the Greeks, in their own life together and in having no contact with strangers; and it was in this way that they changed to good order. When Lycurgus, a man of repute among the Spartans, came to Delphi to visit the sanctuary, the moment he entered the hall the Pythia spoke to him as follows:

3"You have come, Lycurgus, to my rich shrine, / dear to Zeus and to all who hold the halls of Olympus. / I am in doubt whether to declare you a god or a man, / yet I hope rather a god, Lycurgus."

4Some say, besides this, that the Pythia also showed him the order that now stands established among the Spartans. But as the Lacedaemonians themselves tell it, Lycurgus, while serving as guardian for Leobotas—his own nephew, then king of the Spartans—brought these institutions from Crete.

5As soon as he took up the guardianship, he changed all the customs that existed, and guarded them against violation; next came the institutions of war, the enomoties and the triacades and the common messes; and in addition to these Lycurgus established the ephors and the elders.

Chapter 66

1Changed thus, they became a well-governed people; and when Lycurgus died they built him a temple, and hold him in great reverence. And since their land was good and their men were not few, they shot up at once and grew prosperous, and quiet living no longer contented them; so, scorning the Arcadians as weaker men, they consulted the oracle at Delphi for the whole land of Arcadia.

2The Pythia spoke to them as follows: "Arcadia you ask of me: you ask a great thing, and I will not grant it. / Many are the acorn-eating men in Arcadia, and they will stand in your way. / Yet I bear you no grudge: Tegea I will give you, to dance on with sounding feet, / and a fair plain to measure out with a line."

3When the Lacedaemonians heard this answer brought back, they kept their hands off the rest of the Arcadians, but carrying fetters with them they marched against the Tegeans, trusting in a lying oracle, as though they were going to make slaves of the Tegeans.

4Beaten in the battle, as many of them as were taken alive, wearing the very fetters they had brought, measured the Tegean plain with a rope and worked it. These fetters, with which they were bound, were still preserved in my own time at Tegea, hanging about the temple of Athena Alea.

Chapter 67

1In that earlier war, then, they had always contended against the Tegeans with continued ill success; but in the time of Croesus, under the kingship of Anaxandrides and Ariston in Lacedaemon, the Spartans had already grown superior to them in war—and it came about in this way.

2Since they were always being worsted in the war by the Tegeans, they sent messengers to consult the oracle at Delphi, asking which of the gods they must propitiate to gain the mastery over the Tegeans in war. The Pythia answered them that they must bring home the bones of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon.

3But when they proved unable to find the burial place of Orestes, they sent messengers back to the god once more, to ask in what place Orestes lay. And when the messengers put this question to the god, the Pythia spoke to them as follows:

4"There is a place in Arcadia, in Tegea of the level plain, / where two winds blow under strong necessity, / blow answers blow, and grief lies upon grief; / there the life-giving earth holds the son of Agamemnon. / Bring him home, and you shall be lord of Tegea."

5When the Lacedaemonians heard this too, they went on searching no less eagerly, inquiring into everything, until at last Lichas, one of the Spartans called the doers of good, discovered it. The doers of good are men drawn from the citizen body—always the oldest who leave the ranks of the knights in each year; and these men, in the very year they leave the knights, being dispatched on the common business of the Spartans, must not loiter any of them elsewhere.

Chapter 68

1Lichas, one of those men, made the discovery at Tegea, availing himself of both chance and cleverness. For there was at this time intercourse with the Tegeans; and he went into a smithy and watched the iron as it was hammered out, and he was in wonder at what was being made.

2And the smith, seeing him marveling, stopped his work and said: "Truly, Laconian stranger, if you had seen what I have seen, you would marvel greatly—since just now, as it happens, you marvel at my working of the iron."

3"For I wished to make a well in this courtyard; and as I was digging I came upon a coffin seven cubits long. Because I could not believe that there had ever been men larger than the men of today, I opened it again and saw the corpse lying there, equal in length to the coffin; I measured it, and then covered it up once more." Such was what he told of what he had seen; and Lichas, taking the meaning of the words, reasoned that this was Orestes, in fulfillment of the oracle, matching it piece by piece in this way:

4In the smith's two bellows he found the two winds; the anvil and the hammer were the blow and the answer of the blow; the hammered iron was the grief lying upon grief; and he reasoned on this pattern, that iron had been discovered to be the bane of man.

5Having made this reckoning, he went back to Sparta and told the Lacedaemonians the whole matter. They brought against him a fabricated pretext and put him on trial. So he came to Tegea, and laying his misfortune before the smith, rented the courtyard from him, though the smith was unwilling to let it go;

6in time he persuaded him, and he took up his lodging there; then he opened the grave, gathered the bones together, and departed, carrying them to Sparta. And from that time onward, whenever they made trial of one another, the Lacedaemonians were far superior in war; and by now the greater part of the Peloponnese was subject to them as well.

Chapter 69

1When Croesus learned all this, he sent messengers to Sparta, bearing gifts and asking for an alliance, and instructing them what they must say. These came and said:

2"Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other nations besides, sent us and bids us say as follows: 'Lacedaemonians, the god in his oracle commanded me to take the Greek for my friend; and because I learn that you stand at the head of Greece, I call upon you in accordance with the oracle, wishing to become your friend and your ally, without deceit and without trickery.'"

3This was the offer Croesus made through his messengers. The Lacedaemonians, who had heard the oracle that had been given to Croesus as well, were pleased at the arrival of the Lydians and made oaths of guest-friendship and alliance with them; for certain benefits had come to them from Croesus even before this.

4For the Lacedaemonians had once sent to Sardis to buy gold, wishing to use it for a statue of Apollo—the very statue that now stands at Thornax in Laconia; and Croesus, as they were buying it, made them a gift of it.

Chapter 70

1It was for this reason, then, that the Lacedaemonians accepted the alliance—and because he had picked them out above all the Greeks to be his friends. They themselves, then, were ready at his summons; and next, having made a bronze mixing bowl and set figures of living creatures all about its outer rim—a bowl large enough to hold three hundred amphoras—they carried it off, wishing to give Croesus a gift in return.

2This bowl never reached Sardis, and the reasons given are two, as follows. The Lacedaemonians say that, as the bowl was being carried to Sardis, it came into the neighborhood of Samos, and the Samians, learning of it, sailed out with long ships and took it away;

3but the Samians themselves say that the Lacedaemonians bringing the bowl arrived too late, and that, learning that Sardis had fallen and Croesus with it, they sold the bowl in Samos; and the private men who bought it dedicated it in the temple of Hera. It may well be that the men who sold it, when they came to Sparta, said the Samians had taken it from them by force. Such was the story of the bowl.

Chapter 71

1Croesus, misunderstanding the oracle, undertook his campaign against Cappadocia, hoping to crush Cyrus and the power of the Persians.

2While Croesus was making ready his campaign against the Persians, one of the Lydians, who had been thought a wise man even before this, and who drew a great name among the Lydians from that very counsel—his name was Sandanis—gave Croesus this advice: "King, you are making ready to march against men who wear leather trousers and leather for all their other clothing, who eat not as much as they wish but as much as they have, and who possess a rough land.

3And they use no wine at all, but drink water; they have no figs to eat, nor any other good thing whatsoever. If you conquer them, what will you take from them—men who have nothing? But if you are conquered, then learn how many good things you will lose; for once they have had a taste of our good things they will cling to them, and no one will be able to drive them away.

4For my part, I give thanks to the gods, who have not put it into the Persians' minds to march against the Lydians." Speaking these words he did not persuade Croesus; for the Persians, before they subdued the Lydians, had nothing at all that was delicate or good.

Chapter 72

1These Cappadocians are called Syrians by the Greeks. Before the Persians held power, these Syrians were subject to the Medes; at this time they were subject to Cyrus.

2The boundary between the Median empire and the Lydian was the river Halys, which flows from the Armenian mountains through the country of the Cilicians; then, as it flows on, it has the Matieni on the right hand, and on the other side the Phrygians; and passing beyond these, and running its course up toward the north wind, it cuts off the Syrian Cappadocians on this side and the Paphlagonians on the left.

3In this way the river Halys cuts off almost the whole of the lower part of Asia, from the sea that faces Cyprus to the Euxine Sea. This river is the neck of the whole country; and the length of the road, for a man traveling light, is reckoned at five days.

Chapter 73

1Croesus marched against Cappadocia for these reasons: from his desire to win land for his own portion, and above all from his confidence in the oracle, and because he wished to punish Cyrus in requital for Astyages.

2For Cyrus son of Cambyses, having subdued Astyages son of Cyaxares—who was Croesus' brother-in-law and king of the Medes—held him in his power; and Astyages had become Croesus' brother-in-law in this way:

3A horde of nomad Scythians, in discord among themselves, had left their own country and passed into the land of the Medes. Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces was ruling the Medes as tyrant at this time; he received these Scythians kindly at first, as suppliants, and making so much of them he handed over to them boys to learn their language and their craft with the bow.

4In course of time the Scythians went out constantly on the hunt and always brought something back; but once it happened that they caught nothing. When they returned empty-handed, Cyaxares—for he was, as he showed, quick to anger—received them very roughly, with insult.

5The Scythians, having suffered this at the hands of Cyaxares—treatment unworthy of themselves—plotted to cut up one of the boys who were being taught by them; and having dressed him as they were accustomed to dress the game they caught, they carried him to Cyaxares as though he were game from the hunt; and having given him up, they made off as fast as they could to Sardis, to Alyattes son of Sadyattes.

6And this came to pass: Cyaxares and the guests present at the meal ate of these meats, and the Scythians, having done this deed, became suppliants of Alyattes.

Chapter 74

1After this—since Alyattes would not give up the Scythians to Cyaxares when he demanded them back—war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes and lasted five years, and in those years the Medes many times defeated the Lydians, and the Lydians many times the Medes; and once they even fought a battle by night.

2As they carried on the war evenly matched, in the sixth year, once they had joined battle, it happened that the day suddenly turned to night while the fight was still going on. Thales the Milesian had foretold this change of day to the Ionians, setting as its limit this very year in which the change in fact occurred.

3When the Lydians and the Medes saw night come on in place of day, they broke off the battle, and both became all the more eager to make peace with one another. The men who reconciled them were these: Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian.

4These same men also brought the oath about, and they made an exchange of marriages besides: they persuaded Alyattes to give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, son of Cyaxares. For without strong necessity, men are not willing to hold to their compacts.

5The oaths made by such nations—the Greeks as well as those others—are made like this: they nick the skin of their arms and lick up each other's blood.

Chapter 75

1This Astyages, then, who was Cyrus' own grandfather on his mother's side, Cyrus subdued and took prisoner, and for a cause I shall make plain in the later parts of my account.

2For this, Croesus, finding fault with Cyrus, sent to the oracles to ask whether he should march against the Persians; and when a lying oracle came to him, he hoped it spoke in his favor, and marched into the Persian country.

3When Croesus came to the river Halys, from there—as I say—he led his army across by the bridges that stood there; but as the common account of the Greeks has it, Thales the Milesian led him across.

4For Croesus was at a loss how his army should cross the river (the bridges, at least, did not yet exist at that time), and Thales, who was present in the camp, is said to have made the river, which flowed on the left hand of the army, flow also on its right. He did it in this way:

5he began digging a deep channel above the camp, curving it crescent-shaped, so that it should take in the camp pitched behind it; and so the river, turned aside through the channel from its old bed, would circle past the camp and run back again into its old course. Thus, as soon as the river was split in two, it became fordable on both sides;

6but some say that the old channel altogether dried up. This, however, I do not accept—for how did they cross it on their way back?

Chapter 76

1Croesus, then, having crossed with his army, came into Cappadocia, to the place called Pteria (this Pteria is the strongest part of that country, and lies most nearly over against Sinope, a city on the Black Sea). There he encamped and set about destroying the lands of the Syrians.

2He took the city of the Pterians and enslaved its people, took all the towns about it as well, and made the Syrians—who were guilty of nothing—homeless. Cyrus meanwhile gathered his own army and took up every people living between, and marched out against Croesus.

3Before he began to lead his army out, he sent heralds to the Ionians and tried to get them to defect from Croesus. The Ionians, however, would not be persuaded. But when Cyrus arrived and pitched camp opposite Croesus, there in the Pterian country they tried one another's strength to the utmost.

4A hard battle was fought, and many fell on both sides; in the end, neither side prevailing, they broke apart when night came on. So the two armies contended.

Chapter 77

1Croesus, finding fault with the size of his own army (for the army that had fought was much smaller than Cyrus'), and finding fault with this too—that Cyrus did not attempt to come at him again the next day—drove back to Sardis, with this in mind: to summon the Egyptians first, according to their oath

2(for he had made an alliance with Amasis, who was king of Egypt, before ever he did with the Lacedaemonians), and to send for the Babylonians as well (for he had made an alliance with these too, and it was Labynetus who ruled the Babylonians at that time),

3and to announce to the Lacedaemonians that they were to come at an appointed time; and so, once he had gathered these and collected his own army, his plan was to let the winter pass and march against the Persians at the coming of spring.

4Such were his thoughts. On reaching Sardis he sent heralds to his allies with word that they were to assemble at Sardis in the fifth month; and the force that was present, the one that had fought the Persians—his mercenary army—he dismissed entirely and scattered, never imagining that Cyrus would march on Sardis after so evenly matched a contest.

Chapter 78

1While Croesus was turning these plans over, the whole suburb was filled with snakes; and when they appeared, the horses, leaving their pastures and coming after them, ate them up. When Croesus saw this, it seemed to him—as indeed it was—a portent;

2and at once he sent sacred envoys to the interpreters of omens at Telmessus. The envoys arrived and learned from the Telmessians what the portent meant, but they never got the chance to report to Croesus—for before they could sail back to Sardis, Croesus was taken.

3This is what the Telmessians judged: that an army of foreign speech, already on the way, would come against Croesus' land, and that, arriving, it would subdue the native people; for the snake, they said, was a child of the earth, while the horse was an enemy and a comer-in from outside. So the Telmessians gave this answer about Croesus after he was already taken, knowing nothing at all then of what concerned Sardis and Croesus himself.

Chapter 79

1Cyrus, the moment Croesus marched away after the battle fought at Pteria, learned that Croesus intended to disband his army once he had withdrawn; and on consideration he found the thing to do: to drive on Sardis as fast as he could, before the power of the Lydians could be assembled a second time.

2Having so decided, he acted at speed; he marched his army into Lydia, and was himself the messenger who came to Croesus. Croesus, thrown into deep perplexity—for matters had fallen out contrary to his expectation and his own reckoning—nevertheless led the Lydians out to battle.

3At that time there was no nation in Asia more manly or more valiant than the Lydian. Their fighting was from horseback; they carried great spears, and they themselves were good riders.

Chapter 80

1The armies met in the plain before the Sardian city, a great and treeless plain, through which other rivers flow, and the Hyllus too, which breaks into the greatest of them, called the Hermus—a river that, flowing from the sacred mountain of Mother Dindymene, empties into the sea by the city of Phocaea.

2There, when Cyrus saw the Lydians drawn up for battle, he feared their cavalry; and on the advice of Harpagus, a Mede, he did this: he gathered every one of the camels that followed his army carrying food and baggage, unloaded their burdens, and set men on their backs dressed as riders, equipped in the array of horsemen. These he drew up and ordered to advance ahead of the rest of his army against Croesus' cavalry; behind the camels he placed his foot soldiers, and behind the foot soldiers he stationed all his horse.

3When all were drawn up in their places, he gave this command: that the rest of the Lydians they should kill without sparing, every one who stood in their way, but that they must not kill Croesus himself, no, not even if he resisted being seized.

4Such was his command. He ranged the camels facing the cavalry for this reason: a horse fears a camel and cannot endure either the sight of it or its smell when it scents it. For this the trick was devised—so that Croesus' cavalry, the very thing the Lydian was counting on, might be useless to him.

5And when the armies came together in battle, no sooner did the horses catch the scent of the camels and see them than they turned tail, and Croesus' hope was destroyed.

6Yet the Lydians were not cowards from that point on: as soon as they understood what was happening, they leapt down from their horses and fought the Persians on foot. But after many on both sides had fallen over a long stretch of time, the Lydians gave way, and driven in behind their walls they were besieged by the Persians.

Chapter 81

1So the siege stood. Croesus, thinking it would last a long time, sent other messengers out from the wall to his allies. The earlier messengers had carried word that they were to assemble at Sardis in the fifth month; these he sent off begging them to bring aid as fast as might be, with Croesus under siege.

Chapter 82

1He sent, then, to his other alliances, and among them to Lacedaemon. The Spartans themselves, at just that time, had fallen into a quarrel with the Argives over a tract of land called Thyrea:

2for this Thyreatic land belonged by lot to the Argolid, and the Lacedaemonians, cutting it off, held it. The Argives also held the country stretching westward as far as Malea—the land on the mainland, the island of Cythera, and the rest of the islands.

3When the Argives marched out to defend the land being cut away from them, the two sides met and came to an agreement: that three hundred of each should fight, and whichever side prevailed, theirs should be the land; and that each army should go home and not stay while they fought—for this reason, lest with the armies present the one side, seeing its own men losing, come to their rescue.

4Having settled this, both sides withdrew, and the picked men left behind from each army closed in battle. As they fought and the contest stayed even, three men were left of the six hundred: Alcenor and Chromius of the Argives, and Othryades of the Lacedaemonians—and they were left when night came on.

5The two Argives, reckoning themselves the victors, ran to Argos; but the Lacedaemonian Othryades stripped the Argive dead and carried their arms back to his own camp, where he kept his place in his rank. On the second day both armies came to inquire.

6For a while each side claimed the victory—the one saying that more of their own men had survived, the other pointing out that the Argives had run, while their own man had stayed and stripped the enemy dead;

7at last, out of the quarrel, they fell upon one another and fought; and after many of both sides had fallen, the Lacedaemonians won. From that day the Argives—who till then had worn their hair long of necessity—cut their heads close and made a law with a curse: that no Argive should grow long hair again, nor their women wear gold, until they had recovered Thyrea.

8The Lacedaemonians made the opposite law: for they had not worn long hair before this, and from this time on they let it grow. And they say that Othryades, the one man left of the three hundred, ashamed to return home to Sparta with all his messmates destroyed, put an end to himself there at Thyrea.

Chapter 83

1While such matters stood before the Spartans, the herald from Sardis came asking aid for Croesus in his siege. They made ready to help him all the same; but when they were already prepared and their ships were ready, another message arrived with word that the Lydian wall had been taken and Croesus captured alive. So they, mourning over so great a calamity, gave over the enterprise.

Chapter 84

1This is how Sardis was taken. On the fourteenth day of Croesus' siege, Cyrus sent horsemen through his own army to proclaim that he would give gifts to the first man to mount the wall.

2After this, when the army had tried and made no headway, and the rest had given up, a Mardian man attempted the climb, his name being Hyroeades, at that part of the acropolis against which no guard was set; for no one thought the place could ever be taken.

3For at that point the acropolis is sheer and unassailable—so much so that Meles, an earlier king of the Sardians, did not carry around the wall the lion his concubine bore him, the Telmessians having judged that if the lion were carried around the walls, Sardis would never be taken. Meles carried it around the rest of the wall, where the place was open to attack, but passed by this part of the acropolis as being unassailable and sheer; it is turned toward Tmolus, on the far side of the city.

4This same Mardian, Hyroeades, had seen on the day before a Lydian come down at this very part of the acropolis to pick up a helmet that had rolled down from above—and he marked it and laid it away in his mind;

5and so on that day he himself climbed up, and other Persians climbed after him; and when many had mounted, Sardis was taken and the whole city given over to plunder.

Chapter 85

1This is what befell Croesus himself at the same time. He had a son, whom I made mention of before, who in all else was of good worth but was mute. In the years gone by Croesus had made every contrivance for him, seeking out other remedies besides, and had even sent to Delphi to consult the oracle about him.

2The Pythia answered him in verse: "Lydian of race, king of many lands, greatly foolish Croesus, do not long to hear within your halls the voice you prayed for, your son's, sounding. / Far better for you it is to live without it. / For he will speak his first word on a day of ruin."

3Now when the wall was being taken—for a certain one of the Persians was coming at Croesus, not recognizing him, meaning to kill him—Croesus, though he saw the man coming, was indifferent under the calamity upon him; it made no difference to him to die under the blow.

4But the mute son, when he saw the Persian coming, broke his silence out of terror and grief, and cried, "Man, do not kill Croesus!" That was the first word he had ever spoken; and from then on he had his voice for all the rest of his life.

Chapter 86

1So the Persians took Sardis and captured Croesus himself, after he had reigned fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days—he who, as the oracle said, had brought his own great sovereignty to an end. The Persians led him away to Cyrus.

2Cyrus built a great pyre and led Croesus up onto it bound in fetters, with twice seven sons of the Lydians beside him—his intent being perhaps to dedicate these firstfruits by fire to some god or other, or because he wished to complete a vow, or perhaps because he had learned that Croesus was a god-fearing man and so set him on the pyre, wanting to know whether any divinity would deliver him from being burned alive.

3That was Cyrus' doing. But into Croesus, standing upon the pyre, though sunk in such misfortune, there came the saying of Solon—that none of the living is fortunate—a saying, as it seemed to him, spoken with the god's help; and when the thought had come over him, he sighed deeply out of a long silence and, after great stillness, called three times upon the name of Solon.

4And Cyrus, hearing it, ordered his interpreters to ask Croesus whom he was calling upon; and they came near and asked. Croesus at first kept silence under their questioning, but when he was pressed he said: "The man whom, before all tyrants, I would have valued above great wealth to come into speech with me." As he put it in riddles, they asked again what he meant.

5When they pressed him further and held to it, he told them how Solon, an Athenian, had first come, and had looked over all his wealth and made light of it, saying what he said—and how everything had turned out for Croesus just as that man had said, for he spoke not so much about Croesus himself as about all humankind, and most of all about those who among us seem most fortunate. This was the tale Croesus told, while the pyre was already kindled and its outer edges were burning.

6And Cyrus, hearing from the interpreters what Croesus had said, repented, and reflected that he, himself a man, was burning alive another man, his own equal in good fortune; and beyond that he feared retribution, and saw that nothing in human affairs stands sure. So he gave the order to quench the burning fire as fast as possible and to bring Croesus down and those with him; and those who tried could no longer get the mastery of the fire.

Chapter 87

1Here the Lydians say that Croesus, grasping that Cyrus had changed his mind, and seeing that while every man was trying to put out the fire they could no longer get it under, cried out upon Apollo, calling to him—if any gift of his had ever been pleasing to Croesus—to stand by him and deliver him out of the evil at hand.

2He, weeping, called upon the god; and out of a clear sky and a calm, clouds suddenly gathered together, the storm burst, and rain fell in the greatest torrents, and the pyre was put out. So Cyrus learned that Croesus was both beloved of the god and a good man; he brought him down from the pyre and asked him this:

3"Croesus, who was it that persuaded you to march upon my land and become my enemy instead of my friend?" Croesus said: "King, what I did was to your good fortune and to my own misery; and the cause of it was the god of the Greeks, who urged me to march."

4"For no one is so foolish as to choose war in place of peace: in peace, sons bury their fathers, but in war, fathers bury their sons. Yet this was pleasing to some divinity, that it should so fall out."

Chapter 88

1While he was saying this, Cyrus set him free and seated him close beside himself, holding him in very great regard; and both Cyrus himself and all those about him marveled as they looked at him. But Croesus sat silent, held fast in deep thought.

2Then he turned and, seeing the Persians sacking the Lydian city, he said, "King, shall I say what is in my mind, or shall I keep silent in the present moment?" Cyrus bade him speak boldly whatever he wished. Croesus then asked him, saying:

3"What is all this great crowd working so hard at?" Cyrus said, "It is sacking your city and carrying off your wealth." Croesus answered, "It is neither my city nor my wealth that it is sacking, for I have no longer any share in these; no—they are carrying off what is yours."

Chapter 89

1Cyrus took thought for what Croesus had said, and sending the others away he asked Croesus what he saw amiss in what was being done. Croesus said, "Since the gods have given me to you as your slave, I think it right, if I see a little more than others do, to point it out to you."

2"The Persians are by nature violent men with no wealth of their own. If then you let them sack and keep great riches, this is what you must look for from them: whoever among them gets away with the most, expect that man to rise against you. Do this, then, if what I say pleases you:

3set guards from among your spearmen at every gate, who shall take from those carrying the riches out and tell them that a tithe must of necessity be given to Zeus. Then you will not make yourself hated by taking the wealth away by force, and they, seeing that you are acting justly, will give it up willingly."

Chapter 90

1Hearing this, Cyrus was very pleased, since the advice seemed good to him. He praised Croesus at length and commanded the spearmen to carry out what Croesus had proposed, and then said to Croesus this: "Croesus, since you are a man who does good deeds and speaks good words as a king should, ask for whatever gift you would have from me straightaway."

2Croesus said, "Master, you will do me the greatest favor if you allow me to send these fetters to the god of the Greeks, whom I honored above all other gods, and ask him whether it is his custom to deceive those who treat him well." Cyrus asked what complaint against the god he meant by this request.

3Croesus set out before him his whole reasoning and the answers of the oracles, and especially the offerings, and how he had been lifted up by the oracle to march against the Persians; and as he spoke he came at last to asking leave to reproach the god with this. Cyrus laughed and said, "This too you shall have from me, Croesus, and anything else you may need at any time."

4When Croesus heard this, he sent certain Lydians to Delphi, instructing them to lay the fetters on the threshold of the temple and ask whether the god felt no shame at his oracles, which had encouraged Croesus to march against the Persians as though he would put an end to the power of Cyrus—from which power he had gained such first fruits, showing the fetters. They were to ask this, and also whether it was the custom of the Greek gods to be ungrateful.

Chapter 91

1When the Lydians came and delivered what they had been told to say, the Pythia is said to have answered them thus: "Not even a god can escape the fate that has been appointed. Croesus paid the debt for the wrong of his fifth ancestor, who, being a spearman of the Heraclids, followed a woman's guile, killed his master, and took that master's honor to himself, though it in no way belonged to him."

2Though Loxias was eager that the fall of Sardis should come upon the children of Croesus and not upon Croesus himself, he was not able to turn the Fates aside.

3So far as they gave way, he brought it about and granted Croesus this grace: he put off the capture of Sardis by three years, and let Croesus know that he was taken in those years later than his appointed time. And secondly, when Croesus was burning on the pyre, the god came to his aid.

4Croesus is wrong to complain of the oracle that was given him. For Loxias foretold to him that if he marched against the Persians he would destroy a great empire. In the face of this it was his part to consider carefully and send again to ask whether the god meant his own empire or that of Cyrus. But he did not grasp what was said, nor did he ask again; let him therefore declare himself to be the cause.

5So too, at his last consultation, when Loxias spoke to him of a mule, he did not understand this either. For this Cyrus was indeed a mule: he was born of two parents not of the same race, the mother the better, the father the lesser;

6for she was a Mede, daughter of Astyages king of the Medes, while he was a Persian, a subject of those people, and in every way beneath the mistress he lived with. This was the answer the Pythia gave to the Lydians, who carried it back to Sardis and reported it to Croesus. When he heard it, he acknowledged that the fault was his own and not the god's. Such was the course of the empire of Croesus and of the first conquest of Ionia.

Chapter 92

1Croesus has many other offerings in Greece besides those I have mentioned. In Thebes of Boeotia there is a golden tripod, which he dedicated to Apollo of Ismenus; at Ephesus the golden cows and most of the columns; and at the temple of Pronaia in Delphi a great golden shield. These were still surviving in my day; the rest of his offerings are lost.

2The offerings made by Croesus at Branchidae of the Milesians are, as I learn, equal in weight and of the same kind as those at Delphi. Those at Delphi and those at the temple of Amphiaraus he dedicated from his own property, being a first fruits of his ancestral wealth; but the rest of the offerings came from the estate of a man who had been his enemy, who before he became king had stood against him in faction, striving to win the rule of the Lydians for Pantaleon.

3This Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes and a half-brother of Croesus, not by the same mother: Croesus was born to Alyattes by a Carian woman, Pantaleon by an Ionian.

4When, his father having granted it to him, Croesus won the throne, he destroyed the man who had opposed him by dragging him over a carding-comb; and his estate, which he had already dedicated to sacred use, he then consecrated in the places I have named, in the manner I have described. So much for the offerings.

Chapter 93

1The land of Lydia has no great wonders to record beyond what other lands have, except the gold dust carried down from Tmolus.

2But it has one work that is by far the greatest of all, apart from the works of the Egyptians and the Babylonians: the tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, of which the foundation is of great stones and the rest a mound of earth. It was built by the men of the marketplace, the craftsmen, and the girls who ply their trade.

3Five boundary stones stood on top of the tomb, and were still there in my day, and on them was inscribed how much each group had built; and when it was measured, the work of the girls proved the greatest.

4For all the daughters of the common folk of Lydia prostitute themselves, gathering dowries for themselves, and continue to do so until they are married; and they give themselves away in marriage.

5The circuit of the tomb is six stades and two plethra, and the width is thirteen plethra. Adjoining the tomb is a great lake, which the Lydians say never runs dry; it is called Gygaeae. Such is this work.

Chapter 94

1The Lydians have customs much like those of the Greeks, except that they prostitute their female children; and they were the first of men, so far as we know, to strike and use coins of gold and silver, and the first to become retail traders.

2The Lydians themselves say that the games now in use among them and among the Greeks were their own invention; and at the same time as these were invented among them, they say, they sent out the colony to Tyrrhenia. This is how they tell the story.

3In the reign of Atys son of Manes a severe famine fell upon the whole of Lydia; and for a time the Lydians bore it with endurance, but when it would not abate they looked for remedies, and one devised one thing, another something else. Then, they say, were invented the forms of dice and knucklebones and the ball and all the other games except checkers; for the invention of these the Lydians do not claim as their own.

4This was the way they found to deal with the hunger: on one day they played the whole day through, so that they would not look for food, and on the other day they ate, leaving off their games. In this fashion they lived for eighteen years.

5But when the trouble would not relent and pressed upon them harder still, their king divided all the Lydians into two halves and cast lots, one half to remain and one to leave the country; and he appointed himself to lead the half that drew to stay, and his own son, whose name was Tyrrhenus, to lead those whose lot was to depart.

6Those of them who drew the lot to go left the country and went down to Smyrna and built ships; and putting on board all the movable goods they had, they sailed away in search of a livelihood and a land, until, after passing many peoples, they came to the Umbrians, where they founded cities and have lived ever since.

7Instead of Lydians they were renamed after the king's son who led them out, taking their name from him, and were called Tyrrhenians. The Lydians, then, were enslaved by the Persians.

Chapter 95

1From this point our account must inquire who this Cyrus was who destroyed the empire of Croesus, and by what means the Persians became masters of Asia. As some of the Persians say—those who do not wish to glorify the story of Cyrus but to tell it as it truly happened—so shall I write, knowing that I can show three other versions of the story of Cyrus.

2The Assyrians had ruled upper Asia for five hundred years when the Medes were the first to revolt from them; and these, fighting for their freedom against the Assyrians, proved brave men, and shaking off their slavery won their freedom. After them the other peoples too did as the Medes had done.

Chapter 96

1While all the peoples of the mainland lived under their own laws, they came again under tyranny in this way. Among the Medes there was a man of great shrewdness, whose name was Deioces, son of Phraortes.

2This Deioces, who had set his heart on tyranny, did as follows. The Medes lived in villages; and in his own village, where he had already been a man of standing, he took up justice and practiced it with even greater zeal and diligence. And this he did at a time when there was great lawlessness throughout the whole of Media, knowing that injustice is the enemy of justice. The Medes of his own village, seeing his ways, chose him to be their judge. He then, since he was aiming at power, was upright and just,

3and by acting so won no small praise from his fellow citizens. When therefore the men of the other villages learned that Deioces alone judged aright—until then they had fallen victim to unjust judgments—they were glad at what they heard and came to Deioces to have their own cases judged by him, and in the end they would entrust them to no one else.

Chapter 97

1As the number of those who came to him kept growing, since they learned that his judgments turned out according to the truth, Deioces, seeing that everything was laid upon him, would no longer sit in the place where he had formerly taken his seat to give judgment, and declared that he would judge no more; for it did not profit him, he said, to neglect his own affairs and judge his neighbors' all day long.

2When plunder and lawlessness came to be far worse in the villages than before, the Medes gathered together in one place and took counsel with one another, speaking of what had befallen them. As I think, it was chiefly the friends of Deioces who spoke:

3"Since with things as they are we cannot live in this land, come, let us set a king over ourselves; then the land will be well governed and we ourselves can turn to our work, and we shall not be driven from our homes by lawlessness." With words such as these they persuaded themselves to submit to a king.

Chapter 98

1Then, when they put forward the question of whom they should set up as king, Deioces was loudly put forward and praised by every man, until they agreed that he should be their king.

2He ordered them to build him a palace worthy of the royal station and to strengthen him with a guard of spearmen; and the Medes did this. They built him great and strong halls, where he himself pointed out in the country, and they allowed him to choose spearmen for his guard from all the Medes.

3When he had taken the power, he compelled the Medes to make one city and, caring for this, to pay less heed to the others. When the Medes obeyed him in this too, he built great and strong walls—those now called Ecbatana—each circle standing within the next.

4He contrived this wall so that each circle of wall rises above the next by the height of the battlements alone. To be sure, the ground itself lends its aid, being a hill and so making it so; but it was also contrived to be so by design.

5There are seven circles in all, and in the innermost stand the royal palace and the treasuries. The greatest of the walls is about equal in size to the circuit of Athens. The battlements of the first circle are white, of the second black, of the third crimson, of the fourth dark blue, and of the fifth orange-red.

6Thus the battlements of the five circles are colored with dyes; but of the two last, one has its battlements coated with silver, the other with gold.

Chapter 99

1These things Deioces built for himself and around his own palace; but the rest of the people he ordered to build their houses around the wall. When all was built, Deioces was the first to establish this order: that no one should enter before the king, but all should conduct their business through messengers; and that the king should be seen by no one; and besides this, that laughing and spitting in the king's presence should be held shameful for all alike.

2He put this majesty about himself for this reason: so that his peers, who had grown up with him and were of no lesser house and not inferior to him in valor, might not see him and be grieved and plot against him, but that without seeing him they might think him a different sort of man from themselves.

Chapter 100

1When he had ordered these things and strengthened himself in the tyranny, he was strict in guarding justice: they wrote their cases down and sent them in to him, and he decided the cases that were brought and sent the judgments back out.

2This he did in the matter of judgments; and the following was the other order of his rule: if he learned of anyone committing outrage, he would have him summoned and punish him according to the measure of each man's offense; and he had watchers and listeners throughout the whole land he ruled.

Chapter 101

1Deioces, then, united the Median people alone and ruled over them; and these are the tribes of the Medes: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi. These are the tribes of the Medes.

Chapter 102

1To Deioces a son was born, Phraortes, who on the death of Deioces—after a reign of fifty-three years—received the throne; and on receiving it he was not content to rule the Medes alone, but marched against the Persians, and these were the first he attacked, and he made the Persians the first of his subjects.

2Then, holding these two peoples, both of them strong, he went on subduing Asia, passing from one people to another, until he marched against the Assyrians—that people who held Nineveh and had once ruled over all, but were now left without allies, since their allies had revolted, though in all else they were at the height of their power. Against these Phraortes marched, and there he himself perished, after a reign of twenty-two years, and the greater part of his army with him.

Chapter 103

1On the death of Phraortes, Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces took the kingdom. He is said to have been far braver than his forefathers, and he was the first to marshal the peoples of Asia in companies and the first to arrange that each should serve apart—the spearmen, the bowmen, and the horsemen; before this all had been mingled together in confusion.

2This is the king who fought the Lydians when night became day for them as they fought, and who brought all the land above the river Halys under his own rule. Collecting all who were subject to him, he marched against Nineveh, to avenge his father and to take that city.

3And when he had joined battle and defeated the Assyrians and was laying siege to Nineveh, a great army of Scythians came against him, led by Madyes son of Protothyes, king of the Scythians. These had invaded Asia after driving the Cimmerians out of Europe, and following after them as they fled they had come thus into the land of the Medes.

Chapter 104

1From the lake Maeotis to the river Phasis and the Colchians is a journey of thirty days for a light-armed man; and from Colchis it is no great distance to cross into Media, for there is only one people between them, the Saspires, and past these one is in Media.

2The Scythians, however, did not invade by this way, but turned aside by the upper road, which is much longer, keeping the Caucasus mountains on their right. There the Medes joined battle with the Scythians and, defeated in the fight, were stripped of their empire; and the Scythians made themselves masters of the whole of Asia.

Chapter 105

1From there they marched against Egypt. And when they had reached Palestine in Syria, Psammetichus king of Egypt met them and with gifts and entreaties turned them back from going any further.

2As they were retreating and had come back into Syria to the city of Ascalon, most of the Scythians passed by and did no harm, but a few of them, being left behind, plundered the temple of the Heavenly Aphrodite.

3This temple, so far as I can learn by inquiry, is the most ancient of all the temples of this goddess; for the temple in Cyprus was founded from it, as the Cyprians themselves say, and the one in Cythera was founded by Phoenicians who came from this same Syria.

4On the Scythians who plundered the temple at Ascalon, and on their descendants after them forever, the goddess sent a female disease; and so the Scythians say that this is why they are afflicted with it, and they can see for themselves how those who come to the Scythian land are stricken—those whom the Scythians call Enarees.

Chapter 106

1For twenty-eight years the Scythians ruled Asia, and everything was thrown into confusion by their violence and their contempt; for they exacted tribute from each people, assessing what each should pay, and apart from the tribute they rode about and plundered and seized whatever each people had.

2Most of these Cyaxares and the Medes killed by inviting them as guests, making them drunk, and then murdering them; and in this way the Medes won back their empire and held all that they had held before. They took Nineveh as well—how they took it I shall show in another account—and made the Assyrians subject to them, except the territory of Babylon.

Chapter 107

1After this Cyaxares died, having reigned forty years including the time the Scythians ruled, and Astyages son of Cyaxares succeeded to the kingdom. A daughter was born to him, to whom he gave the name Mandane. Astyages dreamed that she urinated so much that it filled his own city and flooded the whole of Asia as well. He laid the dream before the interpreters of dreams among the Magi, and when he learned from them what each part of it meant, he was afraid.

2When this Mandane was now of an age for marriage, he gave her to none of the Medes of his own rank, fearing the vision; but he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses, a man whom he found to be of good family but of a quiet disposition, valuing him far beneath a man of middling rank among the Medes.

Chapter 108

1While Mandane was living with Cambyses, in the first year Astyages saw another vision: it seemed to him that a vine grew from the private parts of this daughter of his, and that the vine covered the whole of Asia.

2When he had seen this and laid it before the interpreters of dreams, he sent for his daughter from Persia, since she was with child; and when she came he kept watch over her, wishing to destroy whatever was born of her. For the dream-interpreters among the Magi were showing him from the vision that the child of his daughter was destined to be king in his place.

3Astyages, being on his guard against this, when Cyrus was born called Harpagus, a man of his own household, the most faithful of the Medes and steward over all his affairs, and spoke to him as follows.

4"Harpagus, the task I am about to lay upon you, do not on any account slight, nor betray me and by choosing others bring ruin upon yourself hereafter. Take the child that Mandane bore, carry it to your own house and kill it, and bury it in whatever way you yourself wish."

5Harpagus answered, "King, never yet have you found this man of yours wanting in anything, and we shall take care to commit no offense against you in the time to come as well. But if this is your wish, then my part must be to serve you well."

Chapter 109

1With this answer, when the child had been delivered to him dressed for death, Harpagus went home weeping; and going in he told his wife the whole of what Astyages had said.

2She said to him, "What do you mean to do now?" He answered, "Not what Astyages commanded. Not even if he loses his senses and raves worse than he raves now will I follow his plan or lend myself to such a murder."

3"I will not kill the child for many reasons: both because the boy is kin to me, and because Astyages is old and has no male child of his own;

4and if, when he is dead, the throne is to pass to this daughter of his—whose son he is now trying to kill through me—is it anything but the greatest of dangers that is left for me? Yet for my own safety the child must die; but the killing must be done by one of Astyages' own men, and not by any of mine."

Chapter 110

1He said this and at once sent a messenger to one of Astyages' herdsmen, the one he knew to graze his cattle in the most suitable pastures and in the most mountainous and wild country. The man's name was Mithradates, and he lived with a fellow slave of his, whose name in Greek was Cyno and in Median Spaco—for the Medes call a dog spaca.

2The foothills of the mountains where this herdsman had his pastures lie to the north of Ecbatana and toward the Euxine Sea; for on that side the Median land toward the Saspires is very mountainous, high and thickly covered with forest, while all the rest of the Median land is flat.

3When the herdsman had come with all speed, being summoned urgently, Harpagus said this: "Astyages orders you to take this child and expose it on the most desolate of the mountains, so that it may perish as quickly as possible. And he ordered me to tell you this: if you do not kill it but by any means keep it alive, he will destroy you in the most wretched way. I am appointed to see that the child lies exposed."

Chapter 111

1The herdsman heard this and, taking up the child, went back along the same road and came to his homestead. As it happened, his own wife, who had been expecting a child all that day, then by some divine chance gave birth while the herdsman was away in the city. They were both in anxiety about each other—he fearful for his wife's labor, and she wondering why Harpagus had summoned her husband, which he had never done before.

2When he returned and came in, his wife saw him, as though from the unexpected, and was the first to ask why Harpagus had sent for him so urgently. He said, "Wife, when I came to the city I saw and heard what I wish I had never seen, and what must never come to pass for our masters. The whole house of Harpagus was full of weeping, and I went in bewildered.

3As soon as I entered, I saw a child lying before me, squirming and crying, dressed in gold and colored clothing. When Harpagus saw me, he ordered me to take up the child as quickly as possible and carry it away and expose it on the wildest of the mountains, saying that Astyages was the one who laid this upon me, and threatening me with many evils if I did not do it.

4And I took it up and carried it away, thinking it was the child of one of the household servants; for I could never have guessed where the child truly came from. But I marveled to see it dressed in gold and fine clothes, and moreover the evident weeping in the house of Harpagus.

5And on the road I soon learned the whole story from the servant who escorted me out of the city and put the infant in my hands—that the child was the son of Mandane, Astyages' daughter, and of Cambyses son of Cyrus, and that Astyages ordered him to be killed. And here he is now."

Chapter 112

1As the herdsman said this, he uncovered the child and showed it. And when the woman saw that the child was big and well-formed, she wept and, taking hold of her husband's knees, begged him by no means to expose it.

2He said he could not do otherwise; for watchers would come from Harpagus to see it done, and he would perish in the worst way if he did not do it. When she could not persuade her husband, the woman spoke again: "Since then I cannot persuade you not to expose the child, do this instead, if it must without fail be seen exposed. I too have given birth—I gave birth to a dead child.

3Take that child and put it out in place of this one, and let us bring up the son of Astyages' daughter as though he were our own. Then neither will you be caught doing wrong to your masters, nor shall we have planned badly: the dead child will have the burial of a prince, and the living one will not lose his life."

Chapter 113

1The woman's words seemed to the herdsman to fit the situation very well, and he did as she said at once. The child he had brought to kill he gave to his wife; and taking up his own dead child he put it in the vessel in which he had carried the other;

2and dressing it in all the finery of the other child, he carried it to the most desolate part of the mountains and left it there. When the third day came for the exposed child, the herdsman went to the city, leaving one of the cowherds as a guard over it; and coming to Harpagus he said he was ready to show the body of the child.

3Harpagus sent some of his most faithful spearmen, and through them he saw the child and buried the herdsman's boy; and so that child was buried, while the other—who was afterwards named Cyrus—was taken and brought up by the herdsman's wife, who gave him some other name and not Cyrus.

Chapter 114

1When the boy was ten years old, an incident that happened to him revealed who he was. He was playing in the village where these pastures lay, playing in the road with other boys of his own age. And the boys at play chose as their king this boy who was called the herdsman's son.

2He assigned them their tasks: some to build houses, some to be spearmen, one of them to be the king's eye, and to one he gave the office of carrying messages, assigning to each his work.

3One of these boys, who was playing with him and was a son of Artembares, a man of standing among the Medes, did not do what Cyrus had ordered; and Cyrus bade the other boys seize him, and when the boys obeyed, Cyrus handled him very roughly, scourging him soundly.

4When the boy was released, smarting at what he thought treatment unworthy of himself, he took it all the harder; and going down into the city to his father he complained of what he had suffered at the hands of Cyrus—though not of Cyrus, for that name did not yet exist, but of the son of Astyages' herdsman.

5Artembares, in a rage, went to Astyages bringing his son along with him, and said he had suffered shocking treatment, declaring, "King, we have been grievously abused by this slave of yours, the herdsman's son," and he showed the boy's shoulders.

Chapter 115

1Astyages, hearing and seeing this, and wishing to give the boy satisfaction for the sake of Artembares' honor, sent for both the herdsman and the boy. When both were present, Astyages looked at Cyrus and said:

2"You, being the son of such a man as this, dared to treat so shamefully the son of this man, who stands first in my favor?" He answered, "Master, I did this to him and rightly. The boys of the village, of whom he was one, chose me to be their king at their play, for they thought me best suited for it.

3The other boys did as they were told, but this one disobeyed and paid no heed, until he got his due. If then for this I deserve some punishment, here I am before you."

Chapter 116

1As the boy spoke, Astyages recognized him; and the cast of his face seemed to him to be his own, and his bearing freer than a slave's, and the time of the exposure seemed to match the boy's age.

2Astounded at these things, he was speechless for a while; but at last, recovering himself, he said—wishing to send Artembares away so that he could take the herdsman alone and examine him—"Artembares, I will see to it that neither you nor your son have any cause to complain."

3So he sent Artembares away, and the servants led Cyrus inside at Astyages' command; and when the herdsman was left alone by himself, Astyages asked him where he had got the child and who had given it to him.

4The herdsman said the boy was his own son, and that the mother who bore him was still with him. Astyages said he was making a poor choice in bringing himself into such great straits; and as he spoke he signaled to the spearmen to seize him.

5As he was being led away to the torture, he then showed the true story; and beginning from the beginning he went through it all, telling the truth, and ended in prayers, begging Astyages to have mercy on him.

Chapter 117

1Now that the herdsman had revealed the truth, Astyages made less of his part in the matter; but he was mightily angry with Harpagus, and ordered the spearmen to summon him.

2When Harpagus came before him, Astyages asked him, "Harpagus, in what manner did you dispose of the child I gave you, the one born of my daughter?" Harpagus, seeing that the herdsman was in the room, did not turn to the road of falsehood, lest he be caught in a lie when examined, but said this:

3"King, when I took over the child, I considered how I could both do as you wished and keep myself guiltless of blood against you, being neither your daughter's killer nor yours.

4This is what I did: I called this herdsman and gave him the child, saying that it was you who ordered him to kill it. And in saying that I told no lie—you did so order. But I handed the child to him with these instructions: to expose it on a lonely mountain and to stay by and watch over it until it should die; and I threatened him with every kind of punishment if he did not carry this out.

5And when he had done as he was told and the child had died, I sent the most faithful of my eunuchs, and through them I saw the child and buried him. That, King, is how the matter went, and that was the fate the child met."

Chapter 118

1Harpagus then told the straightforward story; but Astyages, hiding the anger he felt at what had happened, first recounted the tale to Harpagus just as he had heard it himself from the herdsman, and when he had finished the recital, he ended by saying that the child was alive and that what had happened had turned out well:

2"What was done to this child," he said, "grieved me greatly, and I could not lightly bear being at odds with my daughter. Since fortune has turned out so well, send your own son to the boy who has come back to us; and do this—for I am going to offer a thank-offering to the gods for the boy's preservation, to which occasion this honor is attached—come to dinner with me."

Chapter 119

1When Harpagus heard this, he made obeisance and counted it a great thing both that his mistake had turned to good purpose and that he was invited to a banquet on so happy an occasion; and he went home.

2Going inside as quickly as he could—for he had one son only, a boy of about thirteen years—he sent him out, bidding him go to Astyages and do whatever he was ordered; and he himself, overjoyed, told his wife what had happened.

3When the son of Harpagus came to him, Astyages slaughtered him and cut him apart limb from limb; and he roasted some of the meat and boiled the rest, and when it was ready he kept it prepared.

4When the hour of the banquet came and the other guests and Harpagus were present, tables laden with mutton were set before the others and before Astyages himself; but before Harpagus was set everything else of his own son except the head and the extremities of the hands and feet, which lay apart on a basket, covered over.

5When it seemed to Harpagus that he had eaten his fill, Astyages asked him whether he had enjoyed anything at the feast. Harpagus said he had enjoyed it greatly; and they brought in for him the boy's head, covered, and the hands and the feet, and standing before him they bade Harpagus uncover them and take whatever he wished of them.

6Harpagus obeyed and, uncovering, saw what was left of the boy; and seeing it he was not overcome but kept his composure. Astyages asked him whether he knew what beast's meat he had eaten.

7He said that he knew, and that whatever the king did was welcome to him. With this answer he took up what was left of the meat and went home—where, I think, he was going to gather it all together and bury it.

Chapter 120

1Astyages laid this penalty upon Harpagus; and taking counsel about Cyrus, he summoned the same Magi who had interpreted his dream for him in that way. When they arrived, Astyages asked them how they had judged his vision. They gave the same answer as before, saying that the boy was destined to be king, if he survived and did not die first.

2He answered them as follows: "The boy exists and is alive, and while he was living out in the country the children from the village set him up as their king. And he carried out every one of the acts that kings who are kings in very truth accomplish: he appointed spearmen and doorkeepers and messengers and all the rest, and so held his rule."

3"And now, where does this seem to you to lead?" The Magi said: "If the boy is still alive and has played the king without any design behind it, take courage for that reason and keep up your heart; for it will not come to pass a second time. For in small matters even some of our oracles have gone wide of the mark, and whatever hangs upon dreams comes altogether to nothing."

4Astyages answered them as follows: "I myself, Magi, am very much of this mind: now that the boy has been called king, the dream has run its course, and this boy is no longer any danger to me. Even so, after looking well into the matter, give me sound advice on what will be safest for my house and for you."

5The Magi replied to this: "Sire, we too have every interest in seeing your rule prosper. For in the one case it passes on to this boy and becomes alien to us—he being a Persian—and we, being Medes, are enslaved and become of no account among the Persians, since we are foreigners. But with you on the throne, since you are a fellow citizen, we both hold a share of rule and enjoy great honor at your hands."

6"So in every way we must look to you and to your rule. And now, if we had seen anything to fear, we would have declared it all to you beforehand. As it is, since the dream has ended in nothing, we ourselves take heart, and we urge you to do the same. Send this boy out of your sight, off to Persia and to his parents."

Chapter 121

1On hearing this Astyages was glad, and summoning Cyrus he said to him: "My child, I did you a wrong because of a vision in a dream, but you have survived by your own fortune. So now go with joy to Persia, and I will send escorts along with you. When you get there you will find a father and mother not at all like Mithradates the cowherd and his wife."

Chapter 122

1With these words Astyages sent Cyrus away. When he came to the house of Cambyses, his parents received him; and receiving him, when they had learned the truth, they welcomed him warmly, for they had believed him dead from that day on, and they asked him by what means he had come through.

2He told them that before this he had not known the truth but had been altogether mistaken, and that on the road he had learned the whole story of his own experience: for he had known himself to be the son of Astyages' cowherd, but from that point in the journey onward he had learned the whole account from his escorts.

3He said that he had been reared by the cowherd's wife, and he kept praising her without ceasing; in his telling, everything was Cyno. His parents took up this name, so that it might seem to the Persians that their son's survival was somehow more marvelous, and spread the report that Cyrus had been exposed and a bitch had reared him.

Chapter 123

1From this source, then, that report has spread. When Cyrus had come to manhood and was the bravest and the best loved of his fellows, Harpagus kept pressing attentions upon him and sending gifts, in his desire to get his revenge on Astyages; for a private man as he was, he saw no way of punishing Astyages from his own resources, but seeing Cyrus growing up he made him his ally, likening Cyrus' sufferings to his own.

2Even before this he had brought the following about: since Astyages was harsh toward the Medes, Harpagus met with each one of the foremost Medes and won them over, arguing that they must set Cyrus at their head and strip Astyages of his kingship.

3When he had brought this about and everything was ready, Harpagus, wishing to make his intention known to Cyrus who was living in Persia, had no other way at all, since the roads were watched; so he contrived the following.

4He got hold of a hare, and slitting its belly and plucking out nothing, he put a paper inside just as it was, having written on it what he thought fit; then he sewed up the hare's belly again, and giving it, along with hunting nets, to the most trustworthy of his servants as though he were a huntsman, he sent him off to Persia, instructing him to give the hare to Cyrus with a spoken message—to carve it up with his own hands, with no one present while he did so.

Chapter 124

1This was duly carried out, and Cyrus took the hare and cut it open; finding the paper inside, he took it and read it. The writing said: "Son of Cambyses, the gods have their eyes on you—for otherwise you would never have come to such a height of fortune. Do you now exact payment from Astyages, who plotted your death."

2"For through his eagerness you are dead; but through the gods and through me you are alive. I think you learned all of it long ago—both what was done in your own case, and how I have fared at Astyages' hands for not killing you but giving you to the cowherd. Do you now, if you are willing to heed me, rule over all the land over which Astyages rules. Win the Persians over to revolt and march against the Medes."

3"And whether I am appointed general by Astyages to face you, or another of the notable Medes, what you wish is at hand; for these men will be the first to revolt from him and come over to you, and they will set about bringing Astyages down. Since what lies here is ready, then, do this—and do it quickly."

Chapter 125

1On hearing this Cyrus considered by what cleverest scheme he could persuade the Persians to revolt, and as he considered he found that the following course was the most timely; and so he did it.

2Writing what he wished on a paper, he called an assembly of the Persians, and then unfolding the paper and reading from it, he declared that Astyages was appointing him general of the Persians. "Now therefore," he said, "Persians, I give you notice to come, every man of you, with a sickle." This was Cyrus' proclamation. There are many tribes of Persians, and some of these Cyrus gathered together and won over to revolt from the Medes.

3These are they from whom all the other Persians are derived: the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, and the Maspii. Of these the Pasargadae are the best; among them is the clan of the Achaemenidae, from which spring the Perseid kings.

4Other Persians there are, these: the Panthialaei, the Derusiaei, and the Germanii. All of these are tillers of the soil; the rest are nomads: the Daoi, the Mardi, the Dropici, and the Sagartii.

Chapter 126

1When all were present with what had been prescribed, Cyrus—there was a certain thorn-covered tract in Persia, some eighteen or twenty stades every way—gave them notice to clear this tract in a single day.

2When the Persians had accomplished the task set before them, he gave them second notice to come bathed on the next day. Meanwhile Cyrus gathered together all his father's goat herds and flocks and cattle, and sacrificed them, and made ready to entertain the Persian host, providing wine and food in as ample a measure as he could.

3When the Persians came on the next day, he seated them in a meadow and feasted them. When they had finished dinner, Cyrus asked them which they preferred, what they had had on the previous day or what lay before them now.

4They said there was a great difference between them: on the former day everything had been hardship for them, on the day now present everything was good. Taking up this answer, Cyrus laid bare his whole purpose, saying:

5"Men of Persia, thus the matter stands. If you are willing to obey me, there are these blessings and ten thousand others besides, and none of the toil that belongs to slaves; but if you are not willing to obey me, you have in store toils beyond counting like those of yesterday."

6"Obey me, then, and become free. For I think that by heaven's fortune these matters have been brought into my hands, and I reckon that you are men no less worthy than the Medes, in everything else and in war. Since this is so, revolt from Astyages with all speed."

Chapter 127

1The Persians, then, gladly took a leader to free them, for they had long been indignant at being ruled by the Medes. Astyages, learning that Cyrus was doing these things, sent a messenger and summoned him.

2Cyrus bade the messenger report that he would be there sooner than Astyages himself would wish. When Astyages heard this, he armed all the Medes, and, heaven-struck as he was, he appointed Harpagus their general, forgetting what Harpagus had done to him.

3When the Medes took the field and joined battle with the Persians, some of them fought—those who had not shared in the plot—others deserted to the Persians, and the majority played the coward and fled.

Chapter 128

1When the Median army had been disgracefully broken up, Astyages as soon as he learned of it cried out in threats against Cyrus: "Yet not even so shall Cyrus go unpunished."

2With these words he first impaled those dream-interpreters of the Magi who had persuaded him to let Cyrus go, and then armed those Medes left behind in the city, both young men and old.

3Leading them out and engaging the Persians, he was defeated; Astyages himself was taken alive, and he lost those Medes whom he had led out.

Chapter 129

1When Astyages was a prisoner, Harpagus came and stood over him and gloated and taunted him, among other bitter words heaped upon him, and in particular he asked him about that dinner of his own, at which Astyages had fed him with the flesh of his son—what his servitude was, in place of his royal power.

2Astyages looked at him and asked in turn whether he claimed Cyrus' deed as his own. Harpagus said yes—since he had written the letter—the business was justly his.

3Astyages showed by his argument that he was the most foolish and the most unjust of all men: most foolish, if it was really through him that the present situation was brought about, in that when it was open to him to become king he laid the power upon another; and most unjust, because for the sake of that dinner he had enslaved the Medes.

4"For if it was altogether necessary to place the kingship upon someone else and not keep it himself, it was more just to bestow this boon upon some Mede than upon a Persian. As it is, the Medes, who were not to blame in this matter, have become slaves instead of masters, while the Persians, who were formerly the Medes' slaves, have now become their masters."

Chapter 130

1So Astyages, after reigning five and thirty years, was thus stripped of his kingship, and the Medes bowed to the Persians because of his cruelty. They had ruled the Asia above the river Halys for a hundred and thirty years lacking two, except for the time when the Scythians held sway.

2In later times, however, they repented of what they had done and revolted from Darius; but having revolted they were subdued again, defeated in battle. At that time, in Astyages' day, the Persians and Cyrus rose against the Medes, and from that time on they ruled Asia.

3Cyrus did Astyages no further harm but kept him at his court until he died. Thus Cyrus, born and bred as he was, became king; and afterwards he subdued Croesus, who had begun the injustice, as I have told before; and having subdued him, he ruled over all Asia.

Chapter 131

1I know that the Persians observe customs as follows: they do not hold it right to set up images or temples or altars, and they even charge those who do so with folly—because, as I suppose, they do not believe, as the Greeks do, that the gods are of human shape.

2It is their custom to climb the highest of the mountains and offer sacrifice to Zeus, giving the name Zeus to the whole circle of the sky; and they sacrifice to the sun and to the moon and to the earth and to fire and to water and to the winds.

3These alone they sacrificed to from the beginning; but they have learned besides to sacrifice to the Heavenly Goddess, taking the custom from the Assyrians and the Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians Alilat, and the Persians Mithra.

Chapter 132

1The sacrifice to the gods named above is established among the Persians as follows. They make no altars, they light no fire when they are about to sacrifice; they use no libation, no flute, no fillets, no barley-grains. Whenever a man wishes to sacrifice to any of the gods, he leads the beast to a pure place and calls upon the god, wearing a wreath of myrtle about his tiara for the most part.

2The sacrificer is not permitted to pray for blessings for himself alone: he prays that all may go well with all the Persians and with the king, for he himself is among all the Persians. Then, having cut the victim limb from limb and boiled the flesh, he spreads the tenderest grass he can find, especially clover, and lays all the meat upon it.

3When he has so laid it out, a Magus stands beside him and chants a theogony—the kind of chant, as they say, that is their incantation; for without a Magus it is not their custom to make sacrifice at all. After waiting a short time, the sacrificer carries off the meat and does with it whatever he pleases.

Chapter 133

1Of all days they hold that one most in honor on which each man was born. On this day they think it right to set out a richer feast than at other times: the wealthy among them set out a whole ox or horse or camel or donkey, roasted in ovens, while the poorer among them set out the smaller kinds of sheep.

2They eat little food of the staple kind but many courses afterward, and these not all at once; and it is for this reason, the Persians say, that the Greeks leave the table still hungry, since nothing worth mentioning is served to them after dinner; if anything were served, they would never stop eating.

3They are greatly given to wine, and it is not permitted to vomit or to urinate in another's presence. These customs they observe thus; and it is their habit, when they are in their cups, to deliberate on the most weighty matters.

4Whatever pleases them in their deliberation, this the master of the house in whose house they deliberate sets before them on the next day when they are sober; and if it pleases them when sober too, they adopt it, but if it does not, they let it go. And whatever they have resolved upon when sober, they reconsider when they are in their cups.

Chapter 134

1When they meet one another in the streets, one may tell by this sign whether those who meet are of equal rank: instead of greeting one another they kiss one another on the lips; if one is a little inferior to the other, they kiss one another on the cheeks; if one is much lower born than the other, he falls down and does obeisance to his fellow.

2They honor, above all others, those who dwell nearest to themselves, and next those who are next farthest away, and so they go on, honoring each in proportion; and those who dwell farthest from themselves they hold in least esteem, believing that they themselves are by far the best of all men in every respect, and that the others have a share of virtue in proportion, while those who live farthest away from them are the worst.

3So too in the days of Median rule, when the nations ruled one another in turn: the Medes held first place of all, and the peoples nearest to them; those nearest held precedence over their neighbors, and those neighbors over those next beyond. By this same rule the Persians assign honor; for that nation advances in rank as it advances in rule and wardship.

Chapter 135

1The Persians adopt foreign customs more readily than any other men. For example, judging the Median dress to be handsomer than their own, they wear it; and for war they wear the Egyptian cuirass; and they take their pleasure in every kind of way that they hear of; and in particular, having learned it from the Greeks, they have sex with boys. Each of them marries several lawful wives, and keeps many more concubines.

Chapter 136

1This is held to be a mark of manly excellence—to be a good warrior is another—that a man produce many children; and to him who produces the most the king sends gifts every year. They believe that strength lies in numbers.

2They educate their boys, beginning at five years old and going on until twenty, in three things only: to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. Until the boy is five years old he does not come into his father's sight, but lives among the women. This is done so that, if the child dies in the course of his upbringing, he may not cast any grief upon his father.

Chapter 137

1This custom, then, I approve; and this one too: that for a single offense the king does not put any man to death, nor does any other Persian inflict an irremediable punishment on one of his servants for a single offense; but when he has taken account, if he finds the wrongs to be more and greater than the services, then he gives way to his anger.

2And they say that no one has ever yet killed his own father or mother; but whenever any such thing has happened, they say that on inquiry it has always without fail been found that the child in question was a changeling or a bastard; for it is not likely, they say, that a true parent should die at the hands of his own child.

Chapter 138

1What they may not do, they may not even speak of. The foulest thing in their eyes is lying; and next to it is owing a debt, for many other reasons, but especially because they say that a debtor is bound to tell some lie besides. If any citizen is afflicted with leprosy or the white disease, he does not come into town nor consort with the other Persians; they say that he has these afflictions because he has sinned against the sun.

2Every foreigner too who is seized with these complaints many drive out of the country—and white pigeons as well—imputing the same cause. They do not urinate or spit into a river, nor wash their hands in one, nor permit anyone else to do so, but they hold rivers in the greatest reverence.

Chapter 139

1Here is another thing that has come about among them, which the Persians themselves have not noticed, though we have: their names, which are in keeping with their persons and their dignity, all end in the same letter—the letter that the Dorians call san and the Ionians sigma. If you search, you will find that the names of the Persians end in it—not some of them and not others, but all alike.

Chapter 140

1This much I can speak of as knowing it precisely; the following, however, is told as a matter kept hidden and not clearly: concerning the dead, that the corpse of a Persian man is not buried before it has been torn by a bird or a dog.

2The Magi I know for certain do this—for they do it openly. The Persians, however, encase the corpse in wax and then hide it in the earth. The Magi are set far apart from all other men, and from the Egyptian priests.

3For the Egyptian priests abstain from killing any living thing, save only the beasts they sacrifice; but the Magi kill everything with their own hands, except dogs and men, and they make a great practice of it, killing alike ants and serpents and the other creeping things and winged creatures. Concerning this custom, then, let it stand as it has been held from the beginning; but I will return to my former account.

Chapter 141

1The Ionians and the Aeolians, as soon as the Lydians had been subdued by the Persians, sent messengers to Sardis to Cyrus, wishing to be upon the same terms as those on which they had been subject to Croesus. When he heard what they proposed, he told them a story: how a flute player, seeing fish in the sea, played his flute, thinking that they would come out onto the land.

2But when he was disappointed of his hope, he took a casting net and threw it around a great mass of the fish and drew them out; and when he saw them leaping, he said to the fish—so the story goes—"Stop your dancing for me, since even when I played the flute you would not come out and dance."

3Cyrus told this story to the Ionians and the Aeolians for the following reason: that the Ionians, when earlier Cyrus had sent messengers asking them to revolt from Croesus, had refused to obey him, but now that the business was done they were ready to obey Cyrus.

4This he said to them in anger. When the Ionians heard of this, and word was brought back to their cities, each of them built walls around their city, and all the rest gathered together at the Panionion, except the Milesians—for with these alone Cyrus made an oath-bound pact on the same terms as the Lydian had. The rest of the Ionians resolved in common to send messengers to Sparta to ask aid for the Ionians.

Chapter 142

1These Ionians, in whose land the Panionion is, chanced to found their cities in the fairest position of sky and seasons of all men whose history we know.

2For neither the regions lying above Ionia nor those below it, neither those toward the east nor those toward the west, are the same as Ionia; some of them are oppressed by cold and wet, others by heat and drought.

3They do not all use the same speech, but four different forms of it. Of their cities Miletus lies farthest toward the south, and after it come Myus and Priene.

4These are settled in Caria and speak alike to one another. The following are in Lydia: Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, and Phocaea. These cities agree in speech not at all with those named before, but agree among themselves. Three Ionian cities remain: two of them occupy islands, Samos and Chios, and one is settled on the mainland, Erythrae. The Chians and the Erythraeans speak alike, while the Samians have a speech of their own alone. These make four forms of speech.

Chapter 143

1Of these Ionians the Milesians were sheltered from fear, having made their sworn pact; and the islanders among them had nothing to fear either—for the Phoenicians were not yet subjects of the Persians, nor were the Persians themselves seafarers.

2These differed from the other Ionians in nothing but this: the whole Greek race being weak at that time, the Ionian nation was by far the weakest of all peoples and of least account—for except Athens there was no other city of any note.

3The rest of the Ionians, then, and the Athenians shunned the name, not wishing to be called Ionians; and indeed even now most of them, I think, are ashamed of the name. But these twelve cities gloried in the name and founded a shrine of their own, to which they gave the name Panionion, and they resolved to give no other Ionians a share in it (though none of them asked to have a share, except the Smyrnaeans).

Chapter 144

1Even as the Dorians of the land now called the Pentapolis—the same land that was once called the Hexapolis—take care to admit none of the neighboring Dorians to the sanctuary of Triopian Apollo; indeed they even shut out from the fellowship those of their own number who sinned against the sanctuary.

2For at the games of Triopian Apollo they used in old days to set up bronze tripods as prizes for the victors, and those who received them were not to carry them out of the sanctuary but to dedicate them there on the spot to the god.

3A man of Halicarnassus, named Agasicles, won a victory and paid no heed to the law; for he carried the tripod home and nailed it up in his house. For this reason the five cities—Lindos, Ialysus, and Camirus, and Cos and Cnidos—shut out the sixth city, Halicarnassus, from the fellowship. This penalty, then, they imposed upon the Halicarnassians.

Chapter 145

1The Ionians, I think, made twelve cities and refused to admit more for this reason: that when they dwelt in the Peloponnese there were twelve divisions of them, just as there are now twelve divisions of the Achaeans who drove out the Ionians. Pellene is the first, next to Sicyon; after it come Aegira and Aegae, in which is the ever-flowing river Crathis, from which the river in Italy took its name; then Bura and Helice, where the Ionians took refuge when they were defeated in battle by the Achaeans; then Aegium and Rhypes and Patrae and Pharae and Olenus, in which is the great river Peirus; and Dyme and Tritaea, whose people alone of these dwell inland. These twelve divisions now belong to the Achaeans, and in those days they belonged to the Ionians.

Chapter 146

1For these reasons the Ionians also made twelve cities; but it is great folly to say that these are more truly Ionians than the other Ionians, or of nobler birth; for not the least part of them are Abantes from Euboea, who have no share of Ionia even in name; and Minyans of Orchomenus are mingled with them, and Cadmeans and Dryopians and a division of Phocians, and Molossians and Arcadian Pelasgians and Epidaurian Dorians, and many other nations are mingled in.

2But those of them who set out from the prytaneum of Athens and claim to be the noblest of the Ionians—these brought no wives with them to the colony, but took Carian women, whose parents they had killed.

3Because of this slaughter these women made a law for themselves and bound it with oaths, and handed it down to their daughters: never to eat at the same table with their husbands, and never to call their own husband by name—because their fathers and husbands and children had been killed, and after doing so the men had married them.

Chapter 147

1These things happened at Miletus. As for kings, some of them set over themselves Lycians descended from Glaucus son of Hippolochus, others Cauconians of Pylos descended from Codrus son of Melanthus, and others both together. But in any case they hold to the name of Ionian more than the other Ionians; let them pass, then, as the true-bred Ionians.

2All are Ionians who are sprung from Athens and celebrate the festival of the Apatouria. All celebrate it except the Ephesians and the Colophonians; these alone of the Ionians do not celebrate the Apatouria, and these too on a pretext of some killing.

Chapter 148

1The Panionion is a consecrated place on Mycale, turned toward the north, set apart in common by the Ionians for Poseidon of Helice. Mycale is a headland of the mainland running out toward the west wind, lying opposite Samos; and here the Ionians gathered from their cities and kept a festival which they named the Panionia.

2[It is not only the Ionian festivals that have this peculiarity; all the festivals of all the Greeks alike end in the same letter, just as the names of the Persians do.]

Chapter 149

1These, then, are the Ionian cities; the Aeolian are these: Cyme, called Phriconis, Larissa, Neonteichos, Temnos, Cilla, Notium, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegaeae, Myrina, and Gryneia. These are the eleven ancient cities of the Aeolians; for one of them, Smyrna, was taken away by the Ionians—for these too, those on the mainland, were twelve.

2These Aeolians chanced to found their settlement in a better land than the Ionians, but in their seasons they were not so fortunate.

Chapter 150

1The Aeolians lost Smyrna in this way. They received into their city men of Colophon who had been worsted in party strife and driven from their own land. After this the Colophonian exiles, watching for the moment when the Smyrnaeans were celebrating a festival of Dionysus outside the walls, shut the gates and so took the city.

2When all the Aeolians came to the rescue, they came to terms: the Ionians were to give back the movable goods and the Aeolians were to leave Smyrna. When the Smyrnaeans did this, the eleven cities divided them among themselves and made them citizens of their own.

Chapter 151

1These, then, are the Aeolian cities of the mainland, apart from those settled on Ida—for these are a separate group.

2Of those who hold islands, five cities occupy Lesbos (for the sixth settlement in Lesbos, Arisbe, the Methymnaeans enslaved, though the people were of their own blood); one city is settled in Tenedos, and another in the islands called the Hundred Isles.

3The Lesbians and the Tenedians, like the Ionians who hold islands, had nothing to fear; but it pleased the remaining cities to follow the Ionians in common wherever these should lead.

Chapter 152

1When the messengers of the Ionians and the Aeolians came to Sparta—for this business was done with all speed—they chose to speak before all others the Phocaean whose name was Pythermus. He put on a purple cloak so that as many Spartans as possible might gather to hear, and taking his stand he spoke at length, asking them to come to the aid of his people.

2But the Lacedaemonians would in no way listen to them; they resolved not to come to the aid of the Ionians. So the messengers departed; but the Lacedaemonians, though they had dismissed the Ionian envoys, nevertheless sent men in a fifty-oared ship—as I think, to spy out the affairs of Cyrus and of Ionia.

3When these men came to Phocaea, they sent to Sardis the most notable of their company, whose name was Lacrines, to declare to Cyrus this saying of the Lacedaemonians: that he must do no harm to any city of the Greek land, for the Lacedaemonians would not stand by and watch.

Chapter 153

1When the herald had said this, they say that Cyrus asked the Greeks who were present who the Lacedaemonians were, and how numerous they were, that they gave him such notice; and on being told he said to the Spartan herald: "I have never yet feared men of such a kind as these, who have a place set apart in the middle of their city where they gather together and cheat one another under oath. If I keep my wits, it will not be the troubles of the Ionians that they will be talking about, but their own."

2This taunt Cyrus hurled at all the Greeks, because they set up marketplaces and buy and sell in them; for the Persians themselves are not accustomed to make any use of marketplaces, and they have no marketplace at all.

3After this he entrusted Sardis to a Persian named Tabalus, and the gold of Croesus and of the other Lydians to a Lydian named Pactyes to convey away; and he himself marched off to Agbatana, taking Croesus with him and making no account at all of the Ionians for the present.

4For Babylon stood in his way, and the Bactrian nation, and the Sacae and the Egyptians; against these he intended to march in person, and against the Ionians to send another general.

Chapter 154

1When Cyrus had marched away from Sardis, Pactyes made the Lydians revolt from Tabalus and Cyrus; and going down to the coast—for he had all the gold there was in Sardis—he hired mercenaries and persuaded the men of the coast to take the field with him. Marching on Sardis he besieged Tabalus, who was shut up in the citadel.

Chapter 155

1Cyrus learned of this on the road and said to Croesus: "Croesus, what end will these events have for me? The Lydians, it seems, will never stop making trouble both for me and for themselves. I am considering whether the best course would be to sell them all into slavery. As it is, I seem to have acted like a man who killed a father and spared his children.

2For so I too—having taken you, who are to the Lydians something more than a father, and am carrying you off, I handed the city over to the Lydians themselves, and then I am amazed that they have revolted from me." So he spoke what was in his mind; and Croesus answered him as follows, fearing that he would make Sardis desolate.

3"Sire, what you say is reasonable; yet do not give way wholly to your anger, nor uproot an ancient city that is guiltless alike in what was done before and in what is now afoot. What was done before, I did it, and I bear the weight of it on my own head; but as for the present trouble—it is Pactyes who is the wrongdoer, to whom you entrusted Sardis; let him give you satisfaction.

4But have pity on the Lydians and lay these commands upon them, so that they neither revolt nor be dangerous to you: send and forbid them to possess weapons of war, and order them to wear tunics beneath their clothes and boots on their feet, and proclaim to them that they are to play the lyre and the harp and to train their sons to be shopkeepers. And quickly, Sire, you will see them become women instead of men, so that there is no danger of their revolting."

Chapter 156

1This Croesus advised him, judging it better for the Lydians than to be sold into slavery; for he knew that unless he put forward a sufficient reason he would not persuade Cyrus to change his mind, and he feared that if the Lydians escaped the present danger they might some time later revolt from the Persians and be destroyed.

2Cyrus was pleased with the advice and, relenting in his anger, said that he would follow it. He called Mazares, a Mede, and instructed him to proclaim to the Lydians the measures Croesus had advised, and besides to sell into slavery all the others who had joined the Lydians in the march on Sardis, and to bring Pactyes to him alive at all costs.

Chapter 157

1He, then, having given these instructions on the road, marched away to the Persian homeland; but Pactyes, learning that an army was coming against him and was near at hand, took fright and fled away to Cyme.

2Mazares the Mede marched on Sardis with whatever part of Cyrus' army he had, and when he found that Pactyes and his men were no longer in Sardis, first he compelled the Lydians to carry out Cyrus' orders, and from that time on, under compulsion, the Lydians changed their whole manner of life.

3After this Mazares sent messengers to Cyme, bidding them give up Pactyes. The Cymaeans resolved to refer the question to the god at Branchidae; for there was an oracle established there from ancient times, which the Ionians and the Aeolians were accustomed to consult. This place is in the territory of Miletus, above the harbor of Panormus.

Chapter 158

1The Cymaeans, then, sent envoys to Branchidae to ask about Pactyes, what they should do to win the favor of the gods. When they put this question, the oracle declared that they should give Pactyes up to the Persians. When the Cymaeans heard the answer that was brought back to them, they set about giving him up.

2When the people were thus minded, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a man of standing among the citizens, prevented the Cymaeans from doing this, disbelieving the oracle and thinking that the envoys had not reported the truth; until, to ask about Pactyes a second time, other envoys went, of whom Aristodicus was one.

Chapter 159

1When they arrived at Branchidae, Aristodicus took his turn at the oracle along with the rest and asked this: "My lord, a suppliant has come to us, Pactyes the Lydian, fleeing a violent death at the hands of the Persians; and they demand him back, ordering the men of Cyme to give him up.

2We, fearing the power of the Persians, have not yet dared to give up the suppliant, until word is brought to us plainly from you which of the two courses we are to take." So he asked this; and the god showed him the same oracle again, bidding him give Pactyes up to the Persians.

3To this Aristodicus did the following, with forethought: going around the temple, he was driving out the sparrows and whatever other kinds of birds had nested in the temple. As he did this, they say a voice came from the inner shrine, directed toward Aristodicus, saying this: "Most unholy of men, what is this that you dare to do? Are you robbing my suppliants from my temple?"

4Aristodicus, not at a loss, replied: "My lord, you yourself help your suppliants in this way, and yet you order the men of Cyme to give up the suppliant?" And the god answered him again with these words: "Yes, I do order it, so that you may the sooner perish for your impiety, and never again come to my oracle about the giving up of suppliants."

Chapter 160

1When the men of Cyme heard this answer brought back to them, unwilling either to give him up and be ruined or to keep him and be besieged, they sent him away to Mytilene.

2The Mytilenaeans, as Mazares kept sending them messages demanding the surrender of Pactyes, were preparing to give him up for a price—whatever it may have been; for I cannot say for certain; for it never came to pass.

3For the men of Cyme, when they learned of these dealings with the Mytilenaeans, sent a ship to Lesbos and carried Pactyes away to Chios. From there he was torn from the temple of Athena, guardian of the city, by the Chians and given up; and the Chians gave him up in exchange for Atarneus.

4This Atarneus is a district of Mysia, opposite Lesbos. The Persians, taking Pactyes over, kept him under guard, intending to show him to Cyrus.

5There was a span of no little time thereafter when no Chian made a sprinkling of barley groats to any god, nor baked cakes of the grain grown in that land, but they abstained wholly from every sacred rite involving anything produced from this region.

Chapter 161

1The Chians, then, gave up Pactyes. Mazares after this made an expedition against those who had joined in besieging Tabalus, and he enslaved the people of Priene and overran the whole plain of the Maeander, making spoil for his army, and Magnesia likewise. After this he died at once of a disease.

Chapter 162

1When he died, Harpagus came down to succeed him in the command, himself of Median descent, whom Astyages king of the Medes once feasted with a wicked meal—it was he who helped Cyrus win the throne.

2This man, when he had been appointed general by Cyrus and came to Ionia, took the cities by mounds; for whenever he had penned them behind their walls, from that point on he piled mounds against the walls and so sacked them.

Chapter 163

1The first city of Ionia he attacked was Phocaea. These Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to make long voyages, and it is they who discovered the Adriatic and Tyrrhenia and Iberia and Tartessus.

2They sailed not in round ships but in fifty-oared vessels. Coming to Tartessus they became friends with its king, whose name was Arganthonius; he ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived one hundred and twenty in all.

3So dear did the Phocaeans become to this man that first he urged them, if they left Ionia, to settle wherever they wished in his own land; and then, when he could not persuade the Phocaeans, and he learned from them how the power of the Mede was growing, he gave them money to build a wall around their city.

4And he gave it without stint; for the circuit of the wall is no few stades, and it is all of great stones well fitted together.

Chapter 164

1In this fashion the wall was finished for the Phocaeans. Harpagus, when he brought his army against them, laid siege to them, offering terms that it would satisfy him if the Phocaeans would throw down one single battlement of the wall and consecrate one building.

2The Phocaeans, bitter at the thought of slavery, said they wished to deliberate for one day and then give their answer;

3and while they deliberated, they asked him to lead his army away from the wall. Harpagus said that he knew well what they meant to do, but that nonetheless he would let them deliberate. So while Harpagus led his army away from the wall, the Phocaeans meanwhile launched their fifty-oared ships and put aboard their children, their wives, and all their goods, and besides these the images from the temples and the other dedications—everything, that is, except what was of bronze or stone or painting—and putting all the rest aboard, and themselves embarking, they sailed for Chios. The Persians took possession of Phocaea, left empty of men.

Chapter 165

1When the Chians would not sell them the islands called Oenussae—for the Phocaeans wished to buy them, fearing that these would become a trading station and their own island would be cut off from trade on that account—for this reason the Phocaeans set out for Cyrnus; for in Cyrnus twenty years before this they had founded a city on the god's command, whose name was Alalia.

2Arganthonius was by now dead. As they set out for Cyrnus, they first sailed back to Phocaea and killed the Persian garrison that held the city, having received it from Harpagus. When they had accomplished this, they laid mighty curses on any of their company who should stay behind,

3and besides this they sank a mass of iron in the sea and swore not to return to Phocaea before that iron mass should come to the surface again. But as they sailed for Cyrnus, more than half the citizens were seized with longing and pity for their city and the ways of their land, and, becoming forsworn, they sailed back home to Phocaea. Those of them who kept the oath raised sail from the Oenussae islands and sailed on.

Chapter 166

1When they reached Cyrnus, they lived there for five years together with those who had come before, and they founded shrines. But since they kept harrying all their neighbors, the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians made common cause and marched against them, each with sixty ships.

2The Phocaeans too manned their ships, sixty in number, and put out to meet them in the sea called Sardinian. When they joined battle, the Phocaeans won what is called a Cadmean victory; for forty of their ships were destroyed, and the twenty that survived were useless, since they had lost their rams.

3Sailing back to Alalia they took on board their children, their wives, and as much of their other property as their ships could carry, and then leaving Cyrnus behind they sailed to Rhegium.

Chapter 167

1Of the men from the destroyed ships, the Carthaginians and the Tyrrhenians [cast lots for them, and of the Tyrrhenians the men of Agylla] received by far the greatest number, and these they led out and stoned to death. Afterward everything that passed the place where the slain Phocaeans lay was twisted and crippled and struck down—sheep, beasts of burden, and men alike.

2The men of Agylla sent to Delphi, wishing to make amends for their sin. The Pythia bade them do what the men of Agylla still perform even now; for they hold a great funeral rite for the dead and institute games, both gymnastic and equestrian.

3Such was the fate by which these Phocaeans perished; those of them who fled to Rhegium, sailing from there, won for themselves a city in the land of Oenotria—that which is now called Hyele;

4and they founded it on the word of a man of Poseidonia, when they learned that the Pythia's command to found Cyrnus meant the hero, and not the island.

Chapter 168

1Such was the course of events concerning Phocaea in Ionia; and the Teians did much the same as these. For when Harpagus had taken their wall by a mound, they all embarked in their ships and sailed away to Thrace, and there founded the city of Abdera, which before them Timesius of Clazomenae founded but gained no profit thereby, since he was driven out by the Thracians; he now holds honors among the Teians at Abdera as a hero.

Chapter 169

1These were the only Ionians who, refusing to endure slavery, left their homeland; the rest of the Ionians, apart from the Milesians, met Harpagus in battle just as those who departed did, and proved themselves good men, each fighting for his own country; but being defeated and captured, they stayed each in their own place and performed what was commanded of them.

2The Milesians, as I have said before, had made a sworn treaty with Cyrus himself and kept quiet. Thus for the second time Ionia was enslaved. When Harpagus had subdued the Ionians on the mainland, the Ionians who held the islands, in fear of these events, gave themselves up to Cyrus.

Chapter 170

1Though the Ionians were thus reduced to evil case and still gathered no less at the Panionium, I learn that Bias, a man of Priene, set before the Ionians the most useful counsel, which if they had followed would have made them the most prosperous of all the Greeks;

2for he urged the Ionians to sail all together with a common fleet to Sardinia and there found a single city of all the Ionians, and so escape slavery and be prosperous, holding the greatest of all islands and ruling over others; but if they stayed in Ionia, he said, he could see no further freedom for them.

3This was the counsel of Bias of Priene, given to the Ionians after their ruin; and another, useful even before Ionia was ruined, was that of Thales of Miletus, a man of Phoenician descent, who urged the Ionians to have one council house, and that it be at Teos—for Teos is the center of Ionia—while the other cities still be inhabited and counted as nothing more than townships. Such were the counsels these men set before them.

Chapter 171

1Harpagus, after he had subdued Ionia, made an expedition against the Carians, the Caunians, and the Lycians, taking with him both Ionians and Aeolians.

2Of these peoples the Carians came to the mainland from the islands. For in ancient times they were subjects of Minos and were called Leleges, and they held the islands, paying no tribute, so far back as I can reach in what I have heard; but whenever Minos needed it, they manned his ships.

3Since Minos had subdued much land and prospered in war, the Carian nation was by far the most renowned of all nations at that same time.

4And they made three inventions which the Greeks adopted: for it was the Carians who first put crests on helmets and made devices upon shields, and they were the first to fit handles to shields; before this all who used shields carried them without handles, slinging them by leather straps, worn about the neck and the left shoulder.

5Long after the Carians, the Dorians and Ionians drove them out of the islands, and so they came to the mainland. So far as the Carians are concerned, this is what the Cretans say happened; the Carians themselves, however, do not agree with this account, but hold that they are aborigines of the mainland and have always borne the same name as they bear now.

6They point to an ancient temple of Zeus Carius at Mylasa, in which Mysians and Lydians share as being brothers of the Carians; for they say that Lydus and Mysus were brothers of Car. These, then, share in it; but those who, though of another race, have come to speak the same tongue as the Carians, have no share in it.

Chapter 172

1The Caunians, in my opinion, are aborigines, though they themselves say they come from Crete. Their speech has moved toward the Carian tongue—or that of the Carians toward the Caunian, for this I cannot determine for certain—but in their customs they differ widely both from other men and from the Carians. For their fairest custom is to gather in drinking companies by age and by friendship, men, women, and children alike.

2When foreign shrines had been established among them, later, when they changed their minds—for they resolved to pour offerings only to their native gods—all the Caunians of fighting age put on their arms, and striking the air with their spears they followed on as far as the borders of the Calyndians, saying that they were driving out the foreign gods.

Chapter 173

1Such are the customs of these peoples; the Lycians are of Cretan origin in ancient times (for all of Crete was held in old days by barbarians);

2when a quarrel arose in Crete over the kingdom between the sons of Europa, Sarpedon and Minos, and Minos got the better in the struggle, he drove out Sarpedon and his partisans; and they, being expelled, came to the land of Milyas in Asia; for the land the Lycians now hold was in ancient times Milyas, and the Milyae were then called Solymi.

3As long as Sarpedon ruled them, they were called Termilae—the name they brought with them, and which their neighbors still call the Lycians even now; but when Lycus son of Pandion came from Athens to the Termilae at the court of Sarpedon, he too having been driven out by his brother Aegeus, then in the course of time they came to be called Lycians after Lycus.

4In their customs they follow some Cretan and some Carian practices. But one custom they hold as peculiar to themselves, agreeing with no other people: they take their names from their mothers, and not from their fathers;

5and when one man asks another who he is, he reckons himself by his mother's side and enumerates the mothers of his mother. And if a freeborn woman marries a slave, the children are accounted well-born; but if a freeborn man, even the first among them, has a foreign wife or a concubine, the children are without honor.

Chapter 174

1The Carians, then, achieved no notable deed before they were enslaved by Harpagus—neither the Carians themselves nor those Greeks who inhabit this land;

2among whom dwell the Cnidians, colonists from Lacedaemon. Their territory turns toward the sea—that called Triopium—beginning from the Bybassian Chersonese, and the whole of the Cnidian land except a little is surrounded by water

3(for the Ceramic Gulf bounds it on the north, and on the south the sea by Syme and Rhodes); this small remaining part, some five stades wide, the Cnidians were digging through while Harpagus was subduing Ionia, wishing to make their land an island. And all of it would have been ringed by water; for wherever the Cnidian land runs out to the mainland, there is the isthmus they were digging.

4With a great host at work—for the workmen seemed to be wounded in a fashion more heaven-sent than was natural, in other parts of the body, but especially in their eyes, when the rock was splintered—they sent envoys to Delphi to ask the god about the hindrance.

5The Pythia, as the Cnidians themselves say, gave them this answer in trimeter verse: "Do not fortify the isthmus with towers, nor dig it through; / for Zeus would have made an island, had he so wished."

6When the Pythia had given this oracle, the Cnidians stopped their digging, and when Harpagus came against them with his army, they surrendered without a battle.

Chapter 175

1There were Pedasians living inland above Halicarnassus; among them, whenever anything harmful was about to befall them and their neighbors, the priestess of Athena grew a great beard. This happened to them three times. These were the only men in Caria who held out against Harpagus for a time and gave him the most trouble, fortifying a mountain called Lide.

Chapter 176

1The Pedasians, then, were taken after a time. The Lycians, when Harpagus marched his army into the plain of Xanthus, sallied out and fought, few against many, and proved their valor; but being defeated and driven into the city, they gathered into the acropolis their women, their children, their goods, and their servants, and then set the whole acropolis on fire.

2When they had done this and sworn fearful oaths together, they sallied out and all the Xanthians died fighting.

3Most of the Lycians today who claim to be Xanthians are newcomers, except for eighty households; these eighty households happened to be abroad at that time and so survived. In this way Harpagus took Xanthus, and in like fashion he took Caunus as well; for the Caunians for the most part imitated the Lycians.

Chapter 177

1While Harpagus was laying waste the lower parts of Asia, Cyrus himself was doing the same in the upper parts, subduing every nation and letting none go free. Most of these we shall pass over; but those which gave him the most trouble and are most worth the telling, of these I shall make mention.

Chapter 178

1When Cyrus had made all the continent subject to him, he attacked the Assyrians. Of Assyria there are many other great towns as well; but the most famous and the strongest, and where their royal seat was established after Nineveh was laid waste, was Babylon, a city of such a sort as follows.

2It lies in a great plain, and each of its sides measures one hundred and twenty stades, the city being square; the full circuit of the city thus comes to four hundred and eighty stades. Such is the size of the city of Babylon, and its adornment was beyond that of any other city that we know.

3First a trench, deep and broad and full of water, runs around it; then a wall fifty royal cubits broad and two hundred cubits high; and the royal cubit is three fingers longer than the common cubit.

Chapter 179

1I must go on to tell where the earth from the trench was used up, and how the wall was built. As they dug the trench they made bricks of the earth carried out of the excavation, and when they had molded enough bricks they baked them in kilns;

2then, using hot bitumen as mortar, and laying bands of reeds between every thirty courses of brick, they built first the edges of the trench, and then the wall itself in the same fashion.

3On top of the wall, along its outermost edge, they built single-roomed structures facing one another, leaving between them space for a four-horse chariot to turn. And there are a hundred gates in the wall all around, all of bronze, with doorposts and lintels likewise.

4There is another city eight days' journey from Babylon, named Is. There is a river there, not large, and the river too is named Is; it empties its stream into the river Euphrates. This river Is throws up many lumps of bitumen along with its water, and from there the bitumen was brought for the wall at Babylon.

Chapter 180

1Such, then, was the way Babylon was walled; and the city is in two halves. For a river divides it in the middle, whose name is the Euphrates; it flows from Armenia, being great and deep and swift, and empties into the Red Sea.

2The wall on either side is carried down to the river at its two ends; and from that point the curving stretches along either bank of the river run on as a wall of baked brick.

3The city itself, being full of houses of three and four stories, is cut through by straight streets, both the others and those that run crosswise down to the river.

4Then at each street, in the wall along the river, there were little gates, as many in number as the lanes; and [these too] were of bronze, leading down to the river itself.

Chapter 181

1This wall then is the city's breastwork; and another wall runs around inside it, not much weaker than the outer wall, but narrower.

2In each half of the city there stood in the middle, in the one the royal palace within a great and strong enclosure, and in the other the temple of Zeus Belus with gates of bronze, still standing even in my time, two stades square on every side.

3In the middle of the temple a solid tower is built, a stade in both length and breadth; and upon this tower a second tower stands, and another upon that, and so on up to eight towers.

4A way of ascent is made outside, winding around all the towers. About midway up the ascent there is a stopping place and seats for resting, where those who climb sit and rest.

5On the last tower stands a great temple; and in the temple lies a great bed, well spread, and beside it a golden table. No image is set up there, and no one of mankind spends the night there, save only a woman of the country, whom the god chooses from among them all, as the Chaldeans say, who are the priests of this god.

Chapter 182

1These same men say—though I do not believe them—that the god himself comes to the temple and rests upon the bed, just as at Egyptian Thebes in the same fashion, as the Egyptians say;

2for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Zeus of Thebes, and both of these women, it is said, have no dealings with men; and just so at Patara in Lycia with the god's prophetess, when there is one—for the oracle is not always in operation there—but when it is, she is shut inside the temple for the night.

Chapter 183

1Of the temple at Babylon there is also another below, where a great image of Zeus sits, made of gold, and a great golden table stands beside it, and his footstool and throne are of gold; and as the Chaldeans said, these things are made of eight hundred talents of gold.

2Outside the temple is a golden altar, and there is another great altar, on which the full-grown sheep are sacrificed; for on the golden altar it is permitted to sacrifice nothing but sucking lambs only; and on the greater altar the Chaldeans burn a thousand talents of frankincense each year, when they hold the festival for this god. In this precinct there stood at that time also a solid golden statue twelve cubits high;

3I did not see it myself; I tell what is told by the Chaldeans. This statue Darius son of Hystaspes plotted to take but did not dare; Xerxes son of Darius took it, and killed the priest who forbade him to move the statue. Such is the adornment of this temple, and there are besides many private dedications.

Chapter 184

1Of this Babylon many other kings also arose, of whom I shall make mention in my accounts of the Assyrians, who adorned the walls and the temples; and among them two women. The first of these, who ruled earlier, born five generations before the later one, was named Semiramis; she raised embankments across the plain, a sight worth seeing; before her time the river used to flood the whole plain.

Chapter 185

1The second queen after her, whose name was Nitocris, was wiser than the one who ruled before her; and she left memorials which I shall relate. Seeing the empire of the Medes great and unquiet, and that they kept taking cities—among them Nineveh—she took every precaution she could.

2First, the river Euphrates, which before ran straight and flows through the middle of the city, she made so crooked by digging channels upstream that it comes flowing three times to one of the villages in Assyria; and the name of the village where the Euphrates arrives is Ardericca. And now those who travel from this sea to Babylon, sailing down the Euphrates, arrive at this same village three times, and in three days.

3This then was one thing she did; and she threw up an embankment along either bank of the river, remarkable to see for its size and height.

4Far above Babylon she dug a basin for a lake, stretching a little away from the river, digging down until there was always water in it, and making its whole circuit four hundred and twenty stades; the earth dug from this excavation she used up by heaping it along the banks of the river.

5When she had dug it, she brought stones and laid a foundation course all around it.

6She did both these things—making the river crooked and turning the whole excavation into a marsh—so that the river, broken by many bends, might run more slowly, and the voyages to Babylon be devious, and after the sea voyage a long circuit of the lake follow.

7She carried out these works in the part of the country where the approaches lay and the short road from Media, so that the Medes, mingling with her people, might not learn the state of her affairs.

Chapter 186

1These works she planned from deep forethought; and this further addition she made out of the same work. The city being in two halves with the river between, under the earlier kings, whenever anyone wished to cross from one half to the other, he had to cross by boat—and this, I think, was a nuisance. This queen foresaw this too. For after she had dug the basin for the lake, she left this other memorial of the same work:

2she cut stones of great length; and when the stones were ready and the place was dug out, she turned the whole stream of the river into the excavation she had dug, and while this was filling, the ancient channel being dried up, she rebuilt with baked bricks the banks of the river along the city and the descents from the little gates that lead down to the river, in the same fashion as the wall; and roughly in the middle of the city she built a bridge with the stones she had quarried, binding the stones with iron and lead.

3She laid squared timbers across it by day, on which the Babylonians made their crossing; and at night they took these timbers away, so that people going back and forth by night might not steal from one another.

4When the excavation had become a full lake fed by the river and the bridge was finished, she led the Euphrates back into its ancient channels from the lake; and so the excavation, having become a marsh, was thought to have served its purpose, and a bridge was there ready for the citizens.

Chapter 187

1This same queen also contrived a trick of this sort: above the most traveled gates of the city she built for herself a tomb, high above the very gates, and on the tomb she carved letters saying this:

2"If any king of Babylon who comes after me is in need of money, let him open the tomb and take as much money as he wishes; but let him not open it if he is not in need; for that would not be better."

3This tomb was left untouched until the kingship came round to Darius; and to Darius it seemed a strange thing both that these gates should not be used at all, and that with money lying there and the very inscription inviting him, he should not take it.

4He did not use these gates because the corpse would be over his head as he drove through.

5Opening the tomb he found no money, but the corpse and letters saying this: "If you were not insatiable of money and greedy of gain, you would not have opened the resting places of the dead." Such, then, this queen is said to have been.

Chapter 188

1Cyrus made war upon the son of this woman, who bore his own father's name Labynetus and held the empire of the Assyrians. Now when the great king takes the field he is well furnished with provisions from home and with sheep, and he carries with him water from the river Choaspes, which flows past Susa; of this alone does the king drink, and of no other river.

2This water of the Choaspes, boiled down, is carried in silver vessels in many four-wheeled mule wagons, which follow him wherever he goes each time.

Chapter 189

1When Cyrus, marching on Babylon, came to the river Gyndes, whose springs are in the Matienian mountains and which flows through the land of the Dardani and empties into another river, the Tigris, which flowing past the city of Opis empties into the Red Sea—when Cyrus tried to cross this river Gyndes, which can be crossed only by boat, one of the sacred white horses entered the river in its wantonness and tried to cross, and the river swept it under and carried it off.

2Cyrus was greatly angered at the river for this wanton act, and threatened that he would make it so weak that thereafter even women could cross it easily without wetting the knee.

3After this threat he gave up the expedition against Babylon and divided his army in two; and splitting it he laid out straight lines and dug one hundred and eighty channels from either bank of the Gyndes, running in every direction; and drawing up his army he ordered them to dig.

4With so great a host at work, the task went forward; yet for all that they spent the whole summer there working.

Chapter 190

1When Cyrus had punished the river Gyndes by dividing it into three hundred and sixty channels, and the second spring was dawning, he then marched on Babylon. The Babylonians marched out and waited for him. When he came near the city in his march, the Babylonians joined battle and, being defeated, were driven into the city.

2Since they had long known that Cyrus was not at rest, and saw him attacking every nation alike, they had laid in provisions for very many years. So these men made no account of the siege, while Cyrus was beset by difficulties, as much time passed and his affairs made no progress.

Chapter 191

1Whether someone else suggested it to him in his difficulty, or whether he himself learned what he had to do, this is what he did.

2Drawing up his whole army at the place where the river enters the city, and again drawing up others behind the city where the river flows out, he gave orders to the army that when they saw the channel become fordable they should enter the city that way. So having drawn them up and given these orders, he marched away himself with the useless part of the army.

3Coming to the lake, Cyrus did the like of what the queen of the Babylonians had done with the river and the lake; for he led the river by a channel into the lake, which was marshland, and made the old channel fordable, the river having subsided.

4When this had come about, the Persians who had been stationed for this very purpose along the channel of the river Euphrates, which had subsided to about the middle of a man's thigh, entered Babylon by that way.

5Now if the Babylonians had learned beforehand or discovered what Cyrus was doing, they could have let the Persians enter the city and destroyed them most miserably; for by closing all the little gates leading to the river and themselves mounting the walls built along the banks of the river, they would have caught them as in a net.

6But as it was, the Persians came upon them unawares. Because of the size of the city, as those who live there tell, when the outer parts of the city had been taken, those who lived in the middle of Babylon did not know that it was taken; for as it happened they were holding a festival, and they danced and made merry all that time, until at last they learned the truth.

Chapter 192

1Such, then, was the way Babylon was taken for the first time. I will show how great the power of the Babylonians is by many other things, and especially by this: all the land the great king rules, apart from the tribute, is divided for the support of himself and his army; so of the twelve months in the year, the land of Babylon feeds him for four months, and the whole of the rest of Asia for the eight remaining months.

2Thus the land of Assyria is a third in power of the rest of Asia. And the governorship of this land, which the Persians call a satrapy, is by far the strongest of all the governorships: where Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus held this province from the king, there came in to him each day a full artabe of silver.

3The artabe is a Persian measure holding more than an Attic medimnus by three Attic choenices. His own horses, apart from the war horses, were eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares; for each of these stallions covered twenty mares.

4Such a multitude of Indian dogs was kept that four large villages in the plain, exempt from all other taxes, were assigned to provide food for the dogs. Such, then, were the resources of the governor of Babylon.

Chapter 193

1The land of the Assyrians receives little rain, and it is this that nourishes the root of the corn; but when the fields are watered from the river, the crop grows strong and the grain comes in—not as in Egypt, where the river itself rises over the fields, but watered by hand and by means of hoisting-poles.

2The whole land of Babylon, like that of Egypt, is cut up into canals, and the greatest of these is navigable by ships; it runs toward the winter sunrise, and from the Euphrates it issues into another river, the Tigris, beside which the city of Ninus stood. Of all the lands that we know, this is by far the best at bearing the fruit of Demeter.

3For it does not so much as attempt to bear the other trees—neither fig nor vine nor olive—yet the fruit of Demeter it bears so well that it yields two hundredfold as a matter of course, and when it brings forth its best it yields three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and the barley there grow to a width of four fingers with ease.

4As for the size that the millet and the sesame grow to, each like a great tree, though I know it well I will make no mention of it, well aware that with those who have not traveled to the land of Babylon even what I have said about the crops has come to seem utterly incredible. They use no oil at all except what they make from sesame. There are palms growing all over the plain, most of them fruit-bearing, and from these they make food and wine and honey.

5They tend them as they do fig trees, and among other things they bind the fruit of the male palms—which the Greeks call males—upon the date-bearers, so that the gall-wasp may enter the date and ripen it for them, and so that the fruit of the palm does not drop off; for the males breed gall-wasps in their fruit, just as the wild figs do.

Chapter 194

1The greatest wonder of all that are in those parts, next to the city itself, I am now about to describe: the boats that ply the river and travel to Babylon, which are round and made wholly of leather.

2When they have cut withies of willow in the land of the Armenians who live above Assyria, they stretch waterproof hides over them on the outside in the fashion of a hull, neither separating off a stern nor drawing together a prow, but making the whole round like a shield; and filling the entire boat with straw, they load it with cargo and let it go to be carried down the river. Mostly they bring down jars of palm wood full of wine.

3Each boat is steered by two oars and two men standing upright, one of whom pulls the oar inward while the other pushes it outward. These boats are made both very large and smaller; the largest of them carry a load of five thousand talents. In every boat there is a live donkey, and in the larger ones several.

4When they have sailed to Babylon and sold their cargo, they sell off the withies of the boat and all the straw, and loading the hides on the donkeys they drive them back to the Armenians.

5For there is no way at all to sail up the river, because of the speed of the current; and for this reason they make their boats not of wood but of hides. And when they have driven the donkeys back to the Armenians, they make other boats in the same way.

Chapter 195

1Such are their boats. The clothing they wear is this: a linen tunic reaching to the feet, and over it they put on another tunic of wool, and wrapping themselves in a white cloak they wear shoes native to the country, much like the boots of Boeotia. They let their hair grow long and bind it up in headbands, and they anoint their whole body with perfume.

2Each man carries a seal and a staff made by hand; and on each staff is fashioned an apple, or a rose, or a lily, or an eagle, or some other device; for by their custom it is not lawful to carry a staff with no ornament upon it.

Chapter 196

1Such is their adornment of the body. Their laws are established as follows: the wisest of them, to my mind, is this one, which I hear that the Enetians of Illyria also practice. Once each year in every village they did this: when the girls were ripe for marriage, they gathered them all together and brought them to one place, and a crowd of men stood round about them.

2Then the herald would set up each girl one by one and sell her, first the most beautiful of all; then, when she had been sold for a great sum of gold, he would proclaim another, her who was next in beauty. They were sold for wedlock. Those of the Babylonians who were rich and ready to marry outbid one another to buy the fairest; but the commoners who were ready to marry, who had no need of good looks, took the plainer girls together with the money.

3For when the herald had finished selling the fairest of the maidens, he would set up the ugliest of them, or any who was deformed, and proclaim her, asking who would take her to wife for the smallest sum of gold; and she went to the man who undertook to take her for the least. The gold came from the beautiful maidens, and in this way the fair portioned out the ugly and the deformed. A man was not permitted to give his daughter to whomever he wished, nor could one who had bought a maiden lead her away without sureties, but he was bound to provide sureties that he would marry her, and only then to lead her away.

4If they did not agree, the law required that the money be returned. And it was permitted for anyone who wished to come from another village and buy.

5This, then, was their best law; it does not hold good any longer, however, but they have devised something else in recent times [that they may not wrong the maidens nor carry them away to another city]; for since they were conquered and abused and their households ruined, every commoner in want of a living prostitutes his female children.

Chapter 197

1A second law of theirs has been established, wise in another way: they carry the sick out to the marketplace—for they make no use of physicians. Coming up to the sick man, they give counsel about his disease, if any man has himself suffered what the sick man suffers, or has seen another suffer it; coming up, they advise and recommend whatever he himself did to escape a like disease, or what he saw another do to escape it. Nor may anyone pass the sick man by in silence before he has asked what disease he has.

Chapter 198

1They bury their dead in honey, and their laments are like those in Egypt. Whenever a Babylonian man has lain with his wife, he sits down over burning incense, and the woman does the same apart; and at daybreak they both wash—for neither of them will touch any vessel before washing. The Arabs too do these same things.

Chapter 199

1The most shameful of the Babylonians' customs is this: every native woman must sit in the temple of Aphrodite and lie with a foreign man once in her life. Many who disdain to mingle with the rest, as being above the common through their wealth, drive to the temple in covered carriages and take their stand there, and a great train of attendants follows behind them.

2Most do as follows: they sit in the precinct of Aphrodite, many women, with a cord bound about their heads; for some come and others go. Cord-straight passages run in every direction among the women, through which the foreigners pass and make their choice.

3There, when a woman has taken her seat, she does not return home until some stranger has thrown silver into her lap and lain with her outside the temple. Having thrown it he must say just this: "I invoke for you the goddess Mylitta." Mylitta is the name the Assyrians give to Aphrodite.

4The silver may be of any size at all—for she will not refuse it, since it is not lawful for her to do so; for this money thereby becomes sacred. She follows the first man who throws it and rejects no one. When she has lain with him, having discharged her debt to the goddess she goes home; and thereafter there is no sum so great that, if you gave it, you would win her.

5Those who are comely in face and tall of body are soon released; but the ugly ones wait a long time, unable to fulfill the law—some of them even wait three or four years. In some parts of Cyprus too there is a custom like this one.

Chapter 200

1Such are the laws established among the Babylonians. There are three clans of them who eat nothing but fish alone; and when they have caught the fish and dried them in the sun, they do this: they throw them into a mortar, and pounding them with pestles they work them through linen, and each man, if he will, kneads them like a cake and so keeps them, or bakes them like bread.

Chapter 201

1When Cyrus had subdued this people also, he longed to bring the Massagetae under his rule. This people is said to be both great and valiant, dwelling toward the dawn and the sunrise, beyond the river Araxes, opposite the Issedones. Some say that this people is Scythian.

Chapter 202

1The Araxes is said to be both greater and less than the Ister; and they say that in it are many islands, near the size of Lesbos, in which live people who in summer dig up all manner of roots for food, while the fruits of trees that they have found for fodder they lay by in their season, and these they eat through the winter.

2They have found other trees that bear fruits of a certain kind, which when they have gathered together in companies and lit a fire they throw upon it as they sit round about; and smelling the fruit as it burns they grow drunk on the vapor, as the Greeks do with wine—and the more fruit they throw on, the drunker they grow, until at last they rise up to dance and come to singing. This, then, is said to be their manner of life.

3The river Araxes flows from the land of the Matieni, the same land from which comes the Gyndes, the river that Cyrus divided into the three hundred and sixty channels; and it empties through forty mouths, of which all but one run out into marshes and shallows. In these they say people dwell who eat raw fish and whose custom it is to wear sealskins.

4But one of the mouths of the Araxes flows through open country into the Caspian Sea.

Chapter 203

1The Caspian Sea is a thing apart, not mingling with the other sea. For all the sea that the Greeks sail, and the sea beyond the Pillars, called the Atlantic, and the Red Sea, are one and the same. But the Caspian is another sea by itself; in length, for a man rowing, it is a voyage of fifteen days, and in breadth, where it is widest, of eight days. Along its western side stretches the Caucasus, which in the multitude and in the height of its mountains is the greatest of all ranges. And the Caucasus holds within itself many and various tribes of men, most of whom live wholly on the wild growth of the forest;

2among whom there are said to be trees whose leaves are of such a kind that when they are crushed and mixed with water they paint figures upon their clothing; and the figures are not washed out, but grow old along with the rest of the wool, as though they had been woven in from the beginning. The intercourse of these people is open, as it is among sheep.

Chapter 204

1On the west, then, the Caucasus bounds this sea that is called the Caspian; but on the east there stretches a plain whose extent passes the eye's reach. Of this great plain the Massagetae hold no small portion, against whom Cyrus was eager to make his campaign.

2For many and great were the things that stirred and urged him on: first, his birth, and the belief that he was something more than a man; second, the good fortune that attended his wars—for wherever Cyrus set out to march, that people had no means of escape.

Chapter 205

1After the death of the man, a woman held the royal power among the Massagetae; Tomyris was her name. Cyrus sent to court her in words, wishing to take her as his wife. But Tomyris, understanding that it was not herself he courted but the kingdom of the Massagetae, refused his approach.

2After this, since guile did not advance his purpose, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and openly set about an expedition against the Massagetae, throwing bridges over the river for his army to cross, and building towers upon the boats that ferried across the river.

Chapter 206

1While he was hard at this work, Tomyris sent a herald to him, who said: "King of the Medes, cease from pressing on with what you press—for you cannot know whether these things will turn out to your advantage. Cease, then, and be king over your own, and endure to see us ruling over those whom we rule.

2But you will not be willing to follow this counsel, and will do anything rather than keep quiet. If, then, you are so eager to make trial of the Massagetae, come—set aside the toil you now have of bridging the river, and when we have withdrawn three days' journey from the river, do you cross into our land.

3Or if you would rather receive us into yours, do this same thing." When Cyrus heard this, he called together the chief men among the Persians, and gathering them he laid the matter before them, taking counsel on which course he should take. Their opinions all fell together, advising him to receive Tomyris and her army into his country.

Chapter 207

1Croesus the Lydian, who was present and found fault with this judgment, set forth an opinion opposite to the one before them, saying: "King, I told you before that since Zeus has given me to you, whatever stumble I see for your house I will turn aside with all my power; for my sufferings, bitter as they have been, have become lessons.

2If you think that you are immortal and commander of such an army as this, there is no point in my declaring my judgment to you; but if you have understood that you too are a man and rule over other such men, learn this first: that the circle of human affairs goes round, and as it turns it does not allow the same men to prosper forever.

3Now, then, my judgment upon the question before us is the opposite of these men's. For if we are willing to receive the enemy into our country, this is the danger in it: if you are beaten, you lose your whole empire together with the battle. For it is plain that if they conquer, the Massagetae will not flee back again, but will drive straight on against your realm.

4And if you conquer, your victory is not worth as much as if you crossed into their country and, conquering the Massagetae, followed them as they fled. For I will set the same argument against that case: when you have beaten those who stand against you, you will drive straight on to the realm of Tomyris.

5And apart from what I have set forth, it is shameful and not to be borne that Cyrus son of Cambyses should give way before a woman and withdraw from the country. Now, then, it is my view that we should cross and advance as far as they withdraw, and then, doing as I say, try to get the better of them.

6For as I learn, the Massagetae are untried in Persian good things and have no experience of great luxuries. To these men, then, slaughter plenty of sheep without stint, and dress them, and set out a feast in our camp; and with it great bowls of unmixed wine in plenty, and all manner of food.

7When you have done this, leave behind the poorest part of the army and withdraw the rest again to the river. For if I read the matter aright, when they see many good things they will turn to them; and what is left for us after that is a display of great deeds."

Chapter 208

1These were the judgments set forth; and Cyrus, abandoning his former judgment and choosing that of Croesus, sent word to Tomyris to withdraw, since he was going to cross over to her side. She withdrew, then, as she had first promised; and Cyrus, putting Croesus into the hands of his son Cambyses—to whom he was giving the kingdom—and charging him many times to honor him and to treat him well if the crossing against the Massagetae should not prosper, sent these off to Persia after his charges, and himself crossed the river, and his army with him.

Chapter 209

1After he had crossed the Araxes and night came on, he saw a vision as he slept in the land of the Massagetae, of this kind: Cyrus thought that in his dream he saw the eldest of the sons of Hystaspes bearing wings upon his shoulders, and with one of them shading Asia and with the other Europe.

2Now Hystaspes son of Arsames, a man of the Achaemenid house, had as the eldest of his sons Darius, who was then of an age of about twenty years at the most; and he had been left behind in Persia, for he was not yet of an age to take the field.

3When Cyrus awoke, he took thought about the vision. And as it seemed to him a matter of great import, he called for Hystaspes and, drawing him aside alone, said: "Hystaspes, your son has been caught plotting against me and my rule. How I know this for certain I shall show you.

4The gods care for me, and show me beforehand all that is coming upon me. Now in the night just past, as I slept, I saw the eldest of your sons bearing wings upon his shoulders, and with one of them shading Asia and with the other Europe.

5There is no way from this vision but that he is plotting against me. Do you, then, make your way back to Persia as quickly as possible, and take care that when I come there, after I have subdued these lands, you bring your son to account."

Chapter 210

1Thus Cyrus spoke, thinking that it was Darius who was plotting against him; but the divine power was showing him beforehand that he himself was fated to die right there, and that his kingdom would pass round to Darius.

2Hystaspes answered him thus: "King, may no man of Persian blood ever be born who would plot against you; and if such a one exists, may he perish as quickly as possible—he who made the Persians free instead of slaves, and masters of all instead of ruled by others.

3But if some vision reports to you that my son is planning anything against you, I hand him over to you, to deal with as you wish."

Chapter 211

1Hystaspes, having answered thus and crossed the Araxes, set off for Persia to keep Darius under watch for Cyrus; and Cyrus, advancing a day's journey from the Araxes, did according to the counsels of Croesus.

2After this, when Cyrus and the picked part of the army had withdrawn back to the Araxes, leaving behind the men of no worth, a third of the Massagetae's army fell upon those left behind of Cyrus' force and killed them as they fought back; and when they saw the feast laid out before them, having made an end of their enemies, they reclined and feasted; and when they had their fill of food and wine, they fell asleep.

3Then the Persians fell upon them and killed many, and took still more alive, among others the son of queen Tomyris, who commanded the Massagetae, whose name was Spargapises.

Chapter 212

1When she learned what had happened to her army and what had befallen her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus, who said:

2"Cyrus, insatiate of blood, do not be too proud of what has come to pass—if by a potion of the vine, with which you yourselves get filled and so maddened that as the wine goes down into your bodies words of ill float back up to you, by such a drug you tricked and overcame my son, and not by battle hand to hand.

3Now, then, take the word of one who gives you good counsel: give me back my son and go your way out of this land unharmed, after having done despite to a third of the army of the Massagetae. If you will not do this, I swear to you by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that I will sate you with blood, insatiate though you are."

Chapter 213

1Cyrus paid no heed at all to these words when they were brought to him. But the son of queen Tomyris, Spargapises, when the wine had released its hold on him and he understood what a plight he was in, asked Cyrus to free him from his bonds and obtained his request; and as soon as he was loosed and had command of his hands again, he killed himself.

Chapter 214

1So this man met his end in such a way. Tomyris, since Cyrus would not listen to her, gathered all her own power and joined battle with Cyrus. Of all the battles fought among foreign peoples, I judge this one to have been the fiercest; and indeed I hear that this is how it went.

2First, it is said, they stood apart and shot at one another; then, when their arrows were spent, they closed and grappled with spears and daggers. For a long time they stood and fought, and neither side was willing to give way. At the last the Massagetae prevailed,

3and most of the Persian army perished there, and Cyrus himself died, having reigned in all thirty years, lacking one.

4Tomyris filled a skin with human blood and searched among the Persian dead for the corpse of Cyrus; and when she found it, she thrust his head into the skin, and in her despite toward the corpse she spoke these words:

5"You have destroyed me, alive and conquering you in battle, by taking my son with guile; but I, as I threatened, will sate you with blood." This, then, among the many accounts that are told, is the one I find most persuasive of the end of Cyrus' life.

Chapter 215

1The Massagetae wear clothing like that of the Scythians and live the same way; they are both horsemen and footmen (for they practice both), both bowmen and spearmen, and their custom is to carry the sagaris. For everything they use gold and bronze: for all that pertains to spearpoints and arrowheads and sagares they use bronze, but for headgear and belts and armbands they adorn themselves with gold.

2In the same way, on their horses they put bronze breastplates over the chests, and gold upon the bridles and bits and cheek-pieces. Iron and silver they do not use at all; for there is none in their land, while gold and bronze are without end.

Chapter 216

1Their customs are these. Each man marries a wife, but they have their wives in common. What the Greeks say the Scythians do is done not by Scythians but by Massagetae: when a Massagetae man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of the wagon and lies with her, without fear.

2No limit of age is set for them, other than this one: when a man is grown very old, all his kinsfolk come together and sacrifice him and other sheep along with him, and boiling the meat they feast upon it.

3These things they hold to be the height of blessedness; but one who dies of disease they do not eat, but hide away in the earth, counting it a misfortune that he did not come to be sacrificed. They sow no grain, but live on cattle and fish; and these come to them in plenty from the river Araxes;

4and they are drinkers of milk. Of the gods they worship the sun alone, and to him they sacrifice horses. This is the meaning of the sacrifice: to the swiftest of the gods they offer the swiftest of mortal things.

Chapter 1

This is the record of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. He sets it out so that what people have done may not fade with time, and so that the great and wonderful deeds—some done by Greeks and some by foreigners—may not go without fame, and especially so that the reason they went to war with each other may be known.

1The learned men among the Persians say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the conflict. They came from the sea called the Erythraean Sea to this sea and settled in the place where they live even now. At once they took to long sea voyages. They carried cargoes of Egyptian and Assyrian goods to the rest of the world and especially to Argos.

2At that time Argos stood above every other place in the land that is now called Greece. When the Phoenicians reached Argos, they set out their cargo for sale.

3On the fifth or sixth day after they arrived, when they had sold almost everything, many women came to the shore, and among them the king's daughter. Her name was Io, daughter of Inachus, the same name the Greeks give her.

4These women stood at the stern of the ship and bought whatever goods they most wanted. The Phoenicians urged each other on and rushed at them. Most of the women escaped, but Io and some others were seized. The Phoenicians dragged them aboard the ship and sailed away to Egypt.

Chapter 2

1This is how the Persians say that Io came to Egypt, not as the Greeks tell it, and that this was the first wrong done. After that, some Greeks—since the Persians cannot tell their name—put in at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa. These men would have been Cretans. So each side had done equal wrong to the other. After this the Greeks were to blame for the second wrong.

2They sailed in a long ship to Aea in Colchis and to the river Phasis. There, after they had finished the rest of the business for which they had come, they carried off the king's daughter Medea.

3The king of the Colchians sent a herald to Greece to demand justice for the abduction and to ask for his daughter back. The Greeks answered that they had not given them justice for the carrying off of Io of Argos, and so they would not give the Colchians any justice either.

Chapter 3

1In the next generation after this, they say, Alexander the son of Priam heard of these things and wanted to get himself a wife from Greece by carrying her off. He knew full well that he would not pay any penalty, since those others had not paid any either.

2So when he had carried off Helen, the Greeks first decided to send messengers to demand Helen back and to ask justice for the abduction. When they made these demands, the other side brought up the carrying off of Medea. They said that since the Greeks had paid no penalty and had not given her up when she was demanded, they now wanted to get justice from others.

Chapter 4

1Up to this point there had been nothing but abductions on both sides. From then on the Greeks were greatly to blame, because they were the first to make war on Asia before the people of Asia made war on Europe.

2To carry off women is the work of unjust men. To make a point of avenging the women who are carried off is the work of fools. To pay no attention to them is the work of sensible people. It is perfectly clear that the women would not have been carried off if they had not been willing.

3The Persians say that the people of Asia paid no attention when their women were carried off. The Greeks, though, for the sake of one woman from Lacedaemon gathered a great force, and then went to Asia and destroyed the power of Priam.

4From that time on they have always held the Greek people to be their enemy. The Persians claim Asia and the foreign peoples living in it as their own, and they regard Europe and the Greeks as separate from them.

Chapter 5

1This, the Persians say, is how it happened, and they find that the capture of Ilium is the beginning of their hatred of the Greeks.

2About Io the Phoenicians do not tell the same story as the Persians. They say that they did not take her to Egypt by force. Instead, in Argos she was sleeping with the captain of the ship. When she found out that she was pregnant, she was ashamed before her parents, so she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own free will, so that her condition would not be obvious.

3That is what the Persians and the Phoenicians say. I am not going to say whether these things happened this way or some other way. Instead I will point out the man I know first committed unjust deeds against the Greeks, and then I will go on with my account, dealing with the cities of people both small and great alike.

4Most of the cities that were great long ago have become small now. The ones that were great in my time were small before. Knowing that human good fortune never stays in the same place, I will pay attention to both kinds alike.

Chapter 6

1Croesus was a Lydian by birth, the son of Alyattes, and ruler of the peoples this side of the river Halys. The river runs from the south, between Syria and Paphlagonia, and empties toward the north into the sea called the Euxine.

2This Croesus was the first foreigner of those we know who subdued some of the Greeks and made them pay tribute, while he made others his friends. He subdued the Ionians, the Aeolians, and the Dorians in Asia, and he made the Lacedaemonians his friends.

3Before the rule of Croesus all the Greeks were free. For the Cimmerian army that came against Ionia before the time of Croesus did not conquer the cities. It only raided and plundered them.

Chapter 7

1In this way the rule passed from the Heracleidae to the family of Croesus, whose name is the Mermnadae.

2There was a man called Candaules, whom the Greeks name Myrsilus. He was ruler of Sardis and a descendant of Alcaeus the son of Heracles. Agron the son of Ninus, the son of Belus, the son of Alcaeus, was the first king of Sardis from the Heracleidae line, and Candaules the son of Myrsus was the last.

3The men who ruled this land before Agron were descendants of Lydus the son of Atys. From him the whole people got the name Lydian. Before that they were called Maeonians.

4The Heracleidae took over the rule from these men after being entrusted with it by an oracle. They were born of the slave woman of Iardanus and of Heracles. They ruled for twenty-two generations of men, five hundred and five years, with each son taking the rule from his father, down to Candaules the son of Myrsus.

Chapter 8

1This Candaules fell in love with his own wife. In his passion he believed she was by far the most beautiful of all women. Because he believed this—and his spear bearer Gyges the son of Dascylus was the one he liked best of all his men—Candaules used to tell Gyges even his most important business, and he kept praising his wife's looks to him.

2Not much time passed, and then, since Candaules was fated to come to a bad end, he said to Gyges the following: "Gyges, I do not think you believe me when I talk about how my wife looks. It turns out that people's ears are less trustworthy than their eyes. So find a way to see her naked."

3Gyges cried out and said: "Master, what kind of unsound advice is this, that you order me to look at my mistress naked? When a woman takes off her dress, she takes off her sense of shame with it."

4"People worked out what is right long ago, and we must learn from them. One of those rules is this: each person should look after what is his own. I believe that she is the most beautiful of all women, and I ask you not to demand what is against the law."

Chapter 9

1Gyges kept resisting and saying this kind of thing, because he was afraid that something bad would happen to him out of it. The other replied with these words: "Courage, Gyges. Do not be afraid of me, as if I were testing you when I say this. And do not be afraid of my wife, that she will do you any harm. I will arrange it so that she does not even learn that she has been seen by you."

2"I will stand you in the room where we sleep, behind the door that opens. After I go in, my wife will come to bed too. There is a chair near the entrance. As she takes off her clothes, she will set them on it one by one, and she will give you a very quiet chance to look at her."

3"When she steps from the chair to the bed and you are behind her, it is your job from that point on to make sure she does not see you going out through the door."

Chapter 10

1Since he could not find any way out, Gyges was ready. When bedtime seemed to have come, Candaules led Gyges into the room. Soon after, the woman came too. Gyges watched her as she came in and set down her clothes.

2When the woman turned her back to go to bed, he slipped out and made for the door. She saw him leaving. When she realized what her husband had done, she did not cry out in shame and she did not let on that she had noticed. In her mind she meant to pay back Candaules.

3Among the Lydians, and in fact among most other foreigners too, for a man to be seen naked is a great disgrace.

Chapter 11

1At that time she showed nothing and kept quiet. But as soon as it was day, she had the household servants she saw were most loyal to her made ready and called for Gyges. He came when she called, since he thought she knew nothing of what had happened. He had in fact been in the habit of coming before whenever the queen called him.

2When Gyges arrived, the woman said this: "Now that two roads lie in front of you, Gyges, I give you the choice of which one to take. Either kill Candaules and have me and the kingdom of the Lydians, or you must die here and now. That way you will not go on obeying Candaules and see what you should not see."

3"One of two men must be destroyed: either the one who planned this, or you, who looked at me naked and did what is not allowed." At first Gyges was amazed at what she said. Then he begged her not to force him to decide between such a choice.

4He did not persuade her. He saw that a real necessity lay before him: either destroy his master, or be destroyed by others. He chose to survive himself. He then asked: "Since you force me to kill my master against my will, come now, let me hear how and in what way we will attack him."

5She answered: "The attack will come from the same place where he showed me to you naked, and it will happen while he is asleep."

Chapter 12

1When they had set up the plot, night came. Gyges was not backing out, and there was no way out for him at all. Either he had to die or Candaules did. He followed the woman into the bedroom. She gave him a dagger and hid him behind that same door.

2Then, while Candaules was resting, Gyges slipped out and killed him, and so he got both the woman and the kingdom. This is the Gyges whom Archilochus of Paros, who lived at the same time, mentioned in a poem in iambic trimeter.

Chapter 13

1He got the kingdom and made it secure with the help of the oracle at Delphi. When the Lydians took what had happened to Candaules as a grave wrong and took up arms, the supporters of Gyges and the rest of the Lydians made an agreement. If the oracle declared him to be king of the Lydians, he would be king. If not, the rule would be handed back to the Heracleidae.

2The oracle did declare him, and so Gyges became king. The Pythia did say this much, though: that punishment would come on the Heracleidae in the fifth generation from Gyges. The Lydians and their kings paid no attention to this saying until it came true.

Chapter 14

1That is how the Mermnadae took the rule away from the Heracleidae and held it. Once he was ruler, Gyges sent many offerings to Delphi. In silver offerings, more of his are at Delphi than of anyone else's. Besides the silver he dedicated a huge amount of gold, including most worth remembering of all the six gold mixing bowls that lie there.

2These stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, and they weigh thirty talents. But if you want the truth, the treasury does not belong to the public of Corinth. It belongs to Cypselus the son of Eetion. This Gyges was the first foreigner of those we know to dedicate offerings at Delphi, after Midas the son of Gordius, king of Phrygia.

3Midas dedicated the royal throne on which he used to sit when he judged cases, and it is worth seeing. This throne stands in the same place as the bowls of Gyges. This gold and silver that Gyges dedicated is called Gygadas by the Delphians, named after the man who dedicated it.

Chapter 15

1After he took power, he too sent an army against Miletus and against Smyrna, and he captured the city of Colophon. But no other great deed came from him, though he ruled for thirty-eight years. So we will pass over him, having mentioned this much. I will make mention of Ardys the son of Gyges, who ruled after Gyges. He captured Priene and invaded Miletus. While he was ruling Sardis, the Cimmerians were driven out of their homes by the nomad Scythians and came to Asia, and they captured all of Sardis except the citadel.

Chapter 16

1After Ardys had ruled forty-nine years, Sadyattes the son of Ardys took over the rule, and he ruled for twelve years. After Sadyattes came Alyattes.

2This Alyattes made war on Cyaxares the descendant of Deioces and on the Medes. He drove the Cimmerians out of Asia. He captured Smyrna, the city founded from Colophon, and he invaded Clazomenae. These campaigns did not turn out as he wanted. He stumbled badly and suffered a great defeat. The rest of the deeds he performed while he held power, and which are most worth telling, are these.

Chapter 17

1He made war on the Milesians, having taken over the war from his father. He attacked and besieged Miletus in this way. Whenever the crop in the land was full grown, that was when he sent in the army. He campaigned to the music of pipes and harps and flutes, both women's and men's.

2When he reached the land of Miletus, he did not tear down or burn the buildings in the countryside, and he did not pull off their doors. He left them standing where they were. He destroyed the trees and the crop in the ground, and then he marched his army back.

3The Milesians held control of the sea, so the army had no way to take the city by siege. The Lydian did not tear down the houses for this reason: so that the Milesians would have a base from which to sow and work the land, while he himself, when they were working it, would have something to destroy each time he invaded.

Chapter 18

1Doing this he waged war for eleven years. In that time the Milesians suffered two great defeats: one at Limenium, in their own territory, and one in the plain of the Maeander.

2Of those eleven years, Sadyattes the son of Ardys was still king of the Lydians for the first six, and he was the one sending the army into the land of Miletus then. This Sadyattes was the one who had started the war. For the five years that followed the six, Alyattes the son of Sadyattes carried on the war. He took it over from his father, as I have already shown, and pressed it hard.

3None of the Ionians helped the Milesians lighten the burden of this war except the Chians alone. The Chians helped them in return for like help, since the Milesians had earlier helped the Chians fight their war against the Erythraeans.

Chapter 19

1In the twelfth year, when the standing grain was being set on fire by the army, the following thing happened. As soon as the grain caught fire, the wind drove the flames onto the temple of Athena that is called Assesia. The temple caught fire and burned down.

2At the moment no one made anything of it. But when the army got back to Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. When his illness went on too long, he sent men to Delphi to consult the god. Either someone advised him to do this, or else he decided on his own to send and ask the god about his illness.

3When these men reached Delphi, the Pythia said she would not give them an oracle until they rebuilt the temple of Athena at Assessus in the land of Miletus, the one they had burned down.

Chapter 20

1This is how I know it happened, from what I heard from the Delphians. The Milesians add this to the story: Periander the son of Cypselus was a very close guest-friend of Thrasybulus, who was ruler of Miletus at the time. He learned of the oracle given to Alyattes and sent a messenger to report it to him, so that he could plan with that knowledge for the situation at hand.

Chapter 21

1This, the Milesians say, is what happened. When this was reported to Alyattes, he at once sent a herald to Miletus, wanting to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for as long as it took him to rebuild the temple. While the herald was on his way to Miletus, Thrasybulus, who had learned the whole plan clearly in advance and knew what Alyattes was going to do, worked out the following scheme.

2He gathered all the grain there was in the city, both his own and other people's, into the marketplace. He told the Milesians that when he gave the signal, everyone was to drink and hold a festival with one another.

Chapter 22

1Thrasybulus did these things and gave these orders for this reason: so that the herald from Sardis, when he saw the great heap of grain poured out and the people living in comfort, would report it to Alyattes;

2and so it happened. The herald saw all this, delivered the Lydian's orders to Thrasybulus, and went back to Sardis. As far as I can learn, this was the only reason the two sides came to an agreement.

3Alyattes had believed that there was a severe famine in Miletus, and that its people had been worn down to the last degree of misery. But when the herald came back from Miletus, he heard the opposite of what he himself had expected.

4After that, a settlement was made between the two sides, on the terms that they should be guest-friends and allies to each other. Alyattes built two temples of Athena at Assesus in place of one, and he himself recovered from his sickness. This is how the war of Alyattes against the Milesians and Thrasybulus turned out.

Chapter 23

1This Periander, son of Cypselus, was the man who had passed on the oracle to Thrasybulus. Periander was tyrant of Corinth. The Corinthians say—and the Lesbians agree with them—that the greatest marvel of his life happened to him: Arion of Methymna was carried on a dolphin and brought to Taenarum. Arion was a singer to the lyre, second to none of the men alive at that time. He was also the first man we know of to compose a dithyramb, give it its name, and teach it, at Corinth.

Chapter 24

1They say that this Arion, who spent most of his time living with Periander, wanted to sail to Italy and Sicily to sell his singing. After he had made a great deal of money there, he wanted to come back to Corinth.

2He set out from Tarentum. Because he trusted Corinthians more than anyone else, he hired a ship with a crew of Corinthian men. But out on the open sea the crew made a plan: they would throw Arion overboard and keep his money. When he understood this, he begged them hard, offering them the money and pleading for his life.

3But he did not persuade them with these words. The sailors ordered him either to cut his own throat, so that he might get a burial in the ground, or to jump into the sea at once.

4So Arion, driven into a corner, made one request: since that was what they had decided, he asked to stand on the rowers' benches in all his costume and sing a song. He promised that when he had sung, he would make an end of himself.

5The idea pleased the crew that they would get to hear the best singer of all men, and they moved from the stern to the middle of the ship. Arion put on all his costume, took up his lyre, stood on the benches, and sang through the song called the orthian nomos, from beginning to end. When the song was finished, he threw himself into the sea just as he was, with all his costume on.

6They say the crew sailed on to Corinth, but that a dolphin picked Arion up and carried him out to Taenarum. He went ashore and made his way to Corinth in his costume. When he arrived, he told the whole story of what had happened.

7Periander did not believe it. He held Arion under guard, not letting him go anywhere, and kept the sailors in custody. When they arrived, he called them in and asked them what they had to tell him about Arion. They answered that he was safe and sound in Italy, and that they had left him doing well at Tarentum. At that moment Arion appeared before them, dressed just as he had been when he jumped into the sea. The sailors were struck with amazement, and caught in the lie they could no longer deny it.

8This is the story the Corinthians and Lesbians tell. And there is a bronze offering of Arion at Taenarum, not a large one: a figure of a man riding on a dolphin.

Chapter 25

1Alyattes the Lydian, having settled his war with the Milesians, died some time later. He had ruled fifty-seven years.

2Having escaped his sickness, he was the second man of this house to dedicate offerings at Delphi: a great silver mixing bowl, and an iron stand to set it on, joined by solder. Of all the offerings at Delphi, this one was the most worth seeing. It was the work of Glaucus of Chios, the only man among all people who discovered how to solder iron.

Chapter 26

1When Alyattes died, Croesus son of Alyattes took over the kingship. He was thirty-five years old. He was the first to attack Greeks, and the Ephesians were the first he attacked.

2The Ephesians, under siege by him, dedicated their city to Artemis at that point. They stretched a rope from the temple to the city wall. The distance between the old city, the one he was then besieging, and the temple is seven stades.

3Croesus began with these first. Then he went after the Ionians and the Aeolians, one people after another, bringing different charges against different ones. Against some he was able to find big accusations, blaming them for great things; against others he brought charges that were even petty.

Chapter 27

1When the Greeks in Asia had been conquered and made to pay tribute, Croesus next planned to build ships and attack the islanders.

2When everything was ready for the shipbuilding, some say Bias of Priene came to Sardis, and others say Pittacus of Mytilene. Croesus asked him whether there was anything new about Greece. Their answer stopped the shipbuilding. They said this:

3"King, the islanders are buying ten thousand horses, and they mean to march on Sardis and against you." Croesus, believing the man spoke the truth, said: "May the gods put this plan into the islanders' minds, to come with horses against the sons of the Lydians!"

4The other answered: "King, you seem to me to be praying eagerly to catch the islanders riding horses on the mainland, and that is a natural hope. But what else do you think the islanders pray for? As soon as they heard that you were going to build ships to attack them, they began praying to catch the Lydians on the sea, so that they could pay you back for the Greeks who live on the mainland, whom you hold as slaves."

5Croesus was greatly pleased by the closing words, because the man seemed to speak to the point. He was persuaded and gave up the shipbuilding. And in this way he made an agreement of guest-friendship with the Ionians who live on the islands.

Chapter 28

1As time went on, nearly all the peoples living inside the river Halys had been conquered. For Croesus held all the rest under his own rule except the Cilicians and the Lycians. These are the peoples: Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, the Thracians, both Thynians and Bithynians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, Pamphylians. And when these peoples had been conquered, and Croesus kept winning still more wealth for the Lydians,

Chapter 29

1there came to Sardis, then at the height of its wealth, all the other wise men from Greece who happened to be living at that time, one after another as each of them arrived; and among them also came Solon the Athenian. The Athenians had asked him to make laws for them. When he had made them, he left the country for ten years, sailing out on the excuse of sightseeing, so that he would not be forced to undo any of the laws he had laid down.

2The Athenians themselves could not have done otherwise. They were held by great oaths to use for ten years whatever laws Solon should set for them.

Chapter 30

1So Solon left his country, both for these reasons and to see the world. He came to Egypt, to Amasis, and then to Sardis, to Croesus. When he arrived, Croesus received him as a guest in the palace. Then, on the third or fourth day, at Croesus' order, the servants led Solon around the treasuries and showed him everything, all of it great and rich.

2When Solon had seen and examined everything as it deserved, Croesus asked him this: "Athenian guest, much talk about you has reached us, both because of your wisdom and because of your travels. We hear that you have crossed much of the earth as a lover of wisdom, for the sake of seeing it. Now a desire has come over me to ask you this: of all the men you have ever seen, who is the most prosperous?"

3Croesus asked this because he expected to be named the most prosperous of men. But Solon did not flatter him at all. He answered by the plain truth: "King, Tellus the Athenian."

4Croesus was amazed at the answer and pressed him hard: "How do you decide that Tellus is the most prosperous?" He said: "Tellus had, first, while his city was doing well, children beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born from all of them, and all of those children survived. And besides this, since his life was going well, as lives go among us, there came to him the most glorious end of life:

5for when a battle befell the Athenians against their neighbors at Eleusis, he came to their aid, put the enemy to flight, and died most beautifully; and the Athenians buried him at public expense on the very spot where he fell, and honored him greatly."

Chapter 31

1In this way Solon led Croesus on with his account of Tellus, having said much that was prosperous. Then he asked whom he had seen second after Tellus, and Croesus was sure he would take second place completely. Solon said: "Cleobis and Biton."

2These two were Argives by birth. They had a living that was enough, and besides that they had such strength of body that both alike were prize-winning athletes. This is the story told of them. When the Argives were holding a festival of Hera, their mother absolutely had to be carried to the temple by a team of oxen. But the oxen did not come in from the fields in time. Pressed by the time, the young men put themselves under the yoke and drew the wagon themselves, and their mother rode on the wagon. They carried her forty-five stades and arrived at the temple.

3After they had done this and been seen by the whole festival crowd, the best end of life came to them. In them the god made it clear that it is better for a man to die than to live. For the Argive men stood around them and called the young men blessed for their strength, and the Argive women called their mother blessed for the kind of children she had.

4Their mother was overjoyed at the deed and at the fame. She stood in front of the statue and prayed to the goddess to give Cleobis and Biton, her own children, who had honored her so greatly, the best thing a human being can win.

5After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The young men lay down to sleep in the temple itself and never rose again; that end held them. The Argives made statues of them and dedicated them at Delphi, because they had been the best of men.

Chapter 32

1So Solon gave these men second place in happiness. Croesus was angry and said: "Athenian guest, is my happiness so completely thrown away as nothing, that you do not even rank me above ordinary men?" Solon said: "Croesus, you ask me about the affairs of men, and I know that the divine is altogether jealous and a maker of trouble."

2For in a long life a man sees many things he does not wish to see, and he suffers many things too. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years.

3Those seventy years give twenty-five thousand two hundred days, if no intercalary month is added. But if you want every other year to be a month longer, so that the seasons come round when they should, then in the seventy years the intercalary months come to thirty-five, and the days from those months to one thousand and fifty.

4Of all those days that belong to the seventy years, which come to twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, no one single day brings anything at all like the day next to it. So then, Croesus, a human being is entirely a thing of chance.

5You seem to me both to be very rich and to be king over many people. But the answer you asked me for I cannot yet give you—not until I learn that you have ended your life well. A man of great wealth is not one bit more prosperous than the man who has only what each day brings, unless luck stays with him so that he ends his life still holding all good things. Many of the very rich are unprosperous, and many who have only a moderate living are fortunate.

6The very rich man who is unprosperous beats the fortunate man in only two things; the fortunate man beats the rich but unprosperous one in many. The rich man is better able to satisfy his desire and to bear up under a great disaster falling on him. But the fortunate man beats him in these ways: he is not as able to bring on himself disaster and harmful desire, and luck keeps those things away from him. He is whole in body, without sickness, untouched by evils, blessed with fine children, and good-looking.

7But if, on top of all this, he ends his life well, then he is the man you are looking for, and he deserves to be called prosperous. But until his life ends, wait: do not call him prosperous yet, only fortunate.

8It is impossible for a man to gather all these things together, just as no country is self-sufficient in producing everything it needs: each has one thing and needs another, and the country that has the most is the best. So too no single human body is self-sufficient: it has one thing and lacks another.

9But the man who keeps the most of these things all his life and then ends it with contentment—he, King, deserves this name in my judgment. Yet one must look to the ending of every matter, to see how it will turn out. For to many men the god has given a taste of prosperity and then shaken them to the root and overturned them.

Chapter 33

1In saying this to Croesus, Solon pleased him not at all, and Croesus sent him away without counting him worth anything. He was sure Solon was a great fool, because he told him to let go of the good things he had in hand and look instead to the end of every matter.

Chapter 34

1After Solon had gone, a great vengeance from the god took hold of Croesus—one would guess because he believed himself the most prosperous of all men. At once, as he slept, a dream stood over him, and it showed him the truth of the evils about to happen concerning his son.

2Croesus had two sons. One of them was a broken loss, for he was deaf. The other was by far the first of all the young men of his age in everything. His name was Atys. The dream pointed out this Atys to Croesus: that he would lose him, struck by a spearhead of iron.

3When Croesus woke and took counsel with himself, he was terrified by the dream. First he found a wife for his son. And although the young man had been used to leading the Lydians, he no longer sent him out on any such enterprise. He also carried the javelins and spears and all the other weapons men use in war out of the men's rooms and piled them in the inner chambers, so that none of them, hanging up, might fall on his son.

Chapter 35

1While Croesus had his son's marriage in hand, there came to Sardis a man in the grip of misfortune, with unclean hands. He was a Phrygian by birth, and of the royal family. This man came into Croesus' house and asked, according to the customs of the country, to win purification, and Croesus purified him.

2This purification is about the same among the Lydians and the Greeks. When Croesus had done what the custom requires, he asked the man where he came from and who he was, saying this:

3"Man, who are you, and from what place in Phrygia have you come to me for purification? What man or woman have you killed?" He answered: "King, I am the son of Gordias son of Midas. My name is Adrastus. I killed my own brother against my will, and here I am, driven out by my father and stripped of everything."

4Croesus answered him in these words: "You are the child of friends, and you have come to friends. Stay in my house and you will lack nothing. And by bearing this misfortune as lightly as you can, you will gain the most."

Chapter 36

1This was the life Adrastus led in Croesus' house. At this same time a huge monster of a boar appeared on Mount Olympus in Mysia. It came down from that mountain and kept destroying the fields of the Mysians. Time after time the Mysians went out against it, but they did it no harm; instead they suffered from it.

2At last messengers of the Mysians came to Croesus and said: "King, an enormous boar has appeared in our country, and it destroys our fields. Eager as we are to catch it, we cannot. Now we ask you to send us your son, together with picked young men and hounds, so that we can drive it out of the country."

3This was what they asked for. But Croesus, remembering the words of the dream, said to them: "Say no more about my son. I would not send him with you. He is newly married, and that is what concerns him now. But I will send you picked Lydians and the whole hunting pack, and I will order the men who go to be as eager as possible to help you drive the beast out of the country."

Chapter 37

1This was his answer. When the Mysians were satisfied with it, the son of Croesus came in, having heard what the Mysians were asking for. When Croesus said he would not send his son with them, the young man spoke to him as follows:

2"Father, in earlier days the finest and noblest thing for me was to make a name for myself in war and in the hunt. But now you have shut me off from both. Do you see cowardice in me, or lack of spirit? With what eyes must I now have to show myself, going to the marketplace and coming back from it?

3What kind of man will I seem to my fellow citizens? And what kind to my young wife? And what kind of man will she think she has come to live with? So either let me go to the hunt, or persuade me with an argument that these things are better done this way for me."

Chapter 38

1Croesus answered as follows: "My son, I am not doing these things because I saw you act like a coward, or because I saw anything else unpleasant in you. But a vision of a dream stood over me while I slept, and it said that your life would be short, because you would die by an iron spear."

2"Because of that vision I hurried this marriage of yours, and I do not send you off to take part in the wedding festivities now under way; I am keeping watch over you, so that, if I can manage it at all, I may steal you out of harm's way during my lifetime. For you happen to be my one and only son; the other I do not count as mine, since his hearing is destroyed."

Chapter 39

1The young man answered as follows: "Father, it is fair that you keep watch over me, after seeing a vision like that. But you do not understand, the dream has escaped you, and it is right for me to explain it to you."

2"You say the dream declared that I would end my life by an iron spear. But what kind of hands does a boar have, and what kind of iron spear is it that you fear? If it had said I would die by a tooth, or by anything else like that, then you were right to do what you are doing; but it said 'by a spear.' Since our battle will not be against men, let me go."

Chapter 40

1Croesus answered: "My son, you defeat me with the judgment you give about the dream. Since I am beaten by you, I change my mind, and I let you go to the hunt."

Chapter 41

1After saying these things Croesus sent for the Phrygian Adrastus, and when he came, he said to him: "Adrastus, you had been struck by a terrible misfortune, one that I do not hold against you, and I cleansed you of it. I took you into my house and I keep you there, providing for your every expense."

2"Now then, since you owe it to me to repay good for the good I did you, I ask you to become the guard of my son as he sets out for the hunt, so that no robbers and criminals may show up on the road and do you two harm."

3"Besides this, it is right for you too to go where you can win back glory by your deeds; for this is your family tradition, and besides, you have the strength."

Chapter 42

1Adrastus answered: "King, in any other case I would not go to a contest like this. For a man who has met with such a misfortune is not suited to go among men of his own age who are doing well, and he has no desire to; I would have held myself back in many ways."

2"But now, since you are eager and I must please you—for I owe you repayment for good deeds—I am ready to do this. Your son, whom you order me to guard, you may expect to return home unharmed thanks to his guard."

Chapter 43

1After this man answered Croesus with these words, they then set out, outfitted with picked young men and dogs. When they came to Mount Olympus, the mountain, they searched for the beast; and when they found it and surrounded it in a circle, they hurled their spears at it.

2There the stranger—this same man who had been cleansed of the killing, the one named Adrastus—threw his spear at the boar; he missed the boar and hit the son of Croesus.

3So the young man, struck by the spear, fulfilled the message of the dream. And a man ran to report the event to Croesus; when he came to Sardis, he announced to him both the fight and the death of his son.

Chapter 44

1Croesus, deeply shaken by the death of his son, lamented all the more bitterly because the man he himself had cleansed of the killing was the one who had killed him.

2Grieving terribly over his misfortune, he called on Zeus the Cleanser, citing as witness what he had suffered at the hands of his guest. He also called on Zeus of the Hearth and Zeus of Comradeship—it was the same god he was naming. "Of the Hearth," because he had taken the guest, the murderer of his son, into his house and had fed him without knowing it; and "of Comradeship," because, sending him along as a guard, he had found him to be his most deadly enemy.

Chapter 45

1After this the Lydians arrived carrying the body, and the killer followed behind them. He stood before the body and handed himself over to Croesus, stretching out his hands and telling him to kill him over the corpse. He told of his own earlier misfortune, and how, on top of that, he had now destroyed the man who had cleansed him, so that he could no longer go on living.

2Croesus, when he heard this, pitied Adrastus, even though he himself was in such terrible grief, and said to him: "I have from you all the justice there is, since you condemn yourself to death. But you are not the cause of this evil for me, except insofar as you did it against your will; some god is the cause, one who long ago also foretold to me what was going to happen."

3So Croesus buried his own son as was fitting. Adrastus son of Gordias son of Midas—this same man, who had become the killer of his own brother and then the killer of the man who had cleansed him—when the crowds around the tomb grew quiet, recognized that he was the man most crushed by misfortune of all men he knew, and he killed himself on the tomb.

Chapter 46

1Croesus sat in deep mourning for his son for two years. Then the rule of Astyages son of Cyaxares was overthrown by Cyrus son of Cambyses, and the power of the Persians kept growing. This ended Croesus's mourning, and it put into his mind the question of whether he could, before the Persians became great, seize their growing power.

2So with this plan in mind he immediately began to test the oracles—the ones in Greece and the one in Libya. He sent messengers in different directions: some to Delphi, some to Abae in Phocis, some to Dodona; some were sent to Amphiaraus and to Trophonius; others to Branchidae in the land of Miletus.

3These are the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent to consult them; to Ammon in Libya he sent others to consult it. He sent them to test what the oracles knew, so that, if they were found to answer with the truth, he could then ask them a second time by sending again, whether he should march out against the Persians.

Chapter 47

1He gave the Lydians these orders and sent them out to test the oracles: from the day they set out from Sardis, they were to count the rest of the time, and on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles, asking what Croesus son of Alyattes, king of the Lydians, happened to be doing at that moment; and whatever each oracle prophesied, they were to write it down and bring it back to him.

2As for the answers given by the rest of the oracles, they are reported by no one. But at Delphi, as soon as the Lydians entered the temple to consult the god and asked the question they had been given, the Pythia answered in hexameter verse:

3"I know the number of the sands and the measure of the sea; / I understand the deaf, and I hear the man who does not speak. / The smell has come to my mind of a hard-shelled tortoise / boiling in bronze together with the meat of a lamb; / bronze is laid beneath it, and bronze is spread over it."

Chapter 48

1The Lydians wrote down the answer after the Pythia gave it, and went away back to Sardis. When the other messengers also arrived with the oracles they had brought, Croesus opened each one in turn and read the writings; none of the others pleased him. But when he heard the one from Delphi, he immediately prayed to it and accepted it, believing that Delphi was the only true oracle, because it had found out what he himself had done.

2For when he sent the messengers to the oracles, he had waited for the appointed day and then devised this: he thought up something impossible to discover or guess. He chopped up a tortoise and a lamb together and boiled them himself in a bronze cauldron, putting a bronze lid on top.

Chapter 49

1That was the answer given to Croesus from Delphi. As for the oracle of Amphiaraus: I cannot say what answer it gave the Lydians when they performed the customary rites at the temple (this too is not reported), except that Croesus believed this oracle also to be true and free of lies.

Chapter 50

1After these things Croesus tried to win over the god at Delphi with great sacrifices. He sacrificed all his herds fit for sacrifice, three thousand in number, and burned them up on a great pyre, along with couches overlaid with gold and silver, golden cups, and purple robes and tunics. He hoped that the god would be won over even more by these; and he ordered all the Lydians to sacrifice to him whatever each of them had.

2When the sacrifice was over, he melted down an unmeasured amount of gold and hammered out of it half-bricks: he made the longer ones six palms long, the shorter ones three palms, and their height was one palm. There were one hundred and seventeen in all. Four of them were of refined gold, each weighing two and a half talents; the other half-bricks were of white gold, two talents in weight each.

3He also made an image of a lion of refined gold, weighing ten talents. When the temple at Delphi burned down, this lion fell from the half-bricks (it stood on top of them), and it now lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing six and a half talents, for three and a half talents of it melted away.

Chapter 51

1When Croesus had finished these things, he sent to Delphi these other things along with them: two mixing bowls of enormous size, one of gold and one of silver. The gold one stood on the right as one enters the temple, and the silver one on the left.

2These two were also moved when the temple burned down. The gold one now lies in the treasury of the Clazomenians, weighing eight and a half talents and twelve minas besides; the silver one stands in the corner of the porch, and it holds six hundred amphoras, for the Delphians mix wine in it at the festival of the Theophania.

3The Delphians say it is the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I think so too, for it does not seem to me an ordinary piece of work. Croesus also sent four silver jars, which stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, and he dedicated two sprinkling basins, one of gold and one of silver. The gold one has written on it that it is an offering of the Lacedaemonians, and the Lacedaemonians claim that it is; but they are wrong.

4This one also is Croesus's gift; a certain Delphian wrote the Lacedaemonians' name on it, wanting to please them. I know who he is, but I will not mention his name. The boy, through whose hand the water flows, is a gift of the Lacedaemonians; but neither of the two sprinkling basins is.

5Croesus sent many other offerings of no special fame with these, and round silver basins, and also a golden image of a woman, three cubits tall. The Delphians say it is the likeness of the woman who baked Croesus's bread. And besides, Croesus dedicated the neck ornaments and the belts of his own wife.

Chapter 52

1These things he sent to Delphi. To Amphiaraus, having learned his worth and his misfortune, he dedicated a shield made all alike of gold, and a spearhead solid gold from end to end, the shaft of the spear being likewise of gold. Both of these were still lying down to my time at Thebes, in the temple of Ismenian Apollo.

Chapter 53

1To the Lydians who were going to lead these gifts to the temples, Croesus gave orders to ask the oracles whether Croesus should march against the Persians, and whether he should add to himself any army of men as a friend.

2When they arrived at the places to which they had been sent, the Lydians dedicated the offerings and consulted the oracles, saying: "Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other peoples, believing these to be the only true oracles among men, has given you gifts worthy of what you can reveal, and now he asks you whether he should march against the Persians, and whether he should add any army of men as an ally."

3This is what they asked; and the answers of the two oracles ran to the same conclusion: they prophesied to Croesus that if he marched against the Persians he would destroy a great empire, and they advised him to find out who were the most powerful of the Greeks and to add them as friends.

Chapter 54

1When the answers were brought back and Croesus learned what they said, he was delighted with the oracles, and he hoped that he would completely destroy the kingdom of Cyrus. He sent gifts again to Pytho at Delphi, having first learned the number of the citizens: two staters of gold for each man.

2In return the Delphians gave Croesus and the Lydians the right to consult the oracle before all others, freedom from fees, front seats at the festivals, and the right for any of them who wished to become a citizen of Delphi for all time to come.

Chapter 55

1After rewarding the Delphians, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time; for once he had received the truth from it, he kept turning to it. He asked this question in his inquiry: whether his monarchy would last a long time.

2The Pythia gave him this answer: "But when a mule becomes king of the Medes, / then, soft-footed Lydian, flee along the pebbly Hermus, / and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward."

Chapter 56

1When these verses arrived, Croesus was more pleased with them than with anything else, hoping that a mule would never rule the Medes instead of a man, and that neither he himself nor his descendants would ever lose his rule. After this he looked into which Greeks were the most powerful, so that he might win them as friends.

2In his search he found that the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians stood out above the rest, the Lacedaemonians being of the Dorian stock and the Athenians of the Ionian. For these were the leading peoples—in ancient times the one was Pelasgian and the other Hellenic. The one has never moved from its place anywhere; the other has been a great wanderer.

3Under King Deucalion it lived in the land of Phthiotis; under Dorus son of Hellen, in the country under Mount Ossa and Mount Olympus, called Histiaeotis. Driven out of Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans, it lived in Pindus, in the place called Macednon. From there it moved again into Dryopis, and from Dryopis it came into the Peloponnese, and there it was named Dorian.

Chapter 57

1What language the Pelasgians spoke, I cannot say for certain. But if one must judge by those Pelasgians who still exist—the ones who live above the Tyrrhenians in the city of Creston, who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians (they lived at that time in the land now called Thessaliotis)—

2and by the Pelasgians who settled Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who once lived together with the Athenians, and by whatever other Pelasgian towns there were that changed their name—if one must judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a non-Greek language.

3If then the whole Pelasgian people was like this, the Attic people, being Pelasgian, learned its new language at the same time as it changed and became Greek. For neither the Crestonians speak the same language as any of the peoples who live around them now, nor do the Plakians, while those two peoples speak like each other; this shows that they kept the character of the language they brought with them when they moved to these places, and they guard it carefully.

Chapter 58

1As for the Greek people: ever since it came to be, it has always used the same language, as it seems to me. It was cut off from the Pelasgian people, which was weak, and it started from something small at first and grew into a great multitude of peoples—mostly because the Pelasgians, and many other non-Greek peoples besides, joined it. Before that, I think, the Pelasgian people itself, being non-Greek, never grew greatly anywhere.

Chapter 59

1Of these two peoples, Croesus learned that the Attic one was being held down and torn apart by Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, who was tyrant of the Athenians at that time. For when Hippocrates was a private citizen and was watching the Olympic games, a great wonder happened to him: after he had sacrificed the victims, the cauldrons standing around them, full of meat and water, boiled without fire and overflowed.

2Chilon the Lacedaemonian happened to be there and saw the wonder, and he advised Hippocrates: first, not to bring into his house a wife who would bear children; second, if he had one, to send her away; and third, if he had a son, to disown him.

3Hippocrates was not willing to be persuaded by this advice of Chilon; and after this, Pisistratus was born to him—this same man who, when the men of the coast and the men of the plain were in conflict with each other (the coast party led by Megacles son of Alcmaeon, and the men of the plain by Lycurgus son of Aristolaides), made light of the tyranny and raised a third faction. He gathered partisans, and by his speech he put himself at the head of the men beyond the hills; then he devised this plan:

4He wounded himself and his mules and drove his team into the marketplace, as if he had just escaped from enemies—enemies who, he said, had meant to kill him as he drove out to his land. He asked the people for a guard for himself; he had already won distinction in the war against Megara, where he had captured Nisaea and performed other great deeds.

5The people of the Athenians, deceived, gave him this: they picked out men from among the citizens for him. These men did not become spearmen of Pisistratus but club-bearers; holding clubs of wood, they followed along behind him.

6These men rose up together with Pisistratus and seized the Acropolis. Pisistratus then ruled the Athenians: he did not shake the offices that already existed, nor did he change the laws; he administered the city on the basis of what was established, and he ordered it well and beautifully.

Chapter 60

1Not long after this, the partisans of Megacles and the partisans of Lycurgus, now thinking alike, drove him out. This is how Pisistratus first held Athens, and he lost his tyranny, which was not yet firmly rooted. After driving out Pisistratus, they went back to fighting each other.

2Being hard pressed in the faction struggle, Megacles sent a formal proposal to Pisistratus: if he wished, he could have Megacles' daughter as his wife, along with the tyranny.

3Pisistratus accepted the offer and agreed to these terms; and then, for his homecoming, they devised a trick of the very greatest simplicity, as I find, by far—especially since the Greek people has long been marked off from the foreign peoples as more clever and more free of foolish simplicity; yet these men, who were then said to be the first of the Athenians in wisdom among the Greeks, devised this:

4In the deme of Paeania there was a woman named Phye, three fingers short of four cubits in height, and beautiful as well. They equipped this woman in full armor, put her on a chariot, and, arranging in advance the pose that would look most impressive for her, they drove into the city, after sending heralds ahead. When these came into the city, they proclaimed the orders given to them, saying:

5"Athenians, receive Pisistratus with good will; Athena herself, who honors him above all men, brings him back to her own acropolis." These men went about saying this; at once the report came to the demes that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back, and the people in the city, believing that the woman was the goddess herself, prayed to this human being and welcomed Pisistratus.

Chapter 61

1Having recovered the tyranny in the way described, Pisistratus married the daughter of Megacles, as he had agreed with Megacles. But because he already had grown sons, and the Alcmaeonids were said to be under a curse, he did not want children to be born to him from his new wife; so he did not sleep with her according to law.

2At first the wife kept this hidden; later, whether she asked someone about it, or told her mother—and the mother told her husband—Megacles, in his anger, made up his quarrel with the other faction. Pisistratus, learning what was being done against him, left the country altogether; he came to Eretria and took counsel with his sons.

3The opinion of Hippias won the day, that they should win back the tyranny; and there they began to gather contributions from the cities that owed them any favor. Many cities gave large sums, but the Thebans surpassed all the rest in the gift of money.

4To speak briefly: time passed, and everything was prepared for their return. Hired mercenaries came from the Peloponnese, from Argos; and a volunteer came to them from Naxos, a man named Lygdamis, who showed the greatest eagerness, bringing both money and men.

Chapter 62

1Setting out from Eretria, they came back in the eleventh year, and they first held Marathon in Attica. While they were encamped in that place, partisans came to them from the city, and others kept streaming in from the demes, men to whom the tyranny was dearer than freedom.

2So these men gathered around them. The Athenians in the city, as long as Pisistratus was collecting money, and again later while he held Marathon, gave the matter no thought; but when they learned that he was setting out from Marathon against the city, they went out to his relief—against him.

3They marched out in full force against the men coming down, and the men around Pisistratus, setting out from Marathon for the city, met them; the two armies came together at the temple of Athena of Pallene, and there they set up their weapons facing each other.

4Then, by a sending from the god, there came up to Pisistratus Amphilytus the Acarnanian, a man who spoke oracles; coming near, he prophesied to him in hexameter verse: "The throw has been made, and the net is spread wide, / through the moonlit night the tunny fish will dart."

Chapter 63

1He gave the god's answer in a state of possession; Pisistratus took up the oracle, said that he accepted what had been prophesied, and led his army forward. The Athenians from the city had turned to their lunch just then, and after lunch some of them were at dice and others asleep. The men around Pisistratus fell upon the Athenians and put them to flight.

2As these fled, Pisistratus then devised a plan of the greatest cleverness, so that the Athenians would not scatter and gather again. He mounted his sons on horses and sent them ahead; overtaking the men in flight, they spoke the orders given them by Pisistratus, telling them to take heart and go each man to his own place.

Chapter 64

1The Athenians obeyed, and so Pisistratus, holding Athens for the third time, rooted his tyranny firmly, with many hired troops and with streams of money, some raised on the spot and some coming in from the river Strymon; and he took the children of those Athenians who had stayed behind and not fled at once as hostages and placed them on Naxos

2(for Pisistratus had also conquered this island by war and handed it over to Lygdamis). Besides all this, he also cleansed the island of Delos, according to the oracles; and this is how he cleansed it: he dug up all the dead bodies within sight of the temple and carried them to another place on Delos.

3So Pisistratus ruled the Athenians; and of the Athenians, some had fallen in the battle, and some had fled from home with the Alcmaeonids.

Chapter 65

1Such was the condition Croesus learned the Athenians were in at that time; and the Lacedaemonians, he learned, had come through great troubles and were now superior to the Tegeans in war. For while Leon and Hegesicles were kings in Sparta, the Lacedaemonians had good luck in all their other wars, but stumbled against the Tegeans alone.

2Still earlier than this, they had been almost the worst-governed of all the Greeks, both among themselves and in their dealings with outsiders; and they changed into good government in this way. Lycurgus, a man of standing among the Spartiates, went to Delphi to the oracle; and as he entered the temple, the Pythia said to him at once:

3"You have come, Lycurgus, to my rich temple, / dear to Zeus and to all who hold the Olympian homes. / I am in doubt whether I should prophesy to you as a god or as a man; / but I rather believe you are a god, Lycurgus."

4Some, in addition, say that the Pythia also revealed to him the order of things now established among the Spartiates. But as the Lacedaemonians themselves say, Lycurgus, while guardian of Leobotes—his brother's son, who was king of the Spartiates—brought these things from Crete.

5As soon as he took up his guardianship, he changed all the existing customs and took care that they were not broken. After that he established the things that belong to war, the enomotiae and the triacades and the common meals; and besides these, Lycurgus set up the ephors and the elders.

Chapter 66

1Thus changed, they were well governed; and after Lycurgus died they built him a temple and honor him greatly. As their land was good and there were not a few men in it, they shot up at once and flourished, and then peace no longer sufficed them; so, looking down on the Arcadians as weaker than themselves, they consulted the oracle at Delphi about the whole land of the Arcadians.

2The Pythia gave them this answer: "You ask me for Arcadia; you ask for a great thing; I will not give it. / Many men eat acorns in Arcadia, and they will stop you. / But I do not grudge it to you: / I will give you Tegea to dance on with stamping feet, / and a beautiful plain to measure out with a cord."

3When the Lacedaemonians heard this answer brought back, they left the other Arcadians alone; but they marched against the Tegeans carrying fetters, trusting in a deceitful oracle, as if they would make slaves of the Tegeans.

4They were beaten in the battle; and as many of them as were taken alive, wearing the very fetters they had carried, measured out the Tegean plain with a cord and worked it. These fetters, with which they were bound, were still safe in my time at Tegea, hanging around the temple of Athena Alea.

Chapter 67

1In that earlier war they fought against the Tegeans and always fared badly, continually; but in the time of Croesus, under the kingship of Anaxandrides and Ariston in Lacedaemon, the Spartans had already become superior to them in war, and this is how it came about.

2Because they were always beaten by the Tegeans in war, they sent messengers to Delphi and asked which of the gods they must win over to become superior to the Tegeans in war. The Pythia answered that they must bring back the bones of Orestes son of Agamemnon.

3When they could not find the burial place of Orestes, they sent again to ask the god the place where Orestes lay. When the messengers asked this, the Pythia said:

4"There is a place in the smooth plain of Arcadian Tegea, / where two winds blow under a strong compulsion, / and blow answers blow, and grief lies upon grief. / There life-giving earth holds the son of Agamemnon; / carry him off, and you will be a helper to Tegea."

5Even after hearing this, the Lacedaemonians searched everywhere just as hard and left nothing untried, until Lichas, one of the men called "good workers," found it. These good workers are men from among the citizens: each year the five oldest of those who leave the ranks of the knights go out; and these men must, in the very year in which they leave the knights, be sent about on the Spartans' public business and not sit idle.

Chapter 68

1Lichas, one of these men, found it in Tegea, using both luck and cleverness. At that time there was trade between Sparta and Tegea; he went into a smithy and watched iron being worked, and he was full of wonder at what was being done.

2The smith, seeing him wonder, stopped his work and said: "Laconian stranger, if you had seen what I saw, you would surely wonder greatly—since you wonder so much at the working of the iron."

3"I wanted to make a well in this courtyard; as I dug I came upon a coffin seven cubits long. Because I could not believe that there had ever been men bigger than the men of today, I opened it and saw a corpse as long as the coffin; I measured it and filled the grave in again." This is what the smith told him of what he had seen; and Lichas, reasoning on what was said, concluded that this was Orestes, matching the oracle, and he matched it this way:

4He found the smith's two bellows to be the two winds; the anvil and the hammer were blow answering blow; and the iron being hammered was grief lying upon grief—reasoning that iron was found out for the harm of man.

5Having worked all this out, he went back to Sparta and told the Lacedaemonians the whole matter. They brought a made-up charge against him and prosecuted him. He came to Tegea, told the smith of his misfortune, and tried to rent the courtyard from him; the smith refused to let it out,

6but in time he persuaded him and moved in. He dug up the grave, gathered the bones, and went off carrying them to Sparta. From that time on, whenever they tested each other in war, the Lacedaemonians were far superior; and by then most of the Peloponnese had already been subdued by them.

Chapter 69

1Croesus, having learned all these things, sent messengers to Sparta, carrying gifts and asking for an alliance, with orders as to what they must say. When they came, they said:

2"Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other peoples, sent us and spoke as follows: 'Lacedaemonians, since the god in his oracle commanded me to add a Greek as my friend, and I learn that you stand at the head of Greece, I call you to me, according to the oracle, to become my friend and my ally, without deceit and without trickery.'"

3This was the offer Croesus made through his messengers. The Lacedaemonians, who had themselves heard of the oracle that had come to Croesus, were glad at the arrival of the Lydians, and they swore oaths of friendship and alliance; for they had even received kindnesses from Croesus before this.

4The Lacedaemonians had once sent to Sardis to buy gold, wanting to use it for the statue of Apollo that now stands at Thornax in Laconia; and Croesus, when they tried to buy it, made them a gift of it.

Chapter 70

1For this reason the Lacedaemonians accepted the alliance, and also because he picked them out from among all the Greeks as his friends. They were ready to answer his call; and then they had a bronze mixing bowl made, filled on the outside around the rim with figures of living things, and large enough to hold three hundred amphoras, and they brought it along, wanting to give Croesus a gift in return.

2This bowl never reached Sardis, for reasons told in two different stories. The Lacedaemonians say that when the bowl was being carried to Sardis and had come into Samian territory, the Samians learned of it and took it away with their long ships.

3The Samians themselves say that the Lacedaemonians who were bringing the bowl arrived too late; and when they learned that Sardis and Croesus had fallen, they sold the bowl in Samos, and private men who bought it dedicated it in the temple of Hera. Most likely the men who sold it, when they came back to Sparta, said the Samians had taken it from them. So it went with the bowl.

Chapter 71

1Croesus, missing the meaning of the oracle, made a campaign against Cappadocia, hoping to overthrow Cyrus and the power of the Persians.

2While Croesus was preparing his campaign against the Persians, one of the Lydians, who was considered wise even before this, and who had the greatest name among the Lydians from this advice, gave Croesus the following counsel; his name was Sandanis. "King, you are getting ready to march against men who wear leather trousers and leather clothing for the rest as well; they eat not as much as they want but as much as they have; and they live in a rough land.

3Besides, they do not drink wine but only water; they have no figs to eat, and nothing else good at all. So, first: if you win, what will you take from them, when they have nothing? And next: if you are beaten, learn how many good things you will lose; for once they have tasted our good things, they will hold on to them, and they will not be driven away."

4"For my part, I give thanks to the gods, who do not put it into the minds of the Persians to march against the Lydians." Saying this, he did not persuade Croesus. For the Persians, before they conquered the Lydians, had nothing fine or good at all.

Chapter 72

1The Cappadocians are called Syrians by the Greeks. Before the Persians ruled, these Syrians were subject to the Medes; at this time they were subject to Cyrus.

2For the boundary between the Median empire and the Lydian was the river Halys, which flows from the Armenian mountains through Cilicia; after that it flows with the Matieni on the right hand and the Phrygians on the other side. Passing these and flowing up toward the north wind, it has the Cappadocian Syrians on one side and the Paphlagonians on the left.

3So the river Halys cuts off almost the whole lower part of Asia, from the sea that faces Cyprus to the Euxine Sea. It is the neck of this whole country; a man traveling light would take five days for the crossing.

Chapter 73

1Croesus marched against Cappadocia for these reasons: he wanted to add land to his own share, and—above all—he trusted the oracle and wanted to punish Cyrus for Astyages.

2Astyages son of Cyaxares, who was Croesus's brother-in-law and king of the Medes, had been overcome and held by Cyrus son of Cambyses. Astyages had become Croesus's brother-in-law in this way.

3A band of nomad Scythian men broke into strife among themselves and left their country for the land of Media. Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces was king of the Medes at that time. At first he treated these Scythians well, as suppliants; then, valuing them highly, he gave them boys to teach them their language and the craft of the bow.

4As time went on, the Scythians kept going out hunting and always brought back something; but one time they caught nothing. When they came back empty-handed, Cyaxares (he was, as he showed, a man of the fiercest temper) treated them very roughly and with insult.

5The Scythians, because Cyaxares had treated them this way, worse than they deserved, planned to cut up one of the boys who were being taught with them. They dressed him as they were used to dressing their game, carried him to Cyaxares as if it were game, and then, having given him this, made off as fast as they could to Sardis, to Alyattes son of Sadyattes.

6This is what happened: Cyaxares and the guests at his feast ate of these meats; and the Scythians, after doing this, became suppliants of Alyattes.

Chapter 74

1After these things, because Alyattes would not give up the Scythians to Cyaxares when he asked for them, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes and went on for five years. In it the Medes often beat the Lydians, and the Lydians often beat the Medes; and at one point they even fought a battle by night.

2So they were still at even terms in the war when, in the sixth year, a battle came about, and while the fight was going on, day suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this change of day to the Ionians, setting this very year as its limit, the year in which the change did in fact take place.

3When the Lydians and the Medes saw night come in place of day, they stopped the battle, and both sides were all the more eager for peace between them. The men who brought them together were these: Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian.

4It was these men who urged the oath on and brought about an exchange of marriages: they determined that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages son of Cyaxares. For without some strong necessity, even strong agreements do not hold.

5These nations make oaths the way the Greeks do, and in addition to that: when they cut their arms and let the blood come together in one color, they lick each other's blood.

Chapter 75

1So Cyrus took and overthrew this Astyages, his own grandfather by his mother, and the reason was the one I will point out in my later accounts:

2Croesus, blaming Cyrus for this, sent to the oracles to ask whether he should march against the Persians; and when a false oracle came back, he trusted it as if the answer was on his side, and he marched out into the Persian's share of the land.

3When Croesus came to the river Halys, he then, as I say, led his army across by the bridges that stand there; but as the common story among the Greeks goes, it was Thales of Miletus who took the army across.

4For when Croesus was at a loss as to how his army would cross the river (the bridges in question did not exist yet at that time), Thales, who was present in the camp, is said to have made the river flow on the left hand of the army and on the right, and he did it this way:

5Starting upstream of the camp, he had a deep ditch dug, in a crescent shape, so that it would pass around behind the camp and catch it; in this way the river, turned from its old channels into the ditch, flowed past the camp, and then, coming around it again, it poured back into its old channels. So as soon as the river split, it could be crossed on both sides,

6and some even say that the old channel dried up altogether. But this I do not accept; for how, on the way back, did they cross it?

Chapter 76

1Croesus, after crossing with his army, came into Cappadocia, to the place called Pteria (Pteria is the strongest part of that country, lying most nearly opposite the city of Sinope, on the Euxine Sea). There he encamped and destroyed the farms of the Syrians.

2He took the city of the Pterians and enslaved its people; he took all the towns around it as well, and he made the Syrians, who were not at all at fault, homeless. Cyrus, meanwhile, gathered his own army and picked up all who lived along the way, and marched out to meet Croesus.

3Before starting his army out, he sent heralds to the Ionians and tried to get them to turn away from Croesus. The Ionians would not be persuaded. Cyrus came, encamped opposite Croesus, and then, in the land of Pteria, the two sides tested each other's strength.

4There was a hard battle, and many fell on both sides; at last, with night coming on, neither side won, and they broke apart. So the two armies fought this fight.

Chapter 77

1Croesus found fault with his own army because of its numbers (for the army that had met him was far smaller than the army of Cyrus). Finding fault with this, and because Cyrus did not try an attack the next day, he drove back to Sardis, planning to call up the Egyptians, according to their oath

2(for he had made an alliance with Amasis, who was king of Egypt, earlier than his alliance with the Lacedaemonians), and to send for the Babylonians too (for he had made an alliance with them as well, and Labynetus ruled the Babylonians at that time),

3and to send word to the Lacedaemonians that they should be there at a fixed time. His plan was to gather these together, and, collecting his own army as well, to let the winter go by and march against the Persians with the coming of spring.

4So thinking, when he came to Sardis, he sent heralds to his allies with word to gather at Sardis in the fifth month. The mercenary army that was present and had fought the Persians with him, though, he sent away altogether, scattered to their homes, not expecting at all that Cyrus, after fighting so evenly, would ever march on Sardis.

Chapter 78

1While Croesus was planning these things, all the outskirts of the city filled with snakes. When they appeared, the horses came out after them to their usual grazing and ate them up. Croesus saw this, and it seemed to him, as it was, a portent.

2At once he sent messengers to the interpreters, the Telmessians. When the messengers arrived and learned from the Telmessians what the portent wanted to mean, it became impossible to get the news back to Croesus: before they could sail back to Sardis, Croesus was taken.

3This, though, is what the Telmessians concluded: that a foreign army was to be looked for against Croesus's country, and that, when it came, it would subdue the native people; they said the snake was a child of the earth, and the horse an enemy and an invader. The Telmessians gave this answer to Croesus when he was already taken, knowing nothing at all of what was going on at Sardis and with Croesus himself.

Chapter 79

1Cyrus, as soon as Croesus went off after the battle that took place at Pteria, learned that Croesus meant to scatter his army once he had withdrawn; and taking counsel, he found a plan: to march to Sardis as fast as he could, before the power of the Lydians could be gathered a second time.

2Once this seemed good to him, he did it without delay: he marched his army into Lydia, and he himself arrived at Sardis as his own messenger to Croesus. Croesus, thrown into great perplexity (for things had gone quite otherwise than he had supposed), still led the Lydians out to battle.

3At that time there was no people in Asia braver or more warlike than the Lydian. Their fighting was from horseback; they carried big spears, and they themselves were good horsemen.

Chapter 80

1The two armies came together on the plain that lies in front of the city of the Sardians, a great and bare plain, through which rivers and other streams run and break into the greatest of them, called the Hermus, which flows from a mountain sacred to the Mother Dindymene and empties into the sea by the city of Phocaea.

2There, when Cyrus saw the Lydians forming for battle, he feared their cavalry; and on the advice of Harpagus, a Median man, he did the following. He gathered together all the camels that followed his army carrying food and baggage, took off their loads, and set men on their backs dressed as riders, in full cavalry gear. He then ordered them to go in ahead of the rest of the army against the cavalry of Croesus; the foot soldiers, he said, were to follow the camels; and all his own cavalry was to come behind the foot.

3When all were in position, he gave this order to the rest: to kill without mercy every man who got in their way, but not to kill Croesus himself, not even if he fought back while being seized.

4Such was his order. He set the camels opposite the cavalry for this reason: a horse fears a camel, and it cannot endure either the sight of it or its smell. For this reason the trick was used, so that the cavalry would be useless to Croesus—the very force on which the Lydian set his hope of shining deeds.

5So when the armies met, as soon as the horses caught the smell and the sight of the camels, they turned and ran, and the hope of Croesus was destroyed.

6But the Lydians were not cowards for all that; when they understood what was happening, they leaped from their horses and fought the Persians on foot. After many had fallen on both sides over a long time, the Lydians turned and fled, and, driven inside their wall, they were besieged by the Persians.

Chapter 81

1So the siege was set. Croesus, thinking the siege would go on a long time, sent other messengers out of the wall to his allies. His earlier messengers had been sent with word to gather at Sardis in the fifth month; these he sent out to ask for help with all speed, because Croesus was under siege.

Chapter 82

1He sent to his other allies, and to Lacedaemon as well. Now the Spartiates themselves were, at this very time, caught up in a dispute with the Argives about a place called Thyrea,

2for the Lacedaemonians had cut off Thyrea, which was part of the Argive share, and held it. All the land of the Argives up to Malea, toward the west, had belonged to them—the land on the mainland, the island of Cythera, and the rest of the islands.

3When the Argives came out to help their land that was being cut off, the two sides met and agreed on this: three hundred men from each side should fight, and whichever side won would have the land; the rest of each army was to go home and not stay while the chosen men fought, so that, with the armies absent, neither side, seeing its own men losing, would come to their defense.

4Having made this agreement, the armies went home; the picked men of each side stayed behind and fought. As they fought and kept even, out of the six hundred three men were left when night came on: of the Argives, Alcenor and Chromius; of the Lacedaemonians, Othryades.

5The two Argives ran to Argos as the winners; but Othryades the Lacedaemonian stripped the arms from the Argive dead and carried them to his own camp, and he held his post there in his rank. On the second day both sides came to find out the result.

6For a while each side claimed the win: the Argives said more of their men had survived; the Lacedaemonians pointed out that the Argives had run away, while their man had stayed behind and stripped the Argive dead of their arms;

7and at last, falling from dispute into fight, they battled, and after many had fallen on both sides, the Lacedaemonians won. From that time on, the Argives, who until then had worn their hair long as the custom forced them, cut their heads close and made a law and a curse: no Argive was to let his hair grow long, and no Argive wife was to wear gold, until they won Thyrea back.

8The Lacedaemonians made the opposite law: they had worn their hair short before this, and from that time on they wore it long. They say that the one man of the three hundred who was left, Othryades, was ashamed to return to Sparta with all his fellows dead, and so made an end of himself there at Thyrea.

Chapter 83

1While these things were going on among the Spartiates, the herald from Sardis came asking them to help Croesus, who was under siege. Even so, as soon as they heard the herald, they made ready to help; but when they were already prepared and their ships ready, a second message came: that the Lydians' wall had been taken and Croesus held as a prisoner. So they stopped, having made great mourning over it.

Chapter 84

1Sardis was taken this way. When the fourteenth day of the siege of Croesus had come, Cyrus sent horsemen through his army with word that he would give gifts to the first man to mount the wall.

2The army tried and made no headway; and when the rest had stopped, a Mardian man named Hyroeades tried to climb, at a part of the acropolis where no guard was posted; for it was not thought possible that the city could ever be taken there.

3The acropolis at that point is steep and cannot be stormed; and even Meles, the former king of Sardis, did not carry the lion his concubine had borne to him around that part alone—the Telmessians had judged that if the lion was carried around the wall, Sardis would never be taken. Meles carried it around the rest of the wall, where the acropolis was open to attack, but left out this part, judging it steep and beyond assault; it faces toward Tmolus.

4This Hyroeades the Mardian, on the day before, had seen a Lydian come down at this part of the acropolis and pick up a helmet that had rolled down from above; he marked it and thought about it.

5Then he himself climbed up, and other Persians climbed up after him; and when many had gone up this way, Sardis was taken, and the whole city was plundered.

Chapter 85

1This is what happened to Croesus himself. He had a son, whom I mentioned before, a good young man in other ways, but mute. In the former time of his good fortune, Croesus had done everything he could for him; among other plans, he had even sent to Delphi to consult the oracle about him.

2The Pythia said to him: "Lydian by race, king of many, greatly foolish Croesus, / do not wish to hear, within your halls, the much-prayed-for voice / of your son speaking. It is far better for you the other way; / for he will first speak on a day of misery."

3When the wall was being taken—for one of the Persians was coming at Croesus, not knowing who he was, meaning to kill him—Croesus, as he saw the man coming, paid no attention because of the disaster that had come upon him; it made no difference to him whether he was struck down and died.

4But this mute son, when he saw the Persian coming, broke into speech out of fear and dread, and said: 'Man, do not kill Croesus.' This was the first word he ever spoke; and after that he had speech for all the rest of his life.

Chapter 86

1So the Persians took Sardis and captured Croesus himself, who had ruled for fourteen years and had been besieged fourteen days, fulfilling the oracle, which said he would bring his own great empire to an end. The Persians who took him led him to Cyrus.

2Cyrus heaped up a great pyre and put Croesus on it, bound in fetters, and along with him seven sons of the Lydians, chosen from among their young men. He may have meant to dedicate these as first-fruits to some god, or to fulfill a vow; or it may be that he had heard that Croesus was a god-fearing man, and for this reason he put him on the pyre, wanting to know whether any of the gods would save him from being burned alive.

3This is what Cyrus did. But to Croesus, as he stood on the pyre, there came—great as his trouble was—the thought that Solon had spoken his words with a god's help, that no one among the living is happy. When this came before his mind, they say, he called out with a deep sigh after long silence, three times naming Solon.

4Cyrus heard this, and he told the interpreters to ask Croesus whom he called upon. They came near and asked him. Croesus at first kept silent when asked, but when he was pressed, he said: 'A man whom I would have paid a great price to have come and speak with me before any of the tyrants.' Since his words were not clear to them, they asked again what he meant.

5As they pressed him and crowded around, he told them how Solon the Athenian had once come, had looked over all his wealth and made light of it, saying such things as he had said; and how everything had turned out for him just as that man had said, speaking not of him alone but of all mankind, and especially of those who seemed to themselves to be the happiest of men. While Croesus was telling this, the pyre had already been lit, and the outer edges were burning.

6When Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus had said, he changed his mind and reflected that he, himself a man, was giving another man, his equal in good fortune, to the fire alive; and besides that, he feared the repayment that would come, and he saw that nothing in human affairs is secure. He gave orders to put out the burning fire as fast as possible and to bring down Croesus and those with Croesus. But they tried and could no longer master the fire.

Chapter 87

1Then, as the Lydians say, Croesus, learning of Cyrus's change of mind, and seeing that every man was trying to put out the fire but could no longer get hold of it, cried out to Apollo, calling on him: if any gift from him had ever pleased the god, let him stand by him now and save him from the evil that was upon him.

2So he, weeping, called on the god; and out of a clear sky and calm air clouds suddenly gathered, a storm broke, and rain fell in great torrents, and the pyre was put out. Cyrus then learned that Croesus was both dear to the gods and a good man; he brought him down from the pyre and asked him this:

3"Croesus, who of men persuaded you to march against my land and stand up as my enemy instead of my friend?" And he said: 'King, I did these things to your good fortune and to my own misery; but the cause of it was the god of the Greeks, who urged me on to march.'

4'For no man is so senseless as to choose war over peace: in peace the sons bury their fathers, in war the fathers bury their sons. But it was, I suppose, pleasing to some god, that these things should be so.'

Chapter 88

1While he said these things, Cyrus untied him, seated him close beside himself, and kept him under very careful watch. Cyrus himself, and all who stood around him, were full of wonder at the sight of him. But Croesus, deep in thought, stayed quiet.

2But later, when he turned and saw the Persians sacking the Lydian city, he said: "King, is it the right time for me to say to you what I am thinking, or to keep silent in this situation?" Cyrus told him to take courage and say whatever he wanted. Then he asked him in turn:

3"What is this great crowd working at so busily?" The man said: "They are plundering your city and carrying off your property." Croesus answered: "It is not my city they are plundering, and it is not my property they are carrying off. None of these things is mine any longer. It is your property they are bringing and taking away."

Chapter 89

1What Croesus said gave Cyrus concern. He sent the others away and asked Croesus what he saw in what they were doing. Croesus said: "Since the gods have given me to you as a slave, it is right for me, if I see anything more, to point it out to you."

2"The Persians are by nature violent, and they are poor. If then you let them alone after they have plundered and seized great wealth, expect these things to come of it: expect that whichever of them seizes the most will rise in revolt against you. So do this, if what I say pleases you:"

3"Set guards of your own spearmen at every gate. Let them take away part of what the men carry out, and let them tell the men that necessity forces them to take one tenth of it for Zeus. Then you will not be hated, since you take the treasure by force; and they, seeing that you act justly, will give it up willingly."

Chapter 90

1Cyrus was delighted when he heard this, because he thought the advice was good. He praised Croesus at length, ordered his spearmen to carry out what Croesus had suggested, and then said this to Croesus: "Croesus, even as you hung there, you proved yourself a man fit for a king in deed and in word. Ask for whatever gift you want to have at once."

2Croesus said: "Master, let me do most honor to the god of the Greeks, the god I honored above all gods, by sending him these fetters and asking whether it is his way to trick men who do him good." Cyrus asked him why he used that name and made this request.

3Croesus laid out his whole line of thought: the answers of the oracles, and above all the offerings he had given. He told how, after the oracle had encouraged him, he marched against the Persians. As he said this, he came back again to his request: he begged to be allowed to blame the god for this reproach. Cyrus laughed and said: "You shall have this from me, Croesus, and anything else you may need at any time."

4When Croesus heard this, he sent Lydians to Delphi with orders: when they had set the fetters on the floor of the temple, they were to ask whether the god did not feel shame before his oracles, for stirring Croesus up to march against the Persians, with the claim that he would end the power of Cyrus, when the campaign had produced offerings like these. They were to show the fetters as they asked. They were also to ask whether it is the way of the Greek gods to be without gratitude.

Chapter 91

1When the Lydians came and delivered their message, the Pythia is said to have given this answer: "Not even a god can escape the fate that is fixed. Croesus paid for the sin of his ancestor five generations back, who, though a spearman of the Heraclids, followed a woman's trick, murdered his master, and took his place, a place that in no way belonged to him."

2"The Loxias wanted the fall of Sardis to come in the days of Croesus' children, and not in his own days. But he found it impossible to turn the fates aside."

3"Whatever part of them gave way, that much he won and granted him: the capture of Sardis was put off by three years. Let Croesus know that he was captured three years later than his fate decreed. This second favor stood by him when he was burning on the pyre."

4"Croesus is wrong to blame the oracle that was given. Loxias foretold that, if he marched against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. It was his part, with that answer before him, to think carefully, and to send and ask which empire the god meant, his own or Cyrus'. But he did not take in what was said and did not ask again; so he must call himself the cause."

5"Even at his last consultation Loxias spoke to him about a mule, and even that he failed to grasp. This Cyrus was in fact that mule: he was born of two parents of different peoples, a mother of the higher rank and a father of the lower."

6"The mother was a Mede, daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes. The father was a Persian, subject to them, below every one of them, and he married her who was in every way his mistress." So the Pythia answered the Lydians. They carried the answer back to Sardis and told Croesus. When he heard it, he admitted that the fault was his own and not the god's. This, then, was how the rule of Croesus came to an end, and with it the first overthrow of Ionia.

Chapter 92

1Croesus has many other offerings in Greece besides the ones already named. In Thebes in Boeotia there is a tripod of gold, which he dedicated to Apollo of Ismenus. In Ephesus there are the golden cows and many of the columns. In Delphi, at the shrine of Pronaia, there is a large shield of gold. These were still there in my time. The other offerings have been lost.

2The offerings he made at Branchidae of the Milesians weighed as much, as I learn by asking, as those at Delphi, and were like them in every way. He dedicated some of these to Delphi and to the shrine of Amphiaraus: they were goods of his own household, a first offering from his family property. The rest came from the property of an enemy. That man had been his rival before Croesus became king, and had joined with Pantaleon in trying to make the rule of Lydia his.

3This Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes and brother of Croesus, but not by the same mother. Croesus was born to Alyattes by his wife Cairis; Pantaleon by Iada.

4When Croesus received the rule from his father, he dragged the man who had opposed him over a wool-comb and put him to death. He had first made an offering of the man's property, and that is how the offerings came to be at the places named. So much, then, may be said about the offerings.

Chapter 93

1Lydia holds few wonders worth writing down, as other lands do, apart from the gold dust that is washed down from Mount Tmolus.

2It shows one work that is by far the greatest there, apart from the works of Egypt and Babylon. There stands the tomb of Alyattes, father of Croesus. Its base is built of great stones; the rest of the tomb is a mound of earth. The tradesmen of the market, the craftsmen, and the girls who worked for hire built it.

3Five boundary stones on top of the tomb were still there in my time. Marks were cut into them to show what each group had done. When they were measured, the work of the girls proved to be the greatest.

4The reason is this: all the daughters of the common people of Lydia work as prostitutes to gather dowries for themselves, and they keep doing this until they marry. The girls choose their own husbands.

5The road around the tomb is six stades and two plethra. Its width is thirteen plethra. A large lake lies next to the tomb, which the Lydians say never runs dry. It is called the lake of Gyges. So much for that.

Chapter 94

1The Lydians have laws much like those of the Greeks, except that they make their daughters work as prostitutes. They were the first people we know of to stamp and use coins of gold and silver. They were also the first to become retail sellers.

2The Lydians themselves say that the games now played among them and the Greeks were their own invention. They say the games were invented among them, and that they also sent out the colony of the Tyrrhenians. Their story is this.

3They say that under Atys, son of Manes, king of Lydia, a hard famine came on all Lydia. At first the Lydians bore it and went on living; then, since it would not stop, they looked for help, and each group thought up its own plans. At that time they invented the forms of dice, knucklebones, ball, and all other games, except checkers; the Lydians do not claim the invention of that game.

4They used this plan against hunger: they played games all through one day, so as not to look for food, and on the next day they stopped playing and ate. They lived this way for eighteen years.

5But the evil did not go away; it pressed on them still harder. So the king divided all the Lydians into two groups and drew lots for them: one group was to stay, the other to leave the country. The king put himself over the group whose lot was to stay, and put his son over the group that was to depart. The son's name was Tyrrhenus.

6The group whose lot it was to leave went out of the country. They went down to Smyrna and built ships. They loaded aboard all the goods they had that could be carried aboard, and sailed away to look for a living and a land to live in. They passed many peoples and came to the Umbrians, where they built cities and have lived to this day.

7They changed their name from Lydians to Tyrrhenians, taking the new name from the son of the king who had led them out. So the Lydians were enslaved by the Persians.

Chapter 95

1From this point my account searches for two things: who this Cyrus was who broke the rule of Croesus, and in what way the Persians won the rule of Asia. I will write what the Persians say, those of them who do not want to glorify Cyrus but to tell the true story. I know three other lines of story about Cyrus besides this one.

2The Assyrians held the upper part of Asia for five hundred and twenty years. Then the Medes were the first to begin to break away from them. They fought the Assyrians for their freedom and proved themselves brave men; they threw off slavery and became free. After them, the other peoples did the same as the Medes.

Chapter 96

1So all the peoples of the mainland were living under their own laws. Then they came around to tyranny again in this way. Among the Medes there appeared a man of wisdom named Deioces, son of Phraortes.

2This Deioces desired to be a tyrant, and he did the following. The Medes lived in villages. Deioces lived in his own village, and even before this he had a name for justice; now he gave himself to it with even more zeal. He did this though there was much lawlessness through all Media, because he knew that injustice is the enemy of justice. The Medes of his own village saw his ways and chose him as their judge. He, since his heart was set on power, was straight and just.

3By doing this he won praise without measure from his fellow villagers, until the people of the other villages heard that Deioces was the one man who judged rightly. Before this they had fallen among unjust judgments; when they heard this they were glad, and they too came to Deioces to have their cases judged, until in the end they trusted no one else.

Chapter 97

1As more and more men kept coming, because they heard that cases turned out as the facts were, Deioces saw that everything was being laid on him. He no longer wanted to sit where he had sat before as judge, and he said he would judge no more. It did not pay him to spend the whole day judging for others and neglecting his own affairs.

2So robbery and lawlessness grew in the villages far more than before. The Medes gathered in one place and talked things over, speaking about the wrongs that were being done. As I think, the friends of Deioces were the ones who spoke most:

3"As things are now, we cannot live in this country. Come, let us set up a king over us. Then the land will have good order, we can turn back to our work, and we will not be driven from our homes by lawlessness." They talked like this and persuaded themselves to accept a king.

Chapter 98

1As soon as they began to put forward the man they would set up as king, Deioces was proposed and praised by every man, until they all agreed to make him their king.

2He ordered them to build him houses fit for a king and to give him a bodyguard. The Medes did this. They built him great and strong houses on the spot he pointed out in the land, and let him pick his bodyguard from all the Medes.

3Once he held the power, he forced the Medes to build one city and to take care of it before all the rest. The Medes did this too. He built great and strong walls around it, circle set within circle. The place is now called Ecbatana.

4The plan of this wall is such that one circle rises higher than the next only by its battlements. The site helps somewhat, since the city stands on a hill shaped for this, but the greater part was done by deliberate work.

5There are seven circles in all, and in the last one stand the palace and the treasuries. The largest of the walls, at least in size, is that of the circle called the Athenians'. The battlements of the first circle are white, of the second black, of the third purple, of the fourth blue, and of the fifth orange-red.

6So the battlements of the five circles are painted with colors. The last two have battlements, one covered with silver and the other covered with gold.

Chapter 99

1Deioces built these walls for himself and for his own house. He ordered the common people to live outside the wall. When everything was built, Deioces was the first to set up this order: no one was to come into the king's presence; everything was to be done through messengers; no one was to see the king. Besides this, for everyone alike it was shameful to laugh or to spit in front of him.

2Deioces made himself grand in these ways for this reason: so that men of his own age, who had grown up with him, came from houses as good as his, and were no worse than he in manly worth, would not see him, feel pain, and plot against him. Instead, hidden from their sight, he would seem to them a different kind of man.

Chapter 100

1When he had set all this in order and made his power strong, he guarded justice strictly. People wrote down their cases and sent them in to him. He judged what was brought to him and sent back his decisions.

2That is what he did with lawsuits. This is what else he arranged: whenever he heard of a man doing violence, he summoned him and punished each offense as it deserved. He had spies and listeners through all the land he ruled.

Chapter 101

1So Deioces gathered the Median people alone into one body and ruled them. The tribes of the Medes are these: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi. These are the tribes of the Medes.

Chapter 102

1The son of Deioces was Phraortes. When Deioces died, after ruling fifty-three years, Phraortes took over the power. Once he had it, he was not content to rule only the Medes. He marched against the Persians first, attacked them first, and made the Persians the first people subject to the Medes.

2Then, with these two peoples in his power, both of them strong, he conquered Asia, going from one people to the next. At last he marched against the Assyrians, those Assyrians who held Nineveh and had ruled before all others. These stood alone now, since their allies had left them, though they were otherwise in good case. Phraortes marched against them, and here he lost his life after a reign of twenty-two years, and most of his army with him.

Chapter 103

1When Phraortes died, Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces took his place. This man is said to have been far more warlike than his fathers. He was the first to divide the men of Asia into companies, and the first to set each kind apart by itself: the spearmen, the archers, and the horsemen. Before this, all arms had been jumbled together without order.

2This is the man who fought the Lydians, on the day when day turned to night as they fought, and who brought under his rule all Asia above the Halys river. He gathered all the men under his rule and marched on Nineveh. He wanted to punish his father's killers and to take that city.

3He had beaten the Assyrians in battle and was besieging Nineveh, when a great army of Scythians came against him. Their leader was Madyes son of Protothyes, king of the Scythians. These Scythians had invaded Asia after driving the Cimmerians out of Europe; they had chased the Cimmerians as they fled, and in this way had come into the land of the Medes.

Chapter 104

1From the Maeetian lake it is a march of thirty days for a man traveling light, to the Phasis river and the Colchians. From Colchis it is not far across to Media: only one people lies between them, the Saspires, and past them you are in Media.

2But the Scythians did not invade by that route. They turned aside onto the upper road, which is much longer, keeping the Caucasus mountains on their right. There the Medes met the Scythians in battle, lost the fight, and lost their rule. The Scythians then took all of Asia.

Chapter 105

1From there the Scythians marched on Egypt. When they came into Palestinian Syria, Psammetichus king of Egypt met them with gifts and prayers, and turned them from going any farther.

2So they withdrew and turned back. On the way home they reached the city of Ascalon in Syria. Most of the Scythians went past without doing any harm. But a few of them stayed behind and robbed the temple of the heavenly Aphrodite.

3As I find by asking questions, this temple is the oldest of all the temples of this goddess. The temple in Cyprus came from this one, as the Cypriots themselves say. And Phoenicians founded the temple on Cythera, men who came from this part of Syria.

4The god sent a female disease on the Scythians who robbed the temple at Ascalon, and on their descendants forever after. So the Scythians themselves say that for this reason they are sick in this way, and those who visit the land of Scythia can see the state of the men whom the Scythians call the Enarees.

Chapter 106

1The Scythians held Asia for twenty-eight years. Their insolence and their contempt threw everything into disorder. They collected tribute from each people, the tax they laid on each; and besides this tribute they plundered, riding round the country, whatever each people had.

2Cyaxares and the Medes killed most of them. They made them guests at a feast, got them drunk, and slaughtered them. In this way the Medes won back their rule and kept what they had held before. They took Nineveh (I will show elsewhere how they took it) and made the Assyrians their subjects, all except the Babylonian part.

Chapter 107

1After these things Cyaxares died. He had ruled forty years, counting in the years the Scythians held power. His son Astyages received the kingship from him. Astyages had a daughter, and he named her Mandane. He dreamed that she urinated so much that it filled his own city and flooded all Asia as well. He told the dream to the dream interpreters among the Magi, and when he learned from them every detail of what it meant, he was afraid.

2Later, when Mandane was old enough for a husband, Astyages did not give her to any Mede of his own rank. He was afraid of what he had seen. He gave her instead to a Persian named Cambyses. He found this man of a good house and of a quiet temper, and judged him far below the average man of the Medes.

Chapter 108

1While Mandane lived with Cambyses, Astyages saw a second dream in the first year. It seemed to him that a vine grew from the private parts of this daughter, and that the vine overshadowed all Asia.

2When he had seen this and laid it before the interpreters, he sent for his daughter from the Persians, for she was already with child. When she came, he kept her under guard, because he meant to destroy the child she would bear. The dream interpreters of the Magi had read the vision to mean that the child of his daughter would be king in his place.

3So Astyages kept watch. When Cyrus was born, he called Harpagus, a man of his own house, the most faithful of the Medes and the steward of all his affairs, and said this to him:

4"Harpagus, the business I am about to put in your hands—do not trip in it in any way. Do not weigh me against others and choose them, and so bring yourself to ruin afterward. Take the child Mandane has borne. Carry him to your house and kill him. Then bury him any way you please."

5Harpagus answered: "King, never to this day have you seen any fault in me in anything, and I watch myself to make no mistake now or in the time to come. If it is your wish that this be done, then it is my part to serve you with care."

Chapter 109

1With these words Harpagus took the child, dressed for death, and went home weeping. When he came in, he told his wife every word Astyages had said.

2She said to him: "And what do you now intend to do?" He answered: "Not what Astyages commanded. Even if he goes out of his mind and rages worse than he rages now, I will not join in that plan or serve him in such a murder."

3"I will not kill him for many reasons. The child is my own kin. And Astyages is an old man, with no son to succeed him."

4"If, when this man dies, the rule should pass to his daughter, then the greatest of dangers is left for me, since it is through me that he is killing her son now. But for my own safety the boy must die. Still, the killer must be one of Astyages' own men, not one of mine.

Chapter 110

1He said this and at once sent a messenger to one of Astyages' herdsmen. He knew that this man kept his herds in the best pastures and in the wildest mountains. The man's name was Mitradates. He lived with a woman who was his fellow slave. In the Greek tongue her name was Cyno; in the Median tongue it was Spaco, for the Medes call a dog spaca.

2The lower slopes of the mountains, where this herdsman had his pastures for cattle, face the north wind from Ecbatana and look toward the Euxine Sea. There the Median country, toward the Saspires, is very mountainous, high, and thick with woods; the rest of Media is level plain.

3The herdsman came quickly, at the urgent call. Harpagus said: "Astyages orders you to take this child and lay him in the loneliest place in the mountains, so that he dies as fast as may be. These words he charged me to say to you: if you do not kill the child but save him in any way, he will destroy you by the most terrible death. I myself am ordered to see the body laid out."

Chapter 111

1The herdsman heard this, took up the child, and went home by the same road. When he reached his hut, his wife, who had been in labor all that day, at just that time, as heaven willed, gave birth, while her husband was away in the city. Both of them were anxious about each other: he feared for the birth of her child, and she feared because Harpagus had never before sent for her husband.

2So when he returned and stood in the door, his wife, seeing him so unexpectedly, asked him first why Harpagus had sent for him so eagerly. He said: "Wife, when I came to the city, I saw and heard what I wish I had never seen, and that had never befallen our masters. The whole house of Harpagus was filled with weeping. I was stunned, and I went inside."

3"The moment I went in, I saw a child lying there, breathing and crying, dressed in gold and clothes of many colors. When Harpagus saw me, he told me to take up the child as fast as I could, carry it away, and lay it in the wildest part of the mountains. He said Astyages had laid this charge on him. He threatened me with many terrible things if I failed to do it."

4"So I took the child up and carried it. I thought it belonged to one of the household slaves, for I could not imagine it came from where it did. I was amazed to see it dressed in gold and fine clothes, and the weeping over it stood openly in Harpagus' house."

5"But before long, on the road, I learned the whole story from the servant who brought me out of the city and put the baby in my hands. It is the child of Mandane, daughter of Astyages, and of Cambyses son of Cyrus, and Astyages orders it killed. And here it is."

Chapter 112

1As the herdsman said this he uncovered the child and showed him. When the woman saw how large and beautiful he was, she wept, took her husband by the knees, and begged him not to expose the child by any means.

2He said he could not act otherwise: spies would come from Harpagus to look, and if he failed he would die a horrible death. Since he could not be persuaded, the wife spoke a second time: "Since I cannot persuade you not to expose him, then do this, if he must in all need be seen laid out. I too have given birth—and my child was born dead."

3"Lay this one out, and let us bring up the child of Astyages' daughter as our own. Then you will not be caught wronging your masters, and no harm will be planned against us. The dead child will have a royal burial, and the living one will not lose his life."

Chapter 113

1The herdsman thought the wife spoke the best advice for the situation, and did it at once. The child he had brought, the one meant to die, he handed over to his wife. His own dead child he took and laid in the basket in which he had carried the other.

2He dressed it in all the other child's fine clothes, carried it to the loneliest place in the mountains, and laid it out. When the third day came for the child laid out there, the herdsman went into the city, leaving a watch over the herds. He came to Harpagus' house and said he was ready to show him the child's body.

3Harpagus sent the most trusted of his guards, and through them he saw and buried the herdsman's child. So that child was buried. The other, who was later named Cyrus, the herdsman's wife took and raised, giving him some other name, not Cyrus.

Chapter 114

1When the boy was ten years old, an event of this kind brought him to light. He was playing in the village where these cattle yards were, playing with other boys of his age in the road. As they played, the boys chose this boy, called the herdsman's son, to be their king.

2He gave them their orders: some built houses, some were his guards. One of them was made the king's eye. Another was given the honor of carrying his messages. Each boy had his task assigned.

3One of these boys, the son of Artembares, a man of standing among the Medes, would not do what Cyrus ordered. Cyrus told the other boys to seize him. When they had seized him, Cyrus whipped him very roughly.

4As soon as he was let go, the boy felt he had suffered what no one of his worth should suffer, and he wept aloud. He went down into the city and complained to his father of what Cyrus had done to him. He did not name Cyrus, for that name did not exist yet; he said it was the son of Astyages' herdsman.

5Artembares came to Astyages in anger, leading his boy. He said his son had suffered outrageous things, and said: "King, we have been treated with such insolence by your slave, the herdsman's son." And he showed the boy's shoulders.

Chapter 115

1Astyages heard and saw. Wanting to punish the boy, out of regard for Artembares, he sent for both the herdsman and the boy. When both stood before him, Astyages looked at Cyrus and said:

2"You, the son of a man like this—you dared to whip the son of this man, the first man in my house, with such shame?" Cyrus answered: "Master, I punished him justly. The boys of the village, among whom he was one, made me their king as they played. They thought I was the best fitted for it."

3"All the other boys did what I commanded. This one disobeyed and paid no attention, and so he got his punishment. If I deserve any evil for this, here I stand before you."

Chapter 116

1As the boy said this, recognition came over Astyages. The face, he thought, was like his own. The bearing was freer than a slave's. And the boy's age seemed to match the time of the exposure.

2Astyages was struck by these things and for a while could not speak. With great difficulty he gathered himself and spoke. He wanted to send Artembares away, so that he could question the herdsman alone. He said: "Artembares, I will manage this so that you and your son have no complaint against me."

3So he sent Artembares out. At Astyages' order the servants led Cyrus within. When the herdsman was left alone, Astyages asked him where he had got the boy, and who it was who gave him.

4The herdsman said the boy was his own, born of himself, and that the mother who bore him was still with him. Astyages said he was not thinking straight, and was heading into great trouble. As he said this, he made a sign to his guards to seize him.

5As he was led away to the torture, the herdsman showed what the true story was. From the beginning he told it all in the truth, and he came down to begging, and to asking for forgiveness for himself.

Chapter 117

1When the herdsman had brought the true story to light, Astyages began to take it more lightly. He turned his blame hard against Harpagus and told his guards to call him in.

2When Harpagus stood before him, Astyages asked: "Harpagus, by what death did you destroy the child I gave you, the child born of my daughter?" Harpagus saw the herdsman inside. He did not turn onto a false road, for fear that, caught in a lie, he would be seized. He said this:

3"King, when I took the child, I thought about how I might do your will, and how I might stand before you without blame, so that I would be neither your daughter's murderer, nor yours."

4"This is what I did: I called this herdsman and handed the child over to him, saying that you were the one who ordered it killed. In that I did not lie, for you gave the command. I handed the child over with orders to lay him on an empty mountain, to stay by him and watch until he died, and I threatened him with every kind of thing if he failed to do exactly this."

5"When the child had died as the man carried out the orders, I sent the most trusted of my eunuchs. Through them I saw the body, and I buried it. That is how it went, King, and such was the death the child died."

Chapter 118

1So Harpagus told the straight story. Astyages hid the anger he held against him for it. First he repeated to Harpagus, point by point, the whole matter as he himself had heard it from the herdsman. Then, when they had gone through it together, he said the boy was alive and that the affair stood well, and went on to say:

2"I was terribly grieved over what was done to this child, and I was at great odds with my daughter over it. But now that luck has turned for the better, send your own son to be with this boy newly come, and come yourself to dinner. For I mean to sacrifice to the gods for the safety of the child, and this honor is fitting for them."

Chapter 119

1When Harpagus heard this, he bowed down before the king. He counted himself greatly blessed that his fault had come right, and that he was called to dinner on a day of good fortune. He went home.

2The moment he entered, he sent out his son. The boy was his only child, thirteen years old or so. He told him to go to Astyages and do whatever the king commanded. Then Harpagus, full of joy, told his wife what had happened.

3When the son of Harpagus came, Astyages cut his throat and divided the body limb from limb. Some of the flesh he roasted and some he boiled. He had it all prepared, as befitted the occasion, and kept ready.

4When the dinner hour came and the other guests and Harpagus had arrived, tables heaped with mutton were set before the others and before Astyages himself. Harpagus was served his own child, all of him except the head and the hands and the feet. These lay apart in a basket, covered over.

5When Harpagus seemed to have eaten enough, Astyages asked him whether he was pleased with the meal. Harpagus said he was, and very much so. Then those who served brought in the head of the child with the hands and the feet, covered over, and set it before him. Standing by, they told him to uncover it and take whatever he wanted of it.

6Harpagus obeyed and uncovered it. He saw the remains of his son. At the sight he did not lose himself, but kept his self-command. Astyages asked him whether he knew of what animal he had eaten the flesh.

7Harpagus said he knew it, and that whatever the king did was pleasing to him. With this answer he took up the remaining pieces of flesh and went home. Once there, as I judge, he meant to gather everything and bury it."

Chapter 120

1This was the punishment Astyages laid on Harpagus. Then, thinking about Cyrus, he called in the same Magi who had judged that dream for him. When they came, Astyages asked them how they had read the vision. They answered the same as before: the boy must become king if he grew up and did not die first.

2He answered them: "The boy is alive and safe. While he lived in the country, the boys of the village made him king. He did everything that kings really do: he appointed guards, gatekeepers, and messengers, and all the rest, and ruled."

3"And now, what does this seem to you to mean?" The Magi said: "If the boy is alive and has been king, with no plan of his own, take heart and be of good courage because of it. He will not rule a second time. Some of the things we read have come true on the smallest grounds, and what hangs on dreams, once it meets a weak fulfillment, loses all its force."

4Astyages answered: "Magi, I myself am of this same mind as you. When the boy was named king, the dream was fulfilled, and I no longer have any fear of this boy. All the same, advise me: look carefully, and find what is safest for my house and for yours."

5The Magi answered: "King, our own standing depends very much on your rule keeping its power. As it is now, if the rule passes to this boy, a Persian, we Medes become slaves and count for nothing with the Persians, since we are foreigners. But while you are king, a fellow-countryman, we have our share of rule, and we hold great honors from you."

6"So we must look out for you and for your rule in every way. If we saw anything to fear, we would warn you of it in advance. But now that the dream has turned out to mean little, we ourselves take heart, and we urge you to think the same. As for the boy, send him away out of your sight, to the Persians and to his parents."

Chapter 121

1When Astyages heard this he was glad. He called Cyrus and said: "Child, I wronged you because of a dream that never came true. But you have lived on by your own fate. Now go to the Persians, and go rejoicing. I will send men with you. When you come there, you will find a father and a mother quite different from Mitradates the herdsman and his wife."

Chapter 122

1Astyages said this and sent Cyrus away. When Cyrus came back to the house of Cambyses, his parents received him. When they had received him and learned who he was, they embraced him with great joy, for they had believed he died at once, as a baby. They asked him how he had survived.

2He told them that before this he had not known at all, and had been wrong about everything, but on the way he had learned all that had happened to himself. He said he had believed he was the son of Astyages' herdsman, but on the way down from there he had learned the whole story from his escorts.

3He said the herdsman's wife had raised him. He praised her constantly; in his whole account, Cyno was everything. And the parents took hold of this name, so that the Persians would think the survival of their son more like the work of heaven, and put out the story that a dog had nursed Cyrus when he was exposed.

Chapter 123

1So far that story spread. Cyrus had grown to be a man, the bravest and best loved of all his age-mates. Harpagus attached himself to him, sending gifts. Harpagus wanted revenge on Astyages. Acting as a private man, alone, he saw no way to punish Astyages. But when he saw Cyrus growing up, he made him his ally, matching the sufferings of Cyrus with his own.

2Before this he had already done this work: since Astyages was harsh toward the Medes, Harpagus had spoken with each of the leading Medes, one by one, and persuaded them that they must make Cyrus their leader and take the kingship away from Astyages.

3When this was done and they were ready, Harpagus wanted to declare his plan to Cyrus, who lived among the Persians. But there was no other way open, since the roads were watched. So he used this device:

4He got a hare, cut open its belly without removing anything, and put inside it a letter with what he wanted to say. He sewed up the belly of the hare and gave it to the most trusted of his household, dressed as a hunter with nets. He sent him to the Persians with orders to give the hare to Cyrus by hand and to tell him to cut it open with his own hands, and to let no one be present while he did it.

Chapter 124

1This was done. Cyrus took the hare and cut it open. He found the letter inside, took it out, and read it. The letter said: "Son of Cambyses, the gods watch over you, or you would never have come to such a stroke of luck. Now take revenge on Astyages, your murderer."

2"By his plan you were meant to die, but by the will of the gods and of me you are alive. Long ago, I think, you learned all of it: how you yourself were treated, and what I suffered from Astyages because I did not kill you but gave you to the herdsman. Now, if you will obey me, you will rule all the land that Astyages rules. Persuade the Persians to revolt, and lead your army against the Medes."

3"Whether I am the commander sent against you by Astyages, or one of the other leading Medes, what you want will be ours to give. These men will be the first to revolt from him, to join you, and to try to pull Astyages down. This side is ready. Do this, and do it quickly.

Chapter 125

1When Cyrus heard this he thought how to persuade the Persians to revolt in the cleverest way. Thinking it over, he found this to be the best plan, and he did it.

2He wrote what he wanted in a letter, called an assembly of the Persians, opened the letter, and read it out, saying that Astyages was appointing him commander of the Persians. "Now," he said, "Persians, I give you this order in advance: come, every one of you, bringing a sickle." That was Cyrus' proclamation. There are many tribes of Persians. Some of them Cyrus gathered and persuaded to revolt from the Medes.

3These are the tribes out of which all the other Persians are formed: the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, and the Maspii. The Pasargadae are the best of them. Among them is the clan of the Achaemenids, and from it the Persian kings have come.

4The other Persians are these: the Panthialaei, the Derusiaei, and the Germanii. All of these are farmers. The rest are wanderers with their herds: the Dai, the Mardi, the Dropici, and the Sagartii.

Chapter 126

1When all the Persians had come with the thing named before, Cyrus led them to a thorny tract of the Persian land, about eighteen or twenty stades across in every direction, and ordered them to clear it in one day.

2When the Persians had finished the task set before them, he gave them a second order: to come the next day washed. Meanwhile Cyrus gathered all his father's goat-folds, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle into one place. He slaughtered them and prepared a feast to receive the Persian army, with wine and the finest of food.

3The Persians came the next day, and he seated them on the grass and feasted them. After the meal, Cyrus asked them whether yesterday's work or today's feast pleased them more.

4They said the difference was very great: yesterday they had nothing but trouble, and today nothing but good. Cyrus took hold of this answer and laid bare his whole plan. He said:

5"Men of Persia, it stands with you like this. If you obey me, you have these good things and ten thousand more, with none of the toil of slaves. If you will not obey me, you have labors past counting, like yesterday's."

6"So obey me now, and be free. For I believe I myself, born with a heaven-sent luck, am bringing these things into your hands. And I judge that you are men no worse than the Medes, in other things and in war. Since it stands so, revolt from Astyages, and at once."

Chapter 127

1The Persians seized on the offer and gladly freed themselves, for they had long counted it a hard thing to be ruled by the Medes. When Astyages heard what Cyrus was doing, he sent a messenger and called him to come.

2Cyrus told the messenger to carry back the answer that Cyrus would come to him sooner than Astyages would wish. When Astyages heard this, he armed all the Medes. Then, as though a god had struck his wits, he named Harpagus their commander, forgetting what he had done to him.

3When the Medes met the Persians in the field, those of them who had no part in the plot fought. The rest went over to the Persians. Most of them deserted on purpose and ran.

Chapter 128

1When the Median army broke in shameful flight, Astyages heard of it at once. He said, threatening Cyrus, that not even so would Cyrus get any joy of it.

2First he impaled the Magi, the dream interpreters, who had persuaded him to let Cyrus go. Then he armed the Medes left in the city, young men and old men alike.

3He led them out and joined battle with the Persians, and was beaten. Astyages himself was taken alive, and he lost the Medes he had led out.

Chapter 129

1Astyages was now a prisoner. Harpagus came up to him and greeted him with mockery and jeers. Among other bitter words, he asked him what he thought of his slavery now, in place of his kingship—he who had made Harpagus feast on his son's flesh at that dinner.

2Astyages, looking him in the face, asked in turn whether he claimed the deed of Cyrus as his own. Harpagus said that he himself had written the letter, so the deed was rightly his.

3Astyages declared him, in his words, the most foolish and most unjust of all men: most foolish, because if the deed was his, then it had been in his power to be king, and he had handed that power to another; most unjust, because he had enslaved the Medes for the sake of a dinner.

4For if the kingship had to be handed to another in any case, and he could not keep it himself, it would have been more just for a Mede to receive this good thing than a Persian. But as it was, the Medes, who had no part in the wrong, had become slaves in place of masters, and the Persians, who before had been the slaves of the Medes, had now become their masters.

Chapter 130

1So the reign of Astyages ended, after thirty-five years on the throne. The Medes bowed under the Persians because of his cruelty. They had ruled all Asia above the Halys for a hundred and twenty-eight years, not counting the time the Scythians held it.

2In later times they were sorry for what they had done, and they revolted from Darius. They lost the revolt; they were beaten in battle and brought back under rule. But at this time, under Astyages, the Persians and Cyrus rose against the Medes, and from then on they held Asia.

3Astyages suffered no other wrong from Cyrus. Cyrus kept him in his own house until he died. So Cyrus was born and raised, became king, and later broke the power of Croesus, who had begun the wrong, as I have told before. After conquering him, Cyrus ruled all Asia.

Chapter 131

1I know that the Persians keep laws of this kind. It is not their usage to set up statues, temples, or altars. They even charge those who do so with folly. As I judge, this is because they do not believe, as the Greeks do, that the gods have human form.

2Their custom is to climb the highest peaks of the mountains and offer sacrifice to Zeus, for they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus. They sacrifice to the sun, the moon, the earth, fire, water, and the winds.

3To these alone they sacrificed from the beginning. Later they learned to sacrifice also to the heavenly Aphrodite, which they learned from the Assyrians and the Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians call her Alilat, and the Persians call her Mitra.

Chapter 132

1This is the way of sacrifice the Persians keep for the gods named above. They build no altars, and they kindle no fire when they are about to sacrifice. They use no libation, no flute, no garlands, no grains of barley. When a man wishes to sacrifice to one of these gods, he leads the animal to a clean place and calls on the god. He wears a wreath on his cap, usually of myrtle.

2For the man who sacrifices, it is not permitted to pray for good things for himself alone; he prays that good come to all Persians and to the king, for the king himself is one of all the Persians. Then he cuts the victim limb from limb and boils the meat, laying it on grass trampled down as soft as possible, usually trefoil. On that grass he sets all the meat.

3When he has laid it out, a Magus stands by and sings a hymn of the birth of the gods, such as they say that song is. Without a Magus it is not lawful for them to offer sacrifice. After waiting a short time, the man who sacrificed carries the meat away and uses it as he pleases.

Chapter 133

1Of all days, they think it right to honor most the one on which each of them was born. On that day they judge it proper to set out a fuller meal than on other days. On that day the rich among them set out an ox, a horse, a camel, and an ass, roasted whole in ovens, and the poorer set out the smaller animals of the sheep kind.

2They use little solid food, but many courses served after it, and not set out together. This is why the Persians say that the Greeks leave the table hungry: after dinner nothing worth speaking of is carried in for them; and if anything were carried in, they would not stop eating it.

3They are very fond of wine. It is not lawful for them to vomit or to urinate in front of another person. So they keep this rule. But they have this habit: they debate the most serious matters when they are drunk.

4Whatever they decide while drunk, the master of the house in which they debated sets before them again the next day, when they are sober. If they still approve of it when sober, they act on it; if not, they let it go. And whatever they plan first while sober, they test again when drunk.

Chapter 134

1When Persians meet in the roads, one can tell by this whether the men meeting are of equal rank. Instead of speaking as they pass, they kiss each other on the mouth. If one of them is a little lower in standing, they kiss on the cheek. If one is much lower, he falls down before the other and worships him.

2Of all peoples, they honor most those who live nearest themselves, second the next nearest, and so on, going down in order. They hold in least honor those who live farthest from them. They believe they themselves are by far the best of all men, that the others hold to virtue in proportion as they are nearer or farther, and that those who live farthest away are the worst.

3Under the rule of the Medes, the peoples ruled one another in turn: the Medes ruled all, and those who lived nearest the Medes; these in turn ruled their neighbors; and those, the peoples bordering them. The Persians hold honor by the same rule, for the Median people went on advancing, ruling and taking charge.

Chapter 135

1Of all men, the Persians are the readiest to take up foreign customs. They wear the Median dress because they judge it finer than their own. In war they wear Egyptian breastplates. As they learn of all kinds of pleasures, they take them up. And they have learned from the Greeks to lie with boys. Each of them marries many lawful wives, and keeps far more concubines.

Chapter 136

1This is their test of manly worth: next to being brave in war, to have many children. The king sends gifts each year to the man who shows the largest number of children. They think that number is strength.

2They train their boys from five years old to twenty, in three things only: to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to tell the truth. Before a boy is five years old, he does not come before his father's eyes, but lives with the women. The reason for doing this is that, if the boy dies while being raised, the father will suffer no pain.

Chapter 137

1I approve of this law of theirs, and I approve of this one too: for a single offense, it is not lawful for the king himself to put anyone to death, nor for any other Persian to do any harm past curing to any one of his own servants. He must first count up; and if he finds that the wrongs are more and greater than the services, then he may use his anger.

2They say that no one has ever killed his own father or mother. Whenever such a thing has seemed to happen, they say that a full search has shown it to be either substitute children or children of adultery. It is impossible, they say, for a true father to die at the hands of his own child."

Chapter 138

1Whatever it is not permitted to them to do, it is not permitted to them even to talk about. They hold lying to be the most shameful thing of all, and owing money second — for many other reasons too, but chiefly because, they say, a man in debt is sometimes forced to tell some lie. If any citizen has leprosy or the white disease, he does not come into the city and does not mix with the other Persians; they say he has these conditions because he did some wrong against the sun.

2Many people drive any foreigner seized by these diseases out of the country, and white doves too, giving the same reason for both. They do not urinate into a river or spit into one, and they do not wash their hands in one, and they do not let anyone else do these things either; they honor rivers above all.

Chapter 139

1And this other thing has also turned out this way for them — the Persians themselves have not noticed it, but we have: their names, which are like their bodies and their grandeur, all end in the same letter, the letter the Dorians call san and the Ionians sigma. Search for it, and you will find that the names of the Persians all end this way — not some and not others, but all alike.

Chapter 140

1These things about them I can state truly, knowing them for myself. But the following is told as something kept secret and not said plainly, about a Persian man who has died: his body is not buried before a bird or a dog has torn it.

2That the Magi do this I know for certain — they do it openly. The Persians, however, cover the body with wax and then hide it in the earth. The Magi are set far apart from all other men, and from the priests of Egypt.

3The priests of Egypt, keeping their purity, kill no living thing, except what they sacrifice; but the Magi kill everything with their own hands, except a dog and a man, and they make this a great contest, killing ants and snakes alike, and the other creeping things, and the flying things. Let this custom stand here as it was first established; I go back to my earlier story.

Chapter 141

1When the Persians had quickly conquered the Lydians, the Ionians and Aeolians sent messengers to Cyrus at Sardis, wanting to obey him on the same terms as they had obeyed Croesus. He listened to what they offered, and told them a story: he said that a piper, seeing fish in the sea, played his pipe, expecting them to come out onto the land;

2but when his hope failed, he took a casting net, threw it around a great crowd of the fish, and dragged them out; and seeing them leaping, he said to the fish: "Stop dancing, since you would not come out dancing when I played my pipe."

3Cyrus told this story to the Ionians and Aeolians for this reason: the Ionians had not obeyed earlier, when Cyrus himself asked them through messengers to break away from Croesus, but now, once his work was done, they were ready to obey him.

4So he said this to them in anger. The Ionians, when this was carried back and heard in their cities, each built walls around their cities, and the others gathered at the Panionium, except the Milesians; for Cyrus made a treaty with these alone, on the same terms as the Lydian had held. The rest of the Ionians decided by one plan to send messengers to Sparta, to ask for help for the Ionians.

Chapter 142

1These Ionians, to whom the Panionium belongs, had founded their cities, as it happens, in the fairest region for sky and seasons that we know of among all men:

2for the land above Ionia is not like it, nor the land below, nor the land toward the east or the west — the upper lands are pressed down by cold and wet, the others by heat and drought.

3These people have not all adopted the same speech, but four different forms of it. Of them, Miletus lies first toward the south, and after it Myus and Priene.

4These three are settled in Caria and speak the same way among themselves; these next are in Lydia — Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea — and these cities agree in speech with none of the ones named before, but they sound alike with one another. Three more Ionian cities are left: two of them are settled on islands, Samos and Chios, and one on the mainland, Erythrae. The Chians and the Erythraeans speak the same way, and the Samians alone keep to their own. So there come to be four forms of speech.

Chapter 143

1Of these Ionians, then, the Milesians were sheltered from fear, because they had made a treaty; and for the islanders among them there was nothing dreadful — for the Phoenicians were not yet subject to the Persians, and the Persians themselves were not seafarers.

2These men split off from the other Ionians for no other reason than this: the whole Greek race was weak at that time, and the Ionian people was by far the weakest of the nations and of least account; for except for Athens there was no other city of any name.

3The other Ionians, and the Athenians too, have avoided the name — they do not want to be called Ionians — and even now, it seems to me, most of them are ashamed of the name. But these twelve cities took pride in the name and founded a temple for themselves, to which they gave the name Panionium, and they decided to share it with no other Ionians (none of the others asked to share it either, except the Smyrnaeans);

Chapter 144

1just as the Dorians of the country now called the Five Cities — it was earlier called the Six Cities of this same country — take care to admit none of their neighboring Dorians into the Triopium temple, and shut out of the share even some of their own men who broke the rule of the temple,

2for in the games of Apollo of Triopion they used long ago to set bronze tripods before the winners, and the winners were required not to carry them out of the temple but to dedicate them there to the god.

3A man of Halicarnassus, named Agasicles, won and defied the rule: he carried the tripod to his own house and nailed it up there. Because of this offense the five cities — Lindos, Ialysus, Camirus, Cos, and Cnidos — shut the sixth city, Halicarnassus, out of the partnership. That was the penalty these cities laid on them.

Chapter 145

1It seems to me that the Ionians built twelve cities and were not willing to take in more for this reason: when they lived in the Peloponnese there were twelve divisions of them, just as there are now twelve divisions of the Achaeans who drove the Ionians out — Pellene first, next to Sicyon; then Aegeira and Aegae, where the river Crathis always flows, from which the river in Italy got its name; then Bura and Helice, to which the Ionians fled when they were beaten in battle by the Achaeans; then Aegium, Rhypes, Patrae, Pharae, and Olenus, where the great river Peirus is; then Dyme and Tritaees, the only ones of these who live inland. These are twelve divisions of the Achaeans now and were divisions of the Ionians then.

Chapter 146

1For this reason, then, the Ionians built twelve cities. It is great folly to say that these men are more truly Ionians than the other Ionians or of finer stock: the Abantes from Euboea are no small part of them, and they have no share even in the name of Ionia; the Minyans of Orchomenus are mixed in with them, and Cadmeians, and Dryopians, and Phocians cut off from their homes, and Molossians, and Arcadian Pelasgians, and Dorians of Epidaurus, and many other nations mixed in;

2and those of them who set out from the town hall of the Athenians, who consider themselves the noblest born of the Ionians — these did not take women with them to the colony, but took Carian women, whose parents they killed.

3Because of that killing, these women laid down a custom, bound themselves by oaths, and handed it on to their daughters: never to eat a meal with their husbands, and never to call their own husband by name — because these men killed their fathers and husbands and sons, and then, after doing this, lived with them.

Chapter 147

1These things happened at Miletus. They set up kings: some of them chose Lycians descended from Glaucus son of Hippolochus, some chose Caunians of Pylos descended from Codrus son of Melanthus, and some chose both kinds together. But since these men lay claim to the name a little more than the other Ionians do, then let even those of pure birth be Ionians.

2All who are descended from Athens are Ionians and keep the festival of the Apatouria. All of them keep it except the Ephesians and the Colophonians; these alone of the Ionians do not keep the Apatouria, and they plead some killing as their excuse.

Chapter 148

1The Panionium is a sacred place on Mycale, facing north, set apart by the Ionians in common for Poseidon of Helicon. Mycale is a spur of the mainland, running out toward the west wind and facing Samos; there the Ionians, gathering from their cities, used to hold the festival to which they gave the name Panionia.

2[Not only the festivals of the Ionians have this quality: all the festivals of all the Greeks likewise end in the same letter, just as the names of the Persians do.]

Chapter 149

1Those are the Ionian cities. These are the Aeolian ones: Cuma, the one called Phricoris; Lerisae; Neon Teichos; Temnos; Cilla; Notium; Aegiroessa; Pitane; Aegaeae; Myrina; Gryneia. These are the eleven ancient cities of the Aeolians, for one of theirs, Smyrna, was lost to the Ionians — for these on the mainland too were twelve.

2The Aeolians happened to build their country better than the Ionians did, but the seasons there are not so good.

Chapter 150

1This is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. They took in men of Colophon who had lost out in a faction fight and been driven from their homeland. Then these Colophonian exiles waited until the Smyrnaeans were keeping a festival of Dionysus outside the walls, shut the gates, and seized the city.

2When all the Aeolians came to help, they made an agreement: the Ionians were to give up their goods and leave Smyrna to the Aeolians. When the Smyrnaeans had done this, the eleven cities divided them up among themselves and made them their own citizens.

Chapter 151

1These are the Aeolian cities on the mainland, not counting those settled on Mount Ida, for those are set apart.

2Of those who hold the islands, five cities share Lesbos (for the Methymnaeans made slaves of the sixth city settled on Lesbos, Arisba, though they were of the same blood); one city is settled on Tenedos, and another one on the islands called the Hundred Islands.

3For the Lesbians and the Tenedians, like the Ionians who hold the islands, there was nothing dreadful; but the remaining cities were content in common to follow the Ionians wherever these might lead.

Chapter 152

1When the messengers of the Ionians and Aeolians came to Sparta (for all this was being done fast), they chose the Phocaean to speak first — his name was Pythermus. He put on a purple robe, so that as many of the Spartans as possible would gather to ask about things; then he stood up and spoke, asking for much help for themselves.

2But the Lacedaemonians did not listen at all; they decided not to bring help to the Ionians. So the messengers went away. The Lacedaemonians, after turning the Ionian messengers away, still sent men out on a fifty-oared ship — in my judgment, to spy on the doings of Cyrus and of Ionia.

3When these men reached Phocaea, they sent the most respected man among themselves to Sardis — his name was Lacrines — to tell Cyrus the word of the Lacedaemonians: that he was to do no wrong to any city in the land of Greece, since they would not overlook it.

Chapter 153

1When the herald said this, Cyrus is said to have asked the men standing by who the Lacedaemonians were, and how many there were of them, that they made this proclamation to him. And in his questioning he said this to the Spartan herald: "I have not yet been afraid of men such as these, men who have a place set apart in the middle of their city, where they gather and swear oaths to each other and cheat each other; if I keep my health, these men will have talk of their own troubles, not of the troubles of the Ionians."

2Cyrus threw these words at all the Greeks as a group, because they set up marketplaces and buy and sell in them; the Persians themselves are not used to marketplaces at all, and they have none at all.

3After this, Cyrus handed Sardis over to Tabalus, a Persian, and gave the gold, both the gold of Croesus and that of the other Lydians, to Pactyes, a Lydian, to carry; he himself drove on to Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him, and made nothing of the Ionians for the time being.

4For Babylon stood in his way, and the Bactrian nation and the Sacae and the Egyptians — against these he meant to march himself, and against the Ionians he would send another general.

Chapter 154

1As soon as Cyrus had gone from Sardis, Pactyes made the Lydians revolt from Tabalus and Cyrus. He went down to the sea; and, since he had all the gold from Sardis, he hired mercenaries and persuaded the peoples along the coast to march with him. Then he marched on Sardis and besieged Tabalus, who had shut himself up in the citadel.

Chapter 155

1When Cyrus learned of this on the road, he said this to Croesus: "Croesus, what will be the end of these doings for me? The Lydians, it seems, will not stop making trouble and having it. I am thinking it might be best to make slaves of them. For it seems to me I have now done like a man who killed the father and spared his children;

2just as I took you, who are more than a father to the Lydians, and am carrying you off, while I gave their city back to the Lydians themselves — and then I am surprised that they have revolted from me." So Cyrus spoke the thought he had; Croesus answered as follows, fearing that Cyrus would destroy Sardis root and branch:

3"King, what you say is fitting; but do not give way to your temper in everything, and do not destroy an ancient city that is guiltless, both in what went before and as it stands today. The former things I did, and I carry them on my own head; the wrong being done now is Pactyes', the man to whom you entrusted Sardis — let him pay you the penalty.

4Spare the Lydians, and give them these orders, so that they neither revolt nor are a danger to you: send a man to forbid them to keep weapons of war, and order them to wear tunics under their cloaks and slippers on their feet, and tell them to teach their sons to play the cithara and the harp and to keep shop. Then you will quickly see, king, that they have become women instead of men, so that they will be no danger to you, nor revolt."

Chapter 156

1This advice Croesus offered him, finding these measures more acceptable for the Lydians than being made slaves and put up for sale; for he knew that unless he put forward a reason worthy of the matter, he would not persuade Cyrus to change his mind; and he feared that even later, if the Lydians slipped out of the present trouble, they might revolt from the Persians and be destroyed.

2Cyrus was pleased with the advice, let go of his anger, and said he would follow it. He called Mazares, a Median man, and gave him orders: to tell the Lydians the things Croesus had advised; and, besides that, to make slaves of all the others who had marched with the Lydians against Sardis, and to bring Pactyes himself to him alive at all costs.

Chapter 157

1He, then, gave these orders on the road and drove on to the settlements of the Persians; but Pactyes, hearing that an army was coming near against him, was afraid and fled to Cyme.

2Mazares the Mede marched on Sardis with that part of Cyrus' army that he had; when he found that the men around Pactyes were no longer in Sardis, he first forced the Lydians to carry out the orders of Cyrus; and because of that command the Lydians changed their whole way of life.

3After this, Mazares sent messengers to Cyme, demanding that they give up Pactyes. The Cymaeans decided to take the question to the god at Branchidae; for an oracle had been founded there long ago, which all the Ionians and Aeolians were used to consulting. This place is in Milesian country, above the harbor of Panormus.

Chapter 158

1The Cymaeans then sent sacred envoys to Branchidae to ask about Pactyes: what they might do that would please the god. When they asked, the oracle's answer came: to give Pactyes up to the Persians. When the Cymaeans heard this answer brought back, they set themselves to hand him over;

2but when the common people were moving to do this, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a man of standing among the citizens, stopped the Cymaeans from doing it — he did not believe the oracle and thought the envoys were not reporting it truthfully — so much so that they went a second time to ask about Pactyes, other envoys this time, and Aristodicus was one of them.

Chapter 159

1When they came to Branchidae, Aristodicus put the question to the god, consulting him for them all: "Lord, Pactyes the Lydian came to us as a suppliant, fleeing a violent death from the Persians; and they demand him of us, ordering the Cymaeans to give him up.

2We, fearing the power of the Persians, have not yet dared to give up the suppliant, until it is shown us plainly by you which of the two we should do." This is what he asked; the god again gave them the same oracle, ordering them to give Pactyes up to the Persians.

3At this Aristodicus acted with a plan: going around the temple in a circle, he took out the sparrows and all the other kinds of birds that had nested in the temple. While he was doing this, a voice is said to have come from the inner shrine, aimed at Aristodicus, saying: "Most impious of men, why do you dare do this? Are you pulling my suppliants out of my temple?"

4Aristodicus was not at a loss; he said: "Lord, so you help your own suppliants this way, and yet you order the Cymaeans to give up a suppliant?" The god answered him as follows: "Yes, I do order it, so that you may the sooner perish for your impiety, and never come to this oracle again to ask about giving up suppliants."

Chapter 160

1When the Cymaeans heard this answer brought back, they wanted neither to give him up and be destroyed, nor to keep him and be besieged; so they sent him on to Mytilene.

2The Mytilenaeans, as Mazares kept sending word demanding the giving up of Pactyes, were preparing to hand him over for a price — how much I cannot state exactly, for the business was never finished.

3For the Cymaeans, when they learned that this was being done by the Mytilenaeans, sent a ship to Lesbos and carried Pactyes away to Chios. From there he was torn away from the temple of Athena, guardian of the city, and given up by the Chians; the Chians gave him up for a price of Atarneus:

4this Atarneus is a tract of Mysia, facing Lesbos. The Persians, on receiving Pactyes, kept him under guard, meaning to hand him over to Cyrus.

5For no short time after this, no one of the Chians made offerings of barley groats from that land to any god, nor burned offerings of the fruit grown there, and they kept away from all the holy things produced in that country.

Chapter 161

1The Chians, then, gave up Pactyes. After this, Mazares marched against those who had joined in besieging Tabalus: he made slaves of the Prienians, and he overran the whole plain of the Maeander, taking spoil for his army, and Magnesia in the same way. Right after these things he died of sickness.

Chapter 162

1After his death, Harpagus came down as the next general, himself a Mede by birth — the man whom Astyages, king of the Medes, feasted at an unlawful table, the man who helped Cyrus win his kingship.

2This man, now made general by Cyrus, when he came to Ionia, took the cities with mounds of earth: whenever he had penned them inside their walls, he then heaped earth against the walls and stormed the city.

Chapter 163

1He began with Phocaea, first of Ionia. These Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to make long sea voyages, and they are the ones who discovered the Adriatic, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus;

2they did not sail in round ships but in fifty-oared vessels. When they came to Tartessus, they became friends of the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius; he ruled Tartessus for eighty years, and he lived a hundred and twenty years in all.

3The Phocaeans became so dear to this man that at first he urged them to leave Ionia and live wherever they wished in his country; and then, when he could not persuade the Phocaeans to do this, and heard from them that the power of the Mede was growing, he gave them money to build a wall around their city,

4and he gave it unstintingly; for the circuit of the wall is not a few stades, and all of it is of large stones well fitted together.

Chapter 164

1The wall of the Phocaeans was built in this way, then. When Harpagus marched his army up, he besieged them, putting this offer first: that it would be enough for him if the Phocaeans were willing to tear down one battlement of the wall and dedicate one house.

2The Phocaeans, groaning bitterly at slavery, said they wished to deliberate for one day and then give their answer;

3and while they were deliberating, they asked him to lead his army away from the wall. Harpagus said he knew well what they meant to do, but that all the same he would let them deliberate. While Harpagus led the army back from the wall, the Phocaeans in that time launched their fifty-oared ships, put aboard their children and their women and all their goods, and besides these the statues from the temples and all the other dedications, except whatever was of bronze or stone or painting; everything else they took aboard, and they themselves went aboard too, and sailed for Chios. The Persians took Phocaea emptied of its men.

Chapter 165

1When the Chians were not willing to sell them the islands called the Oinoussae, fearing that the Phocaeans would set up a trading post there and their own island be shut off because of it, the Phocaeans set course for Cyrnus; for twenty years before this they had founded a city in Cyrnus by direction of the oracle, named Alalia.

2Arganthonius had already died by that time. Setting course for Cyrnus, they first sailed down to Phocaea and killed the Persian guard that had been placed there, which had received the city from Harpagus. After they had done this, they laid strong curses on anyone of their fleet who stayed behind,

3and besides the curses they sank a lump of iron in the sea and swore not to return to Phocaea before that iron came to light again. But while they were preparing to sail to Cyrnus, longing and pity for their city and the life of their country seized more than half the citizens, and they broke their oath and sailed back to Phocaea. The rest kept their oath and, putting out from the Oinoussae, sailed away.

Chapter 166

1When they reached Cyrnus, they lived together for five years with those who had come before, and founded shrines there. They so plundered and harassed all their neighbors that the Tyrrhenians and the Carthaginians marched against them by one agreement, each side with sixty ships.

2The Phocaeans manned their own ships too, sixty in number, and met them in what is called the Sardinian Sea. In the sea fight that followed, the Phocaeans won a Cadmean victory: forty of their ships were destroyed, and the twenty that survived were useless, for their rams had been bent aside.

3They sailed down to Alalia, took up their children and their women and all the other property their ships could carry, and then, giving up Cyrnus, sailed to Rhegium.

Chapter 167

1The men from the destroyed ships the Carthaginians and the Tyrrhenians [divided by lot; and the Agyllaeans, part of the Tyrrhenians] got by far the most of them, and they led them out and stoned them to death. After this, for the Agyllaeans, everything that passed the place where the Phocaeans lay stoned to death became twisted and crippled and paralyzed — people and sheep and beasts of burden alike.

2The Agyllaeans sent to Delphi, wanting to make amends for the offense. The Pythia told them to do what the Agyllaeans still carry out today: they make great offerings to them as to heroes, and set up for them a contest of gymnastics and of horses.

3So the Phocaeans met such a fate. The others of them who fled to Rhegium sailed out from there and won for themselves a city in the land of Oenotria, the one now called Hyela;

4they founded this one after learning from a man of Posidonia that the Pythia had ordered them to found Cyrnus as a hero, and not the island.

Chapter 168

1Such, then, is the story of Phocaea in Ionia. The Teians did much the same: when Harpagus took their wall by earthworks, they all went aboard their ships and sailed away to Thrace, and there they founded the city of Abdera — Timaeus, a man of Clazomenae, had founded it before them, and he gained nothing by it, for he was driven out by the Thracians; he now receives honors as a hero from the Teians living in Abdera.

Chapter 169

1These, then, are the only Ionians who, unable to bear slavery, left their homelands. The other Ionians — except the Milesians — met Harpagus in battle just as the ones who left had, and each proved a good man fighting for his own land; but beaten and taken, they stayed each in his own country and carried out the orders given them.

2The Milesians, as I said before, had made a treaty with Cyrus himself and lived quietly. So Ionia was enslaved for the second time. And when Harpagus had conquered the Ionians of the mainland, the Ionians who hold the islands, fearing this, gave themselves over to Cyrus.

Chapter 170

1When the Ionians were in this misery and still gathered, no less than before, at the Panionium, I find that Bias, a man of Priene, gave the Ionians the most useful counsel — counsel which, had they followed it, would have let them be the happiest of the Greeks:

2he urged the Ionians, with one united fleet, to sail away and go to Sardinia, and there to found one city of all the Ionians; and so, rid of slavery, they would grow rich, holding the greatest of all the islands and ruling over others; but if they stayed in Ionia, he said, he saw no freedom that would ever come to them.

3This was the counsel of Bias of Priene, given to the Ionians after they were ruined; but a good one was given also before Ionia was ruined, by Thales, a man of Miletus, whose family was of Phoenician stock long back: he urged the Ionians to have one council house, and that to be at Teos (for Teos is at the center of Ionia), while the other cities, still lived in, were to be counted no less than if they were local districts. Such were the counsels these two men gave them.

Chapter 171

1Harpagus, having subdued Ionia, made his campaign against the Carians and the Caunians and the Lycians, taking the Ionians and Aeolians along with him.

2Of these, the Carians came to the mainland from the islands. In ancient times they were subjects of Minos and were called Leleges, and they held the islands; they paid no tribute, as far back as I am able to reach by report, but whenever Minos had need, they manned his ships.

3Since Minos conquered much land and had good fortune in war, the Carian nation was at that time by far the most famous of all nations.

4Three inventions of theirs also arose, which the Greeks took up: the Carians are the ones who introduced fastening plumes on helmets and putting devices on shields, and they are the ones who first made handles for shields; before that, all who used shields wore them without handles, strapping them on with leather belts set around the neck and the left shoulder.

5Much later, after the Carians, the Dorians and the Ionians rose up out of the islands, and so came to the mainland. This is how the Cretans say the Carians came to be; but the Carians themselves do not agree with them; they hold that they themselves are natives of the mainland and have always used the same name they use now.

6They point to an ancient temple of Zeus of Caria at Mylasa, shared by the Mysians and Lydians as brothers of the Carians; for they say Lydus and Mysus were brothers of Car. These peoples have a share in it; but the others who, though of different nations, speak the same language as the Carians have no share in it.

Chapter 172

1The Caunians, I think, are natives of their land, though they themselves say they came from Crete. Their speech has drawn close to the Carian language, or the Carian speech to theirs — this I cannot decide for certain; but in their customs they differ greatly from all other men and from the Carians too. They think it finest of all for companies of the same age and friendship to come together for drinking — men, women, and children alike.

2Also, when they had set up temples of foreign gods, they later decided, as it seemed good to them, to pour only to their ancestral gods: all the Caunians together, of full age, put on their armor, went and beat the air with spears, and they followed this practice to the boundaries of Calynda, saying they were casting out the foreign gods.

Chapter 173

1Such are the customs of these people. The Lycians are descended of old from Crete (for in ancient times the whole of Crete was held by foreigners):

2when the sons of Europa, Sarpedon and Minos, quarreled in Crete about the kingship, and Minos won the struggle, he drove out Sarpedon himself and his partisans; and they, driven out, came to the land of Milyas in Asia — the land the Lycians now hold was in ancient times Milyas, and the Milyae were then called Solymi.

3While Sarpedon ruled them, they kept the name they had brought with them, and they are still called Termilae by their neighbors today; but when Lycus son of Pandion, himself driven out by his brother Aegeus, came from Athens to the Termilae, to Sarpedon, then in time they were called Lycians after Lycus.

4They use some Cretan customs and some Carian ones. One custom is their own, and shared with no other men: they name themselves from their mothers, and not from their fathers.

5Ask one of them who his neighbor is, and he will count himself off from his mother and recite his mothers. And if a citizen woman lives with a slave, her children are held to be noble; but if a citizen man, even the first of them, has a foreign wife or a concubine, his children are dishonored.

Chapter 174

1The Carians, then, having done nothing brilliant, were enslaved by Harpagus — nor did the Carians themselves do anything notable, nor any of the Greeks living in that country.

2There are also others living there, Cnidians, colonists of the Lacedaemonians. Their country faces the sea — the place called Triopion — and starting out from the peninsula of Bybassia, all of Cnidia is washed round by the sea except a little:

3on the north the Ceramic Gulf shuts it in, and on the south the sea off Syme and Rhodes; this little bit, about five stades across, the Cnidians were digging while Harpagus was conquering Ionia, wanting to make their country an island. Everything inside it was theirs; for this is the isthmus they were digging, where Cnidia joins the mainland.

4And while many Cnidians were working, the workers seemed to be wounded more than was natural, and more as if by a god — in the other parts of the body and above all about the eyes — as the rock broke apart; so they sent sacred envoys to Delphi to ask about the thing that opposed them.

5The Pythia, as the Cnidians themselves say, answered them in trimeter verse: "Do not wall the isthmus and do not dig it; / Zeus would have made it an island, had he so wished."

6When the Pythia gave this answer, the Cnidians stopped the digging, and when Harpagus came against them with his army they gave themselves up without a fight.

Chapter 175

1The Pedasians lived inland above Halicarnassus; whenever anything bad was going to happen to them or to their neighbors, the priestess of Athena would grow a great beard. This happened to them three times. These men alone of the men around Caria held out against Harpagus for a time and gave him the most trouble: they fortified a mountain named Lide.

Chapter 176

1The Pedasians, then, were dislodged in time. The Lycians, when Harpagus drove his army down into the plain of Xanthus, came out against them and, though few against many, showed their valor; but beaten and penned inside the city, they gathered their wives and their children and their goods and their slaves onto the acropolis, and then set the whole acropolis on fire.

2When they had done this and sworn dreadful oaths to one another, they came out against the enemy, and all the men of Xanthus died fighting.

3Of the Lycians now said to be of Xanthus, most are newcomers, except eighty families; for those eighty families happened to be away from home at that time, and so they survived. So Harpagus took Xanthus, and he took Caunus in much the same way; for the Caunians too copied the Lycians in most things.

Chapter 177

1Harpagus, then, made the lower parts of Asia a ruin; and Cyrus himself made the upper parts so, conquering every nation and passing none by. Most of them we shall pass over; but I will speak of the ones that gave him the most trouble and were the most worth telling of.

Chapter 178

1When Cyrus had made everything on the mainland subject to him, he attacked the Assyrians. In Assyria there are many other great cities, but the most famous and the strongest, and the place where the seat of the kingdom was set up after Nineveh had been destroyed, was Babylon — a city of the following kind:

2It lies in a great plain, and each frontage of it is a hundred and twenty stades long, so that it is square; these stades of the circuit of the city come to four hundred and eighty in all. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was laid out as no other city we know of has been.

3First, a moat runs around it, deep and wide and full of water; after that comes a wall, fifty royal cubits thick and two hundred cubits high; the royal cubit is three fingers broader than the common cubit.

Chapter 179

1I must state here also how the earth dug from the moat was used, and in what way the wall was built. As they dug the moat, they shaped the earth brought up out of it into bricks; and when they had molded enough bricks, they baked them in kilns:

2then, using hot bitumen as mortar and laying reed mats between every thirty courses of brick, they built first the edges of the moat, and second the wall itself, in the same way.

3On top of the wall, along its edges, they built single-roomed houses facing one another; and between the houses they left room for a four-horse chariot to turn around. There are a hundred gates set in the wall all around, all of bronze, with jambs and lintels of bronze in the same way.

4There is another city eight days' journey from Babylon; its name is Is. There is a river there, not large; the river too is named Is; its stream empties into the Euphrates. This river Is brings up with its water many lumps of bitumen, and from there the bitumen was carried for the wall at Babylon.

Chapter 180

1Babylon was walled in this way, then. The city is in two parts, for a river runs through its middle, named the Euphrates; it flows from Armenia, great and deep and swift, and it empties out into the Red Sea.

2The wall on each side drives its corners down to the river; and from there the walls, curving, run along each bank of the river — a rampart of baked brick.

3The city itself, which is full of houses of three and four stories, is cut through by straight streets, both the others and the cross streets that run to the river.

4By each of these streets, in the rampart that runs along the river, little gates were set, as many in number as the lanes; and these too were of bronze, [they too] opening right onto the river.

Chapter 181

1This wall is like a breastplate; another wall runs around inside it, not much weaker than the first wall, but narrower.

2In each of the two parts of the city a wall was built in the middle: in one the royal palace, set in a great and strong enclosure; in the other the temple of Zeus Belus, with gates of bronze, which was still there in my time — two stades each way, and square.

3In the middle of the temple a solid tower has been built, a stade in both length and breadth, and on this tower another tower has been set, and another on that, up to eight towers.

4A stairway up to them is made outside, circling around all the towers; about halfway up the climb there is a resting place with seats, where those who climb sit down and rest.

5In the last tower there is a great temple; in the temple lies a great bed, well spread, and beside it stands a golden table. No statue of any kind is set up there, and no human being spends the night there, except one woman alone, a native of the place, whom the god chooses from among them all — so say the Chaldaeans, who are the priests of this god.

Chapter 182

1These same men say — though what they say I do not believe — that the god himself comes to the temple and rests on the bed, just as at Thebes in Egypt, in the same way, as the Egyptians say;

2for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of the Theban Zeus, and both of these women are said never to visit men; and it is like the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, when there is one — for there is not always an oracle there — when one has been appointed, she then sleeps the nights inside the temple along with the god.

Chapter 183

1There is another, lower temple in the sacred enclosure at Babylon, and in it sits a great golden statue of Zeus, and a great golden table stands beside it, and the base and the throne are golden too; and, as the Chaldaeans said, these things were made from eight hundred talents of gold.

2Outside the temple there is a golden altar, and another great altar as well, on which the full-grown sheep are sacrificed; for on the golden altar it is permitted to sacrifice only animals still on milk, while on the greater altar the Chaldaeans also burn a thousand talents of frankincense each year, when they keep the festival of this god. In this enclosure there stood also in that time a solid golden statue twelve cubits high.

3I did not see this statue; I say what the Chaldaeans say. Darius son of Hystaspes plotted to take it but did not dare; Xerxes son of Darius took it, and killed the priest who forbade him to move the statue. Such is the adornment of this temple, and there are many private offerings besides.

Chapter 184

1Of this Babylon there were many other kings besides, whose names I will record in the Assyrian records; they adorned both the walls and the temples; among them were two women. The one who ruled first, five generations before the later one, was named Semiramis: she left earthworks on the plain that are worth seeing as wonders; before that the river was used to flooding the whole plain like a sea.

Chapter 185

1The queen who came second after her was named Nitocris. She was shrewder than the first ruler: she left the memorials I shall tell of, and, seeing that the power of the Medes was great and never at rest — that they had taken other cities, and Nineveh among them — she guarded against them as well as she could.

2First, she changed the course of the Euphrates, which used to run straight through the middle of her city: digging channels upstream, she made it so winding that the river as it flows comes three times to one of the villages in Assyria; the village the Euphrates comes to is named Ardericca. Even today, those who travel from this sea to Babylon, sailing down the Euphrates, arrive three times at this same village, and in three days.

3This she did; and she threw up a bank along each bank of the river, of a size and height well worth wondering at.

4Far above Babylon she dug a basin for a lake, stretching a little way back from the river, digging it always deeper to hold water, and making the circuit of it in breadth four thousand two hundred stades; the earth dug out of this pit she carried off and laid along the banks of the river.

5When the digging was done, she brought stones and built a foundation wall in a circle all around it.

6She did both these things — making the river winding and the whole dig into a swamp — so that the river would run slower, forced through many curves, and the voyages to Babylon would be winding, and after the voyages one would face the long circuit of the lake.

7She worked in that part of the country where the entrances and the shortest roads from Media were, so that the Medes, coming in among them, might not learn her affairs.

Chapter 186

1She built all these defenses around herself from deep down; and from them she made a benefit of this kind: since the city is in two parts and the river runs through the middle, under the earlier kings anyone who wanted to cross from one part to the other had to cross by ferry, and this was, I think, a nuisance. She saw to this too:

2when she dug the lake basin, she left this other memorial from the same work: she had long stones cut; and when the stones were ready and the place had been dug out, she turned the whole stream of the river into the place that was dug, and while that place filled, the old channel dried up. First she rebuilt the banks of the river inside the city, and the steps that went down from the little gates to the river, with baked brick, in the same manner as the wall; and then, about the middle of the city, she built a bridge with the stones she had dug out, binding the stones together with iron and lead.

3She laid over the bridge, for daytime, square timbers, on which the Babylonians made their crossing; at night she took the timbers away, for this reason: so that those who went about at night would not steal from one another.

4When the dug-out place had been made a full lake by the river, and the work of the bridge was finished, she brought the Euphrates back from the lake into its old channels; and so the dug-out swamp, turned to good use, seemed a gain, and the citizens had a bridge built for them.

Chapter 187

1This same queen also devised a trick of this kind: above the most-used gate of the city she had a tomb built for herself, high up on top of the gate itself, and she cut into the tomb writing that said this:

2"If any king of Babylon who comes after me runs short of money, let him open the tomb and take as much money as he wants; but let him not open it unless he is short of money — that will not be for the better;"

3That tomb stayed untouched until the kingdom came around to Darius. To Darius it seemed a dreadful thing to make no use of this gate — with money lying there, and the writing itself calling him — and not take it;

4he made no use of this gate for this reason: that, as he rode through, the dead body would be over his head.

5But when he opened the tomb he found no money — only the dead body and writing that said: "If you were not insatiable for money and shamefully greedy, you would not have opened the tombs of the dead." Such a queen, they say, this woman was.

Chapter 188

1It was against the son of this woman that Cyrus marched — a son who bore the same name as his own father, Labynetus, and ruled the Assyrians. When the great king goes on campaign, he is well supplied with food from home, and with cattle; and water is also brought along for him from the Choaspes river, the one that flows past Susa; from this river alone does the king drink, and from no other.

2Whenever he has taken this Choaspes water, many four-wheeled carts drawn by mules follow him, carrying it in silver jars, wherever he drives at any time.

Chapter 189

1As Cyrus marched toward Babylon he came to the river Gyndes, whose springs are in the Matienian mountains; it flows through the land of the Dardanians and empties into another river, the Tigris, which, flowing past the city of Opis, empties into the Red Sea. When Cyrus tried to cross this Gyndes, which can be crossed only by boat, one of his sacred white horses, in its wildness, plunged into the river and tried to swim across; but the river, catching it under, carried it off drowned.

2Cyrus was very angry at the river for this outrage, and he threatened to make it so weak that from then on even women would cross it easily without wetting the knee.

3After this threat he gave up his march on Babylon for the time being and divided his army in two; when he had divided it, he stretched out cords and marked off a hundred and eighty channels on each bank of the Gyndes, running every which way; then, drawing up his army to dig, he ordered them to dig.

4With so great a crowd working, the work was finished — but they spent the whole summer digging there.

Chapter 190

1When Cyrus had taken his revenge on the Gyndes by cutting it into three hundred and sixty channels, and the second spring had come, he marched on Babylon. The Babylonians marched out and waited for him. When he came driving near the city, the Babylonians joined battle, and, beaten in the fight, were shut up inside the city.

2They had known long before that Cyrus was not resting, and saw that he attacked one nation after another, so they had laid in food for very many years. At that point the siege gave them no concern; but Cyrus was caught in difficulties, for much time was passing and nothing was going forward.

Chapter 191

1Whether someone else suggested this to him in his difficulty, or he himself worked out what had to be done, he acted as follows.

2He posted his whole army where the river enters the city, and others again behind the city, where the river flows out of it; he told the army that when they saw the stream become fordable, they were to go in by it into the city. Having so drawn them up, and given this advice, he himself drove off with the useless part of the army.

3When he came to the lake, Cyrus did there also what the Babylonian queen had done with the river and the lake: he led the river by a channel into the lake, which was a swamp, and so made the old channel fordable, the river having sunk down.

4When this had been done, the Persians who were drawn up for this very thing, at the channel of the Euphrates, which had sunk to about the middle of a man's thigh, entered Babylon that way.

5If the Babylonians had been told beforehand, or had found out, what Cyrus was doing, they would have let the Persians enter the city and then destroyed them miserably: they would have shut all the little gates that led to the river, and gone up onto the ramparts built along the banks of the river, and caught them as in a pit.

6As it was, the Persians were upon them without warning. Because of the city's great size — so the people who live there say — those in the outer parts of the city were taken before those who lived in the middle knew that they were taken; for it happened that a festival was being held, and at that time they were dancing and living in pleasure, until they learned of it beyond doubt.

Chapter 192

1Babylon was taken for the first time in this way, then. I will show how great the power of the Babylonians is by many other proofs, and among them this: apart from its tribute, the whole land he rules is divided out to feed the great king himself and his army — of the twelve months in the year, the Babylonian country feeds him for four months, and all the rest of Asia for the other eight.

2So Assyria is a third of the land in power of all the rest of Asia. And the government of this country, which the Persians call a satrapy, is by far the strongest of all governments: when Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus held this province from the king, a full artaba of silver came to him every day.

3The artaba, a Persian measure, holds more than the Attic medimnus by three Attic choenixes. His private horses, apart from the war horses, were these: eight hundred stallions mounting the mares, and sixteen thousand mares that were mounted — for each of the males mounted twenty mares.

4So great a number of Indian hounds was kept that four great villages of the plain, free of other dues, were assigned to provide food for the dogs. Such were the things that went with the governor of Babylon.

Chapter 193

1The land of the Assyrians gets only a little rain, and this little rain is what feeds the root of the grain. When the land is watered from the river, though, the crop grows large and the grain comes to ripeness. It is not like Egypt, where the river itself rises onto the fields; here the fields are watered by hand and with buckets.

2The whole land of Babylonia, like Egypt, is cut up into canals. The largest of the canals is big enough for boats to pass through. It faces the winter sun, and it leads from the Euphrates down into another river, the Tigris, on which the city of Ninus once stood. This land is by far the best of all the lands we know for bringing forth Demeter's grain,

3for no other trees here even try to bear fruit at all, neither fig trees nor vines nor olive trees. But the land bears Demeter's grain so well that it usually gives back two hundredfold, and when it is at its very best it yields three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and the barley there grow to a width of four fingers without any trouble.

4As for how large a tree millet and sesame grow into, I will say nothing of it, because I know well that people who have not come to the land of Babylonia find the reports of these crops very hard to believe. The Babylonians use no oil at all except oil made from sesame. Palm trees grow all over their plain, and most of them bear fruit; from the fruit they make food, wine, and honey.

5They tend the palms the way fig trees are tended, and especially the male palms, which the Greeks call ersai. They tie the fruit of these male palms onto the fruit-bearing ones, so that the gall-fly may ripen as it enters into the date, and so that the fruit of the palm may not drop off. For the male palms carry the gall-fly in their fruit, just as wild figs do.

Chapter 194

1The greatest wonder of all in this land, after the city itself, I now go on to tell: their boats, which travel on the river down to Babylon, are round and made entirely of hide.

2In Armenia, in the country above Assyria, they cut willow branches and make frames. They stretch hides over these frames on the outside as a covering, like a floor. They cut away no stern and draw in no prow; they make the boat round like a shield. Then they fill the whole boat with reeds, load it with cargo, and set it on the river to float down with the current. Most of all they carry down palm-wood casks full of wine.

3Two men stand upright and steer it with two poles; one pulls his pole toward himself, and the other pushes his away. These boats are made both very large and smaller. The largest of them carry a cargo of even five thousand talents. In each boat there is a live donkey, and in the larger boats there are several.

4When they have sailed down to Babylon and sold their cargo, they put up for sale the willow frame of the boat and all the reeds. They load the hides onto the donkeys and drive them off to Armenia.

5It is impossible to sail back up the river in any way, because of how fast the river flows. That is why they make the boats not of wood but of hides. When they have driven the donkeys back to Armenia, they build other boats in the same way.

Chapter 195

1Such are their boats. They dress like this: they wear a linen tunic reaching to the feet, and over it they put on a second tunic of wool, and they throw a white cloak around that. On their feet they wear local shoes, like the Boeotian kind. They wear their hair long, they bind their heads with turbans, and their whole body is perfumed.

2Each man has a seal and a staff made by hand. On top of every staff there is a carved figure: an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or something else. Their law does not allow them to have a staff without such a mark on it.

Chapter 196

1That, then, is how they adorn their bodies. Their laws are set up as follows, and the one I am about to describe is the wisest in my judgment; I learn that the Eneti of Illyria also use it. In every village this was done once each year: when the girls reached an age fit for marriage, they gathered them all together and brought them into one place, and a crowd of men stood around them.

2A herald stood up and put each one up for sale, one at a time, beginning with the most beautiful of all. When she had found a large sum of gold and been sold, he announced the next one who was the most beautiful after her. The girls were sold to become wives. The well-off Babylonians who wanted wives outbid one another and bought the most beautiful girls; the common people who wanted wives cared nothing for good looks, and took the plain girls together with money.

3When the herald had sold through the most beautiful of the girls, he would put up the most misshapen one, or a crippled girl if there was one among them, and would call out for her: who was willing, taking the least gold, to marry her? And she was assigned to the man who promised to take the least. That gold came from the sale of the beautiful girls, and in this way the beautiful girls provided for the plain and the crippled ones to be married. No man could give his own daughter to anyone he pleased, and a man who had bought a girl could not lead her away without guarantors; he had to set up guarantors, promising that he would truly marry her, and only then lead her away.

4If the two sides did not come to an agreement, the law provided that the gold be given back. Anyone who wanted to could also come from another village to buy.

5This was the best law they had, but it does not last to this day. They have instead lately invented a new practice [so that they do not wrong the girls or lead them off to another city]. For after they were conquered and their homes were destroyed, every common person who lacked a living has been making prostitutes of his female children.

Chapter 197

1The next law, second in wisdom, is this: they carry the sick out into the marketplace, for they do not use doctors. People come up to the sick man and give him advice about his illness. Anyone who has himself suffered the same thing the sick man suffers, or has seen someone else suffer it, comes up, advises him, and urges on him whatever that person did to escape the same disease, or saw another escape it. It is not allowed to walk past a sick man in silence before asking what illness he has.

Chapter 198

1They bury their dead in honey, and their cries of mourning are like those in Egypt. Whenever a Babylonian man has intercourse with his own wife, he sits before a burning incense offering, and in another place the woman does the same thing. When morning comes, they both wash, for they touch no vessel before they have washed. The Arabians do the same things.

Chapter 199

1The most shameful of the Babylonians' laws is this: every native woman must, once in her life, sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with a stranger. Many women, who do not think it right to mix with the other women because they are proud of their wealth, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by a team and stand there; a large company of attendants follows behind them.

2Most of them do it this way. In the sacred enclosure of Aphrodite many women sit with a wreath of cord tied around their heads; some of them are coming in, and some are going out. Ropes mark passages running every way through the women, and the strangers walk along these and make their choice.

3When a woman has sat down there, she does not leave for home until some stranger throws silver money into her lap and has intercourse with her outside the temple. When he throws the money, he must say these words: "I call the goddess Mylitta for you." The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta.

4The amount of the money is small; the woman may not refuse it, for that is not lawful for her, and this money becomes sacred. She follows the first man who throws it in and rejects no one. When she has lain with him, she has paid her duty to the goddess and goes home; and after that, however great a sum you give her, you will not win her.

5Women who are beautiful and tall leave quickly; but those of them who are misshapen wait a long time, unable to fulfill the law, and some of them wait even three or four years. There is a law like this one also in Cyprus.

Chapter 200

1These, then, are the laws established for the Babylonians. There are among them three tribes who eat nothing but fish alone. When they have caught the fish and dried them in the sun, they do this: they throw them into a mortar and pound them, and strain them through linen cloth. Some of them eat it kneaded like barley cake, while others bake it like bread.

Chapter 201

1When Cyrus had also brought this nation under his power, he wanted to make the Massagetae subject to himself. This nation is said to be both large and warlike, living toward the east and the sunrise, beyond the Araxes River, facing the Issedones. Some people say this nation is Scythian.

Chapter 202

1The Araxes is said to be both larger and smaller than the Ister. They say it has many islands in it about as large as Lesbos, and that in them live people who in summer dig up roots of all kinds and eat them. They also take ripe fruit from trees and store it away for food, and they eat this in winter.

2They also have, it is said, trees found among them that bear a certain kind of fruit. When they come together in companies and build a fire, sitting around in a circle, they throw the fruit onto the fire; and as the fruit burns, they smell it, and the smell makes them drunk, just as the Greeks are made drunk by wine. The more fruit is thrown on, the more drunk they get, until at last they rise to dance and begin to sing. This, it is said, is their way of life.

3The Araxes River flows out of the land of the Matienians, the same land the Gyndes comes from, the river Cyrus divided into three hundred and sixty canals. The Araxes empties into the sea through forty mouths, and all of these except one pour into marshes and swamps. People are said to live in them who eat raw fish and wear clothing made from sealskins.

4The one other mouth of the Araxes flows in a clear channel into the Caspian Sea.

Chapter 203

1The Caspian Sea stands by itself and does not join the other sea. The sea the Greeks sail—both the sea outside the Pillars, called the Atlantic, and the Red Sea—is all one sea. The Caspian is another sea, separate and by itself. Its length is a voyage of fifteen days for a boat rowed with oars; its width, at its widest point, is eight days. The part of this sea that runs toward the west is bordered by the Caucasus range, which is the greatest of mountains in number and the tallest in height. The Caucasus holds many and various tribes of people within it, most of them living off wild forest,

2and among these tribes there are said to be trees that give leaves of this kind: the people grind them and mix them with water, and paint figures of living creatures onto their clothes. The figures do not wash out; they grow old with the rest of the wool, as if they had been woven in from the start. These people have intercourse openly, like cattle.

Chapter 204

1The Caucasus closes off the western side of this sea called the Caspian; the side toward the east and the sunrise opens onto a plain whose size is endless to the eye. The Massagetae hold no small share of this great plain. It is against them that Cyrus had the desire to lead his army.

2Many great things were raising him up and urging him on: first his birth, since he seemed to be more than an ordinary man; and second the good luck he had met in his wars. Wherever Cyrus turned his campaign, that nation could not possibly escape him.

Chapter 205

1This man had died, and his wife was queen of the Massagetae; her name was Tomyris. Cyrus sent to court her, wanting her as a wife—but only in words. Tomyris understood that he was not courting her but the kingdom of the Massagetae, and she refused his approach.

2After this, since his trick had not carried him forward, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and made his attack on the Massagetae openly. He built bridges over the river so his army could cross, and he built towers on the boats that ferried across the river.

Chapter 206

1While he was busy with this work, Tomyris sent a herald and said this: "King of the Medes, stop hurrying what you are hurrying. You cannot know whether this work will end well for you in time. Stop, and rule your own people, and put up with seeing us rule the people we rule."

2"If you will not take this advice, then do the opposite of keeping quiet. If you greatly want to test the Massagetae, give up the work you have of bridging the river. When we have moved three days' journey away from the river, cross over into our land."

3"Or if you would rather have us come into your land, then you do the same thing." When Cyrus heard this, he called together the leading Persians. He gathered them and put the matter before them, asking which thing he should do. Their opinions all agreed: they urged him to receive Tomyris and her army into their land.

Chapter 207

1Croesus the Lydian was there, and finding fault with this opinion he set out the opposite of the plan before them, saying this: "King, I told you even before that, since Zeus gave me to you, I would turn aside whatever harm I see coming to your house, as far as I am able. My painful experiences have become lessons to me."

2"If you think you are immortal and rule an army like this, it would be nothing for me to state my opinion to you. But if you know that you are yourself a man and rule men like yourself, learn this first: human affairs are a circle, and as the circle turns, it does not allow the same men always to be lucky."

3"Now I have an opinion about the matter at hand that is the opposite of theirs. If we receive the enemy into our land, this danger lies in it: if you are beaten, you lose your whole empire in addition. It is clear that if the Massagetae win, they will not run back the way they came; they will charge straight at your empire."

4"But if you win here, you win less than you would if you crossed into their land and put the Massagetae to flight. I answer that point with the same argument: once you have beaten those who stand against you, you can drive straight at the empire of Tomyris."

5"And besides what I have said, it would be a shameful and unbearable thing for Cyrus son of Cambyses to give way to a woman and retreat from the land. So this is my advice: cross over and advance as far as they withdraw, and from there try this plan to get the better of them."

6"For as I learn, the Massagetae have no experience of Persian goods, and they have never tasted great pleasures. So, for these men, slaughter and cook plenty of sheep without holding back, and set out a feast in our camp, and also plenty of bowls of unmixed wine and food of every kind."

7"When you have done this, leave the weakest part of the army behind, and march the rest back to the river. If I do not miss the mark in my judgment, when they see the many good things they will turn to them, and after that it is left for us to show great deeds."

Chapter 208

1These were the opinions that had been gathered. Cyrus gave up the first opinion and chose the one from Croesus. He sent word to Tomyris to withdraw, since he was going to cross over against her. She then withdrew, as she had promised at first. Cyrus put Croesus into the hands of his own son Cambyses, the one he was giving the kingdom to, and gave him many orders to honor Croesus and treat him well if the crossing against the Massagetae did not turn out well. Having given these orders, he sent the two of them away to Persia, and he himself crossed the river with his army.

Chapter 209

1When Cyrus had crossed the Araxes and night had come on, he saw a vision while sleeping in the land of the Massagetae. In his sleep Cyrus seemed to see the eldest of the sons of Hystaspes with wings on his shoulders; with the one wing he shaded Asia, and with the other Europe.

2Hystaspes the son of Arsames was an Achaemenid, and the eldest of his sons was Darius, who was at that time about twenty years old. Darius had been left behind in Persia, for he was not yet old enough to serve on a campaign.

3When Cyrus woke up, he turned the vision over in his own mind. Since it seemed to him a matter of great weight, he called Hystaspes and took him aside alone, and said: "Hystaspes, your son was caught plotting against me and against my rule. I know this for certain, and I will show you how."

4"The gods watch over me, and they show me in advance everything that is coming. Last night, while I slept, I saw the eldest of your sons with wings on his shoulders, shading Asia with the one wing and Europe with the other."

5"There is no way, from this vision, that it can be anyone but him plotting against me. So you make your way back to Persia as fast as you can, and arrange that, when I have finished this work and come there, you put your son before me for judgment."

Chapter 210

1Cyrus said these things, thinking that Darius plotted against him; but the divine power showed him beforehand that he himself would meet his end there at that time, and that his kingship would pass over to Darius.

2Hystaspes answered as follows: "King, may no Persian man ever be born who would plot against you; and if there is one, may he perish as fast as possible. You have made the Persians free instead of slaves, and made them rule over all instead of being ruled by others."

3"But if some vision tells you that my son is planning something new against you, then I hand him over to you, to do with him whatever you want."

Chapter 211

1Hystaspes, having answered with these words, crossed the Araxes and went to Persia, to guard for Cyrus his son Darius. Cyrus moved out from the Araxes a day's journey and acted according to the advice of Croesus.

2After this, Cyrus and the picked troops of the Persian army marched back to the Araxes, and the worthless part of the army was left behind. Then a third part of the Massagetae army came up and killed the men left behind of Cyrus' army as they defended themselves. When they saw the feast laid out, they lay down and ate, now that they had beaten their enemies; and filled with food and wine, they fell asleep.

3The Persians came upon them and killed many, and captured many more, and among others the son of Tomyris the queen, who was leading the Massagetae. His name was Spargapises.

Chapter 212

1When she learned what had happened to the army and what had happened to her son, Tomyris sent a herald to Cyrus and said this.

2"You who can never get enough blood, Cyrus, do not lift yourself up because of what has happened. You did not beat my son in battle by strength; you tricked him with the grape's drug, that fruit of the vine with which you fill yourselves and go mad, so that when the wine goes down into your bodies, ugly words come floating up with it."

3"Now listen well to my advice. Give me back my son, and go free from this land without paying any penalty, though you have brutalized a third part of the army of the Massagetae. If you do not do this, I swear to you by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae: I will give even you, insatiable for blood as you are, your fill of blood."

Chapter 213

1Cyrus paid no attention to any of these words when they were brought to him. But the son of Tomyris the queen, Spargapises, when the wine left him and he learned what evil he was in, begged Cyrus to be freed from his bonds and got his wish; and as soon as he was freed and had control of his hands, he killed himself.

Chapter 214

1So this one ended his life in such a way. But Tomyris, when Cyrus did not listen to her, gathered her whole force together and joined battle with Cyrus. I judge that this battle was the hardest-fought of all the battles foreign men ever fought, and I learn that it in fact happened so.

2First, they say, they stood apart from each other and shot arrows; then, when their missiles were all shot away, they fell together and fought hand to hand with spears and daggers. For a long time they stood fighting, and neither side was willing to flee. In the end the Massagetae won,

3and the greater part of the Persian army was destroyed there, and Cyrus himself met his end too, after reigning thirty years less one in all.

4Tomyris filled a skin with human blood and searched among the dead Persians for the body of Cyrus; and when she found it, she pushed his head into the skin, and while she outraged the corpse she spoke these words:

5"You destroyed me, though I was alive and beating you in battle, by taking my son through trickery. But I will give you your fill of blood, just as I threatened." So, of the many stories told about the death of Cyrus, this one is to me the most believable.

Chapter 215

1The Massagetae wear clothing like the Scythian kind, and they live the same way. They are horsemen and footmen too (they have both kinds), and also archers and spearmen; they hold it right to carry the sagaris. They use gold and bronze for everything: all their spear points, their arrow points, and their sagaris axes are of bronze, while everything worn on the head, their belts, and their breast straps they decorate with gold.

2So too with their horses: they put bronze breastplates around their chests, and gold on their bridles, their bits, and their cheek pieces. They use no iron and no silver at all, for there is none of these in their land; but gold and bronze are without limit.

Chapter 216

1They use laws of this kind. Each man marries one wife, but they use the women in common. The Greeks say the Scythians do this, but it is not the Scythians who do it; it is the Massagetae. When a Massagete man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of her wagon and has intercourse with her openly.

2They have no other set limit of life; but when a man becomes very old, all his relatives come together and sacrifice him, along with other sheep at the same time; and having boiled the meat, they feast on it.

3This is held by them the most blessed end; but one who dies of disease they do not eat; they hide him in the ground, counting it a misfortune that he did not reach being sacrificed. They sow nothing, but live from their animals and from fish, which come to them in plenty from the Araxes River.

4They are milk drinkers. Of the gods they worship the sun alone, and they sacrifice horses to it. The meaning of this sacrifice is this: they give the swiftest of all mortal things to the swiftest of the gods.

Chapter 1

This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other.

1The Persian learned men say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the dispute. 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,

2which was at that time preeminent in every way among the people of what is now called Hellas. The Phoenicians came to Argos, and set out their cargo.

3On the fifth or sixth day after their arrival, when their wares were almost all sold, many women came to the shore and among them especially the daughter of the king, whose name was Io (according to Persians and Greeks alike), the daughter of Inachus.

4As these stood about the stern of the ship bargaining for the wares they liked, the Phoenicians incited one another to set upon them. Most of the women escaped: Io and others were seized and thrown into the ship, which then sailed away for Egypt.

Chapter 2

1In this way, the Persians say (and not as the Greeks), was how Io came to Egypt, and this, according to them, was the first wrong that was done. Next, according to their story, some Greeks (they cannot say who) landed at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa. These Greeks must, I suppose, have been Cretans. So far, then, the account between them was balanced. But after this (they say), it was the Greeks who were guilty of the second wrong.

2They sailed in a long ship to Aea, a city of the Colchians, and to the river Phasis: and when they had done the business for which they came, they carried off the king's daughter Medea.

3When 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, they would not make any to the Colchians.

Chapter 3

1Then (they say), in the second generation after this, Alexandrus, son of Priam, who had heard this tale, decided to get himself a wife from Hellas by capture; for he was confident that he would not suffer punishment.

2So he carried off Helen. The Greeks first resolved to send messengers demanding that Helen be restored and atonement made for the seizure; but when this proposal was made, the Trojans pleaded the seizure of Medea, and reminded the Greeks that they asked reparation from others, yet made none themselves, nor gave up the booty when asked.

Chapter 4

1So far it was a matter of mere seizure on both sides. But after this (the Persians say), the Greeks were very much to blame; for they invaded Asia before the Persians attacked Europe.

2“We think,” they say, “that it is unjust to carry women off. But to be anxious to avenge rape is foolish: wise men take no notice of such things. For plainly the women would never have been carried away, had they not wanted it themselves.

3We of Asia did not deign to notice the seizure of our women; but the Greeks, for the sake of a Lacedaemonian woman, recruited a great armada, came to Asia, and destroyed the power of Priam.

4Ever since then we have regarded Greeks as our enemies.” For the Persians claim Asia for their own, and the foreign peoples that inhabit it; Europe and the Greek people they consider to be separate from them.

Chapter 5

1Such is the Persian account; in their opinion, it was the taking of Troy which began their hatred of the Greeks.

2But 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, finding herself pregnant, she was ashamed to have her parents know it, and so, lest they discover her condition, she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own accord.

3These are the stories of the Persians and the Phoenicians. For my part, I shall not say that this or that story is true, but I shall identify the one who I myself know did the Greeks unjust deeds, and thus proceed with my history, and speak of small and great cities of men alike.

4For many states that were once great have now become small; and those that were great in my time were small before. Knowing therefore that human prosperity never continues in the same place, I shall mention both alike.

Chapter 6

1Croesus was a Lydian by birth, son of Alyattes, and sovereign of all the nations west of the river Halys, which flows from the south between Syria and Paphlagonia and empties into the sea called Euxine.

2This Croesus was the first foreigner whom we know who subjugated some Greeks and took tribute from them, and won the friendship of others: the former being the Ionians, the Aeolians, and the Dorians of Asia, and the latter the Lacedaemonians.

3Before the reign of Croesus, all Greeks were free: for the Cimmerian host which invaded Ionia before his time did not subjugate the cities, but raided and robbed them.

Chapter 7

1Now the sovereign power that belonged to the descendants of Heracles fell to the family of Croesus, called the Mermnadae, in the following way.

2Candaules, 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.

3The kings of this country before Agron were descendants of Lydus, son of Atys, from whom this whole Lydian district got its name; before that it was called the land of the Meii.

4The Heraclidae, descendants of Heracles and a female slave of Iardanus, received the sovereignty from these and held it, because of an oracle; and they ruled for twenty-two generations, or five hundred and five years, son succeeding father, down to Candaules son of Myrsus.

Chapter 8

1This Candaules, then, fell in love with his own wife, so much so that he believed her to be by far the most beautiful woman in the world; and believing this, he praised her beauty beyond measure to Gyges son of Dascylus, who was his favorite among his bodyguard; for it was to Gyges that he entrusted all his most important secrets.

2After a little while, Candaules, doomed to misfortune, spoke to Gyges thus: “Gyges, I do not think that you believe what I say about the beauty of my wife; men trust their ears less than their eyes: so you must see her naked.” Gyges protested loudly at this.

3“Master,” he said, “what an unsound suggestion, that I should see my mistress naked! When a woman's clothes come off, she dispenses with her modesty, too.

4Men have long ago made wise rules from which one ought to learn; one of these is that one should mind one's own business. As for me, I believe that your queen is the most beautiful of all women, and I ask you not to ask of me what is lawless.”

Chapter 9

1Speaking thus, Gyges resisted: for he was afraid that some evil would come of it for him. But this was Candaules' answer: “Courage, Gyges! Do not be afraid of me, that I say this to test you, or of my wife, that you will have any harm from her. I will arrange it so that she shall never know that you have seen her.

2I will bring you into the chamber where she and I lie and conceal you behind the open door; and after I have entered, my wife too will come to bed. There is a chair standing near the entrance of the room: on this she will lay each article of her clothing as she takes it off, and you will be able to look upon her at your leisure.

3Then, when she moves from the chair to the bed, turning her back on you, be careful she does not see you going out through the doorway.”

Chapter 10

1As Gyges could not escape, he consented. Candaules, when he judged it to be time for bed, brought Gyges into the chamber; his wife followed presently, and when she had come in and was laying aside her garments, Gyges saw her;

2when she turned her back upon him to go to bed, he slipped from the room. The woman glimpsed him as he went out, and perceived what her husband had done. But though shamed, she did not cry out or let it be seen that she had perceived anything, for she meant to punish Candaules;

3since among the Lydians and most of the foreign peoples it is felt as a great shame that even a man be seen naked.

Chapter 11

1For the present she made no sign and kept quiet. But as soon as it was day, she prepared those of her household whom she saw were most faithful to her, and called Gyges. He, supposing that she knew nothing of what had been done, answered the summons; for he was used to attending the queen whenever she summoned him.

2When Gyges came, the lady addressed him thus: “Now, Gyges, you have two ways before you; decide which you will follow. You must either kill Candaules and take me and the throne of Lydia for your own, or be killed yourself now without more ado; that will prevent you from obeying all Candaules' commands in the future and seeing what you should not see.

3One of you must die: either he, the contriver of this plot, or you, who have outraged all custom by looking on me uncovered.” Gyges stood awhile astonished at this; presently, he begged her not to compel him to such a choice.

4But when he could not deter her, and saw that dire necessity was truly upon him either to kill his master or himself be killed by others, he chose his own life. Then he asked: “Since you force me against my will to kill my master, I would like to know how we are to lay our hands on him.”

5She replied, “You shall come at him from the same place where he made you view me naked: attack him in his sleep.”

Chapter 12

1When they had prepared this plot, and night had fallen, Gyges followed the woman into the chamber (for Gyges was not released, nor was there any means of deliverance, but either he or Candaules must die). She gave him a dagger and hid him behind the same door;

2and presently he stole out and killed Candaules as he slept. Thus he 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.

Chapter 13

1So he took possession of the sovereign power and was confirmed in it by the Delphic oracle. For when the Lydians took exception to what was done to Candaules, and took up arms, the faction of Gyges came to an agreement with the rest of the people that if the oracle should ordain him king of the Lydians, then he would reign; but if not, then he would return the kingship to the Heraclidae.

2The oracle did so ordain, and Gyges thus became king. However, the Pythian priestess declared that the Heraclidae would have vengeance on Gyges' posterity in the fifth generation; an utterance to which the Lydians and their kings paid no regard until it was fulfilled.

Chapter 14

1Thus the Mermnadae robbed the Heraclidae of the sovereignty and took it for themselves. Having gotten it, Gyges sent many offerings to Delphi: there are very many silver offerings of his there; and besides the silver, he dedicated a hoard of gold, among which six golden bowls are the offerings especially worthy of mention.

2These weigh thirty talents and stand in the treasury of the Corinthians; although in truth it is not the treasury of the Corinthian people but of Cypselus son of Eetion. This Gyges then was the first foreigner whom we know who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias.

3For Midas too made an offering: namely, the royal seat on which 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.

Chapter 15

1As 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 as he did nothing else great in his reign of thirty-eight years, I shall say no more of him, and shall speak instead of Ardys 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 acropolis.

Chapter 16

1Ardys reigned for forty-nine years and was succeeded by his son Sadyattes, who reigned for twelve years; and after Sadyattes came Alyattes,

2who 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 he did not return from these as he wished, but with great disaster. Of other deeds done by him in his reign, these were the most notable:

Chapter 17

1He continued the war against the Milesians which his father had begun. This was how he attacked and besieged Miletus: he sent his army, marching to the sound of pipes and harps and bass and treble flutes, to invade when the crops in the land were ripe;

2and whenever he came to the Milesian territory, he neither demolished nor burnt nor tore the doors off the country dwellings, but let them stand unharmed; but he destroyed the trees and the crops of the land, and so returned to where he came from;

3for as the Milesians had command of the sea, it was of no use for his army to besiege their city. The reason that the Lydian did not destroy the houses was this: that the Milesians might have homes from which to plant and cultivate their land, and that there might be the fruit of their toil for his invading army to lay waste.

Chapter 18

1He waged war in this way for eleven years, and in these years two great disasters overtook the Milesians, one at the battle of Limeneion in their own territory, and the other in the valley of the Maeander.

2For six of these eleven years Sadyattes son of Ardys was still ruler of Lydia, and it was he 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 indicated before, inherited the war from his father and carried it on vigorously.

3None of the Ionians helped to lighten this war for the Milesians, except the Chians: these lent their aid in return for a similar service done for them; for the Milesians had previously helped the Chians in their war against the Erythraeans.

Chapter 19

1In the twelfth year, when the Lydian army was burning the crops, the fire set in the crops, blown by a strong wind, caught the temple of Athena called Athena of Assesos, and the temple burned to the ground.

2For the present no notice was taken of this. But after the army had returned to Sardis, Alyattes fell ill; and, as his sickness lasted longer than it should, he sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle, either at someone's urging or by his own wish to question the god about his sickness.

3But when the messengers came to Delphi, the Pythian priestess would not answer them before they restored the temple of Athena at Assesos in the Milesian territory, which they had burnt.

Chapter 20

1I know this much to be so because the Delphians told me. The Milesians add that Periander son of Cypselus, a close friend of the Thrasybulus who then was sovereign of Miletus, learned what reply the oracle had given to Alyattes, and sent a messenger to tell Thrasybulus so that his friend, forewarned, could make his plans accordingly.

Chapter 21

1The Milesians say it happened so. Then, when the Delphic reply was brought to Alyattes, he promptly sent a herald to Miletus, offering to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians during his rebuilding of the temple. So the envoy went to Miletus. But Thrasybulus, forewarned of the whole matter, and knowing what Alyattes meant to do, devised the following plan:

2he brought together into the marketplace all the food in the city, from private stores and his own, and told the men of Miletus all to drink and celebrate together when he gave the word.

Chapter 22

1Thrasybulus did this so that when the herald from Sardis saw a great heap of food piled up, and the citizens celebrating, he would bring word of it to Alyattes:

2and so it happened. The herald saw all this, gave Thrasybulus the message he had been instructed by the Lydian to deliver, and returned to Sardis; and this, as I learn, was the sole reason for the reconciliation.

3For 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;

4so presently the Lydians and Milesians ended the war and agreed to be friends and allies, and Alyattes built not one but two temples of Athena at Assesos, and recovered from his illness. That is the story of Alyattes' war against Thrasybulus and the Milesians.

Chapter 23

1Periander, who disclosed the oracle's answer to Thrasybulus, was the son of Cypselus, and sovereign of Corinth. The Corinthians say (and the Lesbians agree) that the most marvellous thing that happened to him in his life was the landing on Taenarus of Arion of Methymna, brought there by a dolphin. This Arion was a lyre-player second to none in that age; he was the first man whom we know to compose and name the dithyramb which he afterwards taught at Corinth.

Chapter 24

1They say that this Arion, who spent most of his time with Periander, wished to sail to Italy and Sicily, and that after he had made a lot of money there he wanted to come back to Corinth.

2Trusting none more than the Corinthians, he hired a Corinthian vessel to carry him from Tarentum. But when they were out at sea, the crew plotted to take Arion's money and cast him overboard. Discovering this, he earnestly entreated them, asking for his life and offering them his money.

3But the crew would not listen to him, and told him either to kill himself and so receive burial on land or else to jump into the sea at once.

4Abandoned to this extremity, Arion asked that, since they had made up their minds, they would let him stand on the half-deck in all his regalia and sing; and he promised that after he had sung he would do himself in.

5The men, pleased at the thought of hearing the best singer in the world, drew away toward the waist of the vessel from the stern. Arion, putting on all his regalia and taking his lyre, stood up on the half-deck and sang the “Stirring Song,” and when the song was finished he threw himself into the sea, as he was with all his regalia.

6So the crew sailed away to Corinth; but a dolphin (so the story goes) took Arion on his back and bore him to Taenarus. Landing there, he went to Corinth in his regalia, and when he arrived, he related all that had happened.

7Periander, skeptical, kept him in confinement, letting him go nowhere, and waited for the sailors. When they arrived, they were summoned and asked what news they brought of Arion. While they were saying that he was safe in Italy and that they had left him flourishing at Tarentum, Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the ship; astonished, they could no longer deny what was proved against them.

8This is what the Corinthians and Lesbians say, and there is a little bronze memorial of Arion on Taenarus, the figure of a man riding upon a dolphin.

Chapter 25

1Alyattes the Lydian, his war with the Milesians finished, died after a reign of fifty-seven years.

2He was the second of his family to make an offering to Delphi (after recovering from his illness) of a great silver bowl on a stand of welded iron. Among all the offerings at Delphi, this is the most worth seeing, and is the work of Glaucus the Chian, the only one of all men who discovered how to weld iron.

Chapter 26

1After the death of Alyattes, his son Croesus, then thirty-five years of age, came to the throne. The first Greeks whom he attacked were the Ephesians.

2These, besieged by him, dedicated their city to Artemis; they did this by attaching a rope to the city wall from the temple of the goddess, which stood seven stades away from the ancient city which was then besieged.

3These were the first whom Croesus attacked; afterwards he made war on the Ionian and Aeolian cities in turn, upon different pretexts: he found graver charges where he could, but sometimes alleged very petty grounds of offense.

Chapter 27

1Then, when he had subjugated all the Asiatic Greeks of the mainland and made them tributary to him, he planned to build ships and attack the islanders;

2but when his preparations for shipbuilding were underway, either Bias of Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene (the story is told of both) came to Sardis and, asked by Croesus for news about Hellas, put an end to the shipbuilding by giving the following answer:

3“O King, the islanders are buying ten thousand horse, intending to march to Sardis against you.” Croesus, thinking that he spoke the truth, said: “Would that the gods would put this in the heads of the islanders, to come on horseback against the sons of the Lydians!” Then the other answered and said:

4“O King, you appear to me earnestly to wish to catch the islanders riding horses on the mainland, a natural wish. And what else do you suppose the islanders wished, as soon as they heard that you were building ships to attack them, than to catch Lydians on the seas, so as to be revenged on you for the Greeks who dwell on the mainland, whom you enslaved?”

5Croesus was quite pleased with this conclusion, for he thought the man spoke reasonably and, heeding him, stopped building ships. Thus he made friends with the Ionians inhabiting the islands.

Chapter 28

1As time went on, Croesus subjugated almost all the nations west of the Halys; for except the Cilicians and Lycians, all the rest Croesus held subject under him. These were the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, the Thracian Thynians and Bithynians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Pamphylians;

Chapter 29

1and after these were subdued and subject to Croesus in addition to the Lydians, all the sages from Hellas who were living at that time, coming in different ways, came to Sardis, which was at the height of its property; and among them came Solon the Athenian, who, after making laws for the Athenians at their request, went abroad for ten years, sailing forth to see the world, he said. This he did so as not to be compelled to repeal any of the laws he had made,

2since the Athenians themselves could not do that, for they were bound by solemn oaths to abide for ten years by whatever laws Solon should make.

Chapter 30

1So for that reason, and to see the world, Solon went to visit Amasis in Egypt and then to Croesus in Sardis. When he got there, Croesus entertained him in the palace, and on the third or fourth day Croesus told his attendants to show Solon around his treasures, and they pointed out all those things that were great and blest.

2After Solon had seen everything and had thought about it, Croesus found the opportunity to say, “My Athenian guest, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings, how as one who loves learning you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it, so now I desire to ask you who is the most fortunate man you have seen.”

3Croesus asked this question believing that he was the most fortunate of men, but Solon, offering no flattery but keeping to the truth, said, “O King, it is Tellus the Athenian.”

4Croesus was amazed at what he had said and replied sharply, “In what way do you judge Tellus to be the most fortunate?” Solon said, “Tellus was from a prosperous city, and his children were good and noble. He saw children born to them all, and all of these survived. His life was prosperous by our standards, and his death was most glorious:

5when the Athenians were fighting their neighbors in Eleusis, he came to help, routed the enemy, and died very finely. The Athenians buried him at public expense on the spot where he fell and gave him much honor.”

Chapter 31

1When Solon had provoked him by saying that the affairs of Tellus were so fortunate, Croesus asked who he thought was next, fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Cleobis and Biton.

2They were of Argive stock, had enough to live on, and on top of this had great bodily strength. Both had won prizes in the athletic contests, and this story is told about them: there was a festival of Hera in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the temple by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time, so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling five miles until they arrived at the temple.

3When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to an excellent end, and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is a better thing to die than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having borne such children.

4She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for man to her children Cleobis and Biton, who had given great honor to the goddess.

5After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the temple and went to sleep and never rose again; death held them there. The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them as being the best of men.”

Chapter 32

1Thus Solon granted second place in happiness to these men. Croesus was vexed and said, “My Athenian guest, do you so much despise our happiness that you do not even make us worth as much as common men?” Solon replied, “Croesus, you ask me about human affairs, and I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome to us.

2In a long span of time it is possible to see many things that you do not want to, and to suffer them, too. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years;

3these seventy years have twenty-five thousand, two hundred days, leaving out the intercalary month. But if you make every other year longer by one month, so that the seasons agree opportunely, then there are thirty-five intercalary months during the seventy years, and from these months there are one thousand fifty days.

4Out of all these days in the seventy years, all twenty-six thousand, two hundred and fifty of them, not one brings anything at all like another. So, Croesus, man is entirely chance.

5To me you seem to be very rich and to be king of many people, but I cannot answer your question before I learn that you ended your life well. The very rich man is not more fortunate than the man who has only his daily needs, unless he chances to end his life with all well. Many very rich men are unfortunate, many of moderate means are lucky.

6The man who is very rich but unfortunate surpasses the lucky man in only two ways, while the lucky surpasses the rich but unfortunate in many. The rich man is more capable of fulfilling his appetites and of bearing a great disaster that falls upon him, and it is in these ways that he surpasses the other. The lucky man is not so able to support disaster or appetite as is the rich man, but his luck keeps these things away from him, and he is free from deformity and disease, has no experience of evils, and has fine children and good looks.

7If besides all this he ends his life well, then he is the one whom you seek, the one worthy to be called fortunate. But refrain from calling him fortunate before he dies; call him lucky.

8It is impossible for one who is only human to obtain all these things at the same time, just as no land is self-sufficient in what it produces. Each country has one thing but lacks another; whichever has the most is the best. Just so no human being is self-sufficient; each person has one thing but lacks another.

9Whoever passes through life with the most and then dies agreeably is the one who, in my opinion, O King, deserves to bear this name. It is necessary to see how the end of every affair turns out, for the god promises fortune to many people and then utterly ruins them.”

Chapter 33

1By saying this, Solon did not at all please Croesus, who sent him away without regard for him, but thinking him a great fool, because he ignored the present good and told him to look to the end of every affair.

Chapter 34

1But after Solon's departure divine retribution fell heavily on Croesus; as I guess, because he supposed himself to be blessed beyond all other men. Directly, as he slept, he had a dream, which showed him the truth of the evil things which were going to happen concerning his son.

2He had two sons, one of whom was ruined, for he was mute, but the other, whose name was Atys, was by far the best in every way of all of his peers. The dream showed this Atys to Croesus, how he would lose him struck and killed by a spear of iron.

3So Croesus, after he awoke and considered, being frightened by the dream, brought in a wife for his son, and although Atys was accustomed to command the Lydian armies, Croesus now would not send him out on any such enterprise, while he took the javelins and spears and all such things that men use for war from the men's apartments and piled them in his store room, lest one should fall on his son from where it hung.

Chapter 35

1Now while Croesus was occupied with the marriage of his son, a Phrygian of the royal house came to Sardis, in great distress and with unclean hands. This man came to Croesus' house, and asked to be purified according to the custom of the country; so Croesus purified him (

2the Lydians have the same manner of purification as the Greeks), and when he had done everything customary, he asked the Phrygian where he came from and who he was:

3“Friend,” he said, “who are you, and from what place in Phrygia do you come as my suppliant? And what man or woman have you killed?” “O King,” the man answered, “I am the son of Gordias the son of Midas, and my name is Adrastus; I killed my brother accidentally, and I come here banished by my father and deprived of all.”

4Croesus answered, “All of your family are my friends, and you have come to friends, where you shall lack nothing, staying in my house. As for your misfortune, bear it as lightly as possible and you will gain most.”

Chapter 36

1So Adrastus lived in Croesus' house. About this same time a great monster of a boar appeared on the Mysian Olympus, who would come off that mountain and ravage the fields of the Mysians. The Mysians had gone up against him often; but they never did him any harm but were hurt by him themselves.

2At last they sent messengers to Croesus, with this message: “O King, a great monster of a boar has appeared in the land, who is destroying our fields; for all our attempts, we cannot kill him; so now we ask you to send your son and chosen young men and dogs with us, so that we may drive him out of the country.”

3Such was their request, but Croesus remembered the prophecy of his dream and answered them thus: “Do not mention my son again: I will not send him with you. He is newly married, and that is his present concern. But I will send chosen Lydians, and all the huntsmen, and I will tell those who go to be as eager as possible to help you to drive the beast out of the country.”

Chapter 37

1This was his answer, and the Mysians were satisfied with it. But the son of Croesus now entered, having heard what the Mysians had asked for; and when Croesus refused to send his son with them, the young man said,

2“Father, it was once thought very fine and noble for us to go to war and the chase and win renown; but now you have barred me from both of these, although you have seen neither cowardice nor lack of spirit in me. With what face can I now show myself whenever I go to and from the market-place?

3What will the men of the city think of me, and what my newly wedded wife? With what kind of man will she think that she lives? So either let me go to the hunt, or show me by reasoning that what you are doing is best for me.”

Chapter 38

1“My son,” answered Croesus, “I do this not because I have seen cowardice or anything unseemly in you, but the vision of a dream stood over me in my sleep, and told me that you would be short-lived, for you would be killed by a spear of iron.

2It is because of that vision that I hurried your marriage and do not send you on any enterprise that I have in hand, but keep guard over you, so that perhaps I may rob death of you during my lifetime. You are my only son: for that other, since he is ruined, he doesn't exist for me.”

Chapter 39

1“Father,” the youth replied, “no one can blame you for keeping guard over me, when you have seen such a vision; but it is my right to show you what you do not perceive, and why you mistake the meaning of the dream.

2You 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 killed by a tusk or some other thing proper to a boar, you would be right in acting as you act; but no, it was to be by a spear. Therefore, since it is not against men that we are to fight, let me go.”

Chapter 40

1Croesus answered, “My son, your judgment concerning the dream has somewhat reassured me; and being reassured by you, I change my thinking and permit you to go to the chase.”

Chapter 41

1Having said this, Croesus sent for Adrastus the Phrygian and when he came addressed him thus: “Adrastus, when you were struck by ugly misfortune, for which I do not blame you, it was I who cleansed you, and received and still keep you in my house, defraying all your keep.

2Now then, as you owe me a return of good service for the good which I have done you, I ask that you watch over my son as he goes out to the chase. See that no thieving criminals meet you on the way, to do you harm.

3Besides, it is only 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 besides.”

Chapter 42

1“O King,” Adrastus answered, “I would not otherwise have gone into such an arena. One so unfortunate as I should not associate with the prosperous among his peers; nor have I the wish so to do, and for many reasons I would have held back.

2But now, since you urge it and I must please you (since I owe you a return of good service), I am ready to do this; and as for your son, in so far as I can protect him, look for him to come back unharmed.”

Chapter 43

1So when Adrastus had answered Croesus thus, they went out provided with chosen young men and dogs. When they came to Mount Olympus, they hunted for the beast and, finding him, formed a circle and threw their spears at him:

2then 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.

3So Atys was struck by the spear and fulfilled the prophecy of the dream. One ran to tell Croesus what had happened, and coming to Sardis told the king of the fight and the fate of his son.

Chapter 44

1Distraught by the death of his son, Croesus cried out the more vehemently because the killer was one whom he himself had cleansed of blood,

2and 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 wanted the god to know what evil his guest had done him; the second, because he had received the guest into his house and thus unwittingly entertained the murderer of his son; and the third, because he had found his worst enemy in the man whom he had sent as a protector.

Chapter 45

1Soon the Lydians came, bearing the corpse, with the murderer following after. He then came and stood before the body and gave himself up to Croesus, holding out his hands and telling him to kill him over the corpse, mentioning his former misfortune, and that on top of that he had destroyed the one who purified him, and that he was not fit to live.

2On hearing this, Croesus took pity on Adrastus, though his own sorrow was so great, and said to him, “Friend, I have from you the entire penalty, since you sentence yourself to death. But it is not you that I hold the cause of this evil, except in so far as you were the unwilling doer of it, but one of the gods, the same one who told me long ago what was to be.”

3So Croesus buried his own son in such manner as was fitting. But Adrastus, son of Gordias who was son of Midas, this Adrastus, the destroyer of his own brother and of the man who purified him, when the tomb was undisturbed by the presence of men, killed himself there by the sepulcher, seeing clearly now that he was the most heavily afflicted of all whom he knew.

Chapter 46

1After the loss of his son, Croesus remained 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, distracted Croesus from his mourning; and he determined, if he could, to forestall the increase of the Persian power before they became great.

2Having thus determined, he at once made inquiries of the Greek and Libyan oracles, sending messengers separately to Delphi, to Abae in Phocia, and to Dodona, while others were despatched to Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and others to Branchidae in the Milesian country.

3These are the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent for divination: and he told others to go inquire of Ammon in Libya. His intent in sending was to test the knowledge of the oracles, so that, if they were found to know the truth, he might send again and ask if he should undertake an expedition against the Persians.

Chapter 47

1And when he sent to test these shrines he gave the Lydians these instructions: they were to keep track of the time from the day they left Sardis, and on the hundredth day inquire of the oracles what Croesus, king of Lydia, son of Alyattes, was doing then; then they were to write down whatever the oracles answered and bring the reports back to him.

2Now 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 entrusted, than the Pythian priestess uttered the following hexameter verses:

3“I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea, And understand the mute and hear the voiceless. The smell has come to my senses of a strong-shelled tortoise Boiling in a cauldron together with a lamb's flesh, Under which is bronze and over which is bronze.”

Chapter 48

1Having written down this inspired utterance of the Pythian priestess, the Lydians went back to Sardis. When the others as well who had been sent to various places came bringing their oracles, Croesus then unfolded and examined all the writings. Some of them in no way satisfied him. But when he read the Delphian message, he acknowledged it with worship and welcome, considering Delphi as the only true place of divination, because it had discovered what he himself had done.

2For after sending his envoys to the oracles, he had thought up something which no conjecture could discover, and carried it out on the appointed day: namely, he had cut up a tortoise and a lamb, and then boiled them in a cauldron of bronze covered with a lid of the same.

Chapter 49

1Such, 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, except that Croesus believed that from this oracle too he had obtained a true answer.

Chapter 50

1After this, he tried to win the favor of the Delphian god with great sacrifices. He offered up three thousand beasts from all the kinds fit for sacrifice, and on a great pyre burnt 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 sacrifice what he could.

2When the sacrifice was over, he melted down a vast store of gold and made ingots of it, the longer sides of which were of six and the shorter of three palms' length, and the height was one palm. There were a hundred and seventeen of these. 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.

3He also had a figure of a lion made of refined gold, weighing ten talents. When the temple of Delphi was burnt, this lion fell from the ingots which were the base on which it stood; and now it is in the treasury of the Corinthians, but weighs only six talents and a half, for the fire melted away three and a half talents.

Chapter 51

1When these offerings were ready, Croesus sent them to Delphi, with other gifts besides: namely, two very large bowls, one of gold and one of silver. The golden bowl stood to the right, the silver to the left of the temple entrance.

2These too were removed about the time of the temple's burning, and now the golden bowl, which weighs eight and a half talents and twelve minae, is 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.

3It is said by the Delphians to be the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I agree with 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,

4for this, too, is Croesus' gift. The inscription was made by a certain Delphian, whose name I know but do not mention, 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.

5Along with these Croesus sent, besides many other offerings of no great distinction, certain round basins of silver, and a female figure five feet high, which the Delphians assert to be the statue of the woman who was Croesus' baker. Moreover, he dedicated his own wife's necklaces and girdles.

Chapter 52

1Such were the gifts which he sent to Delphi. To Amphiaraus, of whose courage and fate he had heard, he dedicated a shield made entirely of gold and a spear all of solid gold, point and shaft alike. Both of these were until my time at Thebes, in the Theban temple of Ismenian Apollo.

Chapter 53

1The Lydians who were to bring these gifts to the temples were instructed by Croesus to inquire of the oracles whether he was to send an army against the Persians and whether he was to add an army of allies.

2When the Lydians came to the places where they were sent, they presented the offerings, and inquired of the oracles, in these words: “Croesus, king of Lydia and other nations, believing that here are the only true places of divination among men, endows you with such gifts as your wisdom deserves. And now he asks you whether he is to send an army against the Persians, and whether he is to add an army of allies.”

3Such was their inquiry; and the judgment given to Croesus by each of the two oracles was the same: namely, that if he should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire. And they advised him to discover the mightiest of the Greeks and make them his friends.

Chapter 54

1When the divine answers had been brought back and Croesus learned of them, he was very pleased with the oracles. So, altogether expecting that he would destroy the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent once again to Pytho and endowed the Delphians, whose number he had learned, with two gold staters apiece.

2The Delphians, in return, gave Croesus and all Lydians the right of first consulting the oracle, exemption from all charges, the chief seats at festivals, and perpetual right of Delphian citizenship to whoever should wish it.

Chapter 55

1After his gifts to the Delphians, Croesus made a third inquiry of the oracle, for he wanted to use it to the full, having received true answers from it; and the question which he asked was whether his sovereignty would be of long duration. To this the Pythian priestess answered as follows:

2“When the Medes have a mule as king, Just then, tender-footed Lydian, by the stone-strewn Hermus Flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.”

Chapter 56

1When he heard these verses, Croesus was pleased with them above all, for he thought that a mule would never be king of the Medes instead of a man, and therefore that he and his posterity would never lose his empire. Then he sought very carefully to discover who the mightiest of the Greeks were, whom he should make his friends.

2He 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 a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far.

3For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.

Chapter 57

1What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say definitely. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who live above the Tyrrheni in the city of Creston —who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessalian—

2and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who came to live among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name: if, as I said, one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek.

3If, then, all the Pelasgian stock spoke so, 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 neighbors; and it is plain that they still preserve the manner of speech which they brought with them in their migration into the places where they live.

Chapter 58

1But the Hellenic stock, it seems clear to me, has always had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, 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, I think, the Pelasgic stock nowhere increased much in number while it was of foreign speech.

Chapter 59

1Now 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 still a private man when a great marvel happened to him when 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 until they boiled over.

2Chilon the Lacedaemonian, who happened to be there and who saw this marvel, advised Hippocrates not to take to his house a wife who could bear children, but if he had one already, then to send her away, and if he had a son, to disown him.

3Hippocrates refused to follow the advice of Chilon; and afterward there was born to him this Pisistratus, who, when 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 Aristolaides, raised up a third faction, as he coveted the sovereign power. He collected partisans and pretended to champion the uplanders, and the following was his plan.

4Wounding himself and his mules, he drove his wagon into the marketplace, with a story that he had escaped from his enemies, who would have killed him (so he said) as he was driving into the country. So he implored the people to give him a guard: and indeed he had won a reputation in his command of the army against the Megarians, when he had taken Nisaea and performed other great exploits.

5Taken in, the Athenian people gave him a guard of chosen citizens, whom Pisistratus made clubmen instead of spearmen: for the retinue that followed him carried wooden clubs.

6These rose with Pisistratus 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 arranging all things fairly and well.

Chapter 60

1But after a short time the partisans of Megacles and of Lycurgus made common cause and drove him out. In this way Pisistratus first got Athens and, as he had a sovereignty that was not yet firmly rooted, lost it. Presently his enemies who together had driven him out began to feud once more.

2Then Megacles, harassed by factional strife, sent a message to Pisistratus offering him his daughter to marry and the sovereign power besides.

3When this offer was accepted by Pisistratus, who agreed on these terms with Megacles, they devised a plan to bring Pisistratus back which, to my mind, was so exceptionally foolish that it is strange (since from old times the Hellenic stock has always been distinguished from foreign 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 subtlest of the Greeks.

4There was in the Paeanian deme a woman called Phya, three fingers short of six feet, four inches in height, and otherwise, too, well-formed. This woman they equipped in full armor and put in a chariot, giving her all the paraphernalia to make the most impressive spectacle, and so drove into the city; heralds ran before them, and when they came into town proclaimed as they were instructed:

5“Athenians, give a hearty welcome to Pisistratus, whom Athena herself honors above all men and is bringing back to her own acropolis.” So the heralds went about proclaiming this; and immediately the report spread in the demes that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back, and the townsfolk, believing that the woman was the goddess herself, worshipped this human creature and welcomed Pisistratus.

Chapter 61

1Having got back his sovereignty in the manner which I have described, Pisistratus married Megacles' daughter according to his agreement with Megacles. But as he already had young sons, and as the Alcmeonid family were said to be under a curse, he had no wish that his newly-wedded wife bear him children, and therefore had unusual intercourse with her.

2At first the woman hid the fact: presently she told her mother (whether interrogated or not, I do not know) and the mother told her husband. Megacles was very angry to be dishonored by Pisistratus; and in his anger he patched up his quarrel with the other faction. Pisistratus, learning what was going on, went alone away from the country altogether, and came to Eretria where he deliberated with his sons.

3The opinion of Hippias prevailing, that they should recover the sovereignty, they set out collecting contributions from all the cities that owed them anything. Many of these gave great amounts, the Thebans more than any,

4and in course of time, not to make a long story, everything was ready for their return: for they brought Argive mercenaries from the Peloponnese, and there joined them on his own initiative a man of Naxos called Lygdamis, who was most keen in their cause and brought them money and men.

Chapter 62

1So 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—demesmen who loved the rule of one more than freedom. These, then, assembled;

2but the Athenians in the city, who while Pisistratus was collecting money and afterwards when he had taken Marathon took no notice of it, did now, and when they learned that he was marching from Marathon against Athens, they set out to attack him.

3They came out with all their force to meet the returning exiles. Pisistratus' men encountered the enemy when they had reached the temple of Pallenian Athena in their march from Marathon towards the city, and encamped face to face with them.

4There (by the providence of heaven) Pisistratus met Amphilytus the Acarnanian, a diviner, who came to him and prophesied as follows in hexameter verses: “The cast is made, the net spread, The tunny-fish shall flash in the moonlit night.”

Chapter 63

1So Amphilytus spoke, being inspired; Pisistratus understood him and, saying that he accepted the prophecy, led his army against the enemy. The Athenians of the city had by this time had breakfast, and after breakfast some were dicing and some were sleeping: they were attacked by Pisistratus' men and put to flight.

2So they fled, and Pisistratus devised a very subtle plan to keep them scattered and prevent them assembling again: he had his sons mount and ride forward: they overtook the fugitives and spoke to them as they were instructed by Pisistratus, telling them to take heart and each to depart to his home.

Chapter 64

1The Athenians did, and by this means Pisistratus gained Athens for the third time, rooting his sovereignty in a strong guard and revenue collected both from Athens and from the district of the river Strymon, and he took hostage the sons of the Athenians who remained and did not leave the city at once, and placed these in Naxos.

2(He had conquered Naxos too and put Lygdamis in charge.) And besides this, he purified the island of Delos as a result of oracles, and this is how he did it: he removed all the dead that were buried in ground within sight of the temple and conveyed them to another part of Delos.

3So 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.

Chapter 65

1So Croesus learned that at that time such problems were oppressing the Athenians, but that the Lacedaemonians had escaped from the great evils and had mastered the Tegeans in war. In the kingship of Leon and Hegesicles at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians were successful in all their other wars but met disaster only against the Tegeans.

2Before this they had been the worst-governed of nearly all the Hellenes and had had no dealings with strangers, but they changed to good government in this way: Lycurgus, a man of reputation among the Spartans, went to the oracle at Delphi. As soon as he entered the hall, the priestess said in hexameter:

3You have come to my rich temple, Lycurgus, A man dear to Zeus and to all who have Olympian homes. I am in doubt whether to pronounce you man or god, But I think rather you are a god, Lycurgus.

4Some say that the Pythia also declared to him the constitution that now exists at Sparta, but the Lacedaemonians themselves say that Lycurgus brought it from Crete when he was guardian of his nephew Leobetes, the Spartan king.

5Once he became guardian, he changed all the laws and took care that no one transgressed the new ones. Lycurgus afterwards established their affairs of war: the sworn divisions, the bands of thirty, the common meals; also the ephors and the council of elders.

Chapter 66

1Thus they changed their bad laws to good ones, and when Lycurgus died they built him a temple and now worship him greatly. Since they had good land and many men, they immediately flourished and prospered. They were not content to live in peace, but, confident that they were stronger than the Arcadians, asked the oracle at Delphi about gaining all the Arcadian land.

2She replied in hexameter: You ask me for Arcadia? You ask too much; I grant it not. There are many men in Arcadia, eaters of acorns, Who will hinder you. But I grudge you not. I will give you Tegea to beat with your feet in dancing, And its fair plain to measure with a rope.

3When the Lacedaemonians heard the oracle reported, they left the other Arcadians alone and marched on Tegea carrying chains, relying on the deceptive oracle. They were confident they would enslave the Tegeans, but they were defeated in battle.

4Those taken alive were bound in the very chains they had brought with them, and they measured the Tegean plain with a rope by working the fields. The chains in which they were bound were still preserved in my day, hanging up at the temple of Athena Alea.

Chapter 67

1In the previous war the Lacedaemonians continually fought unsuccessfully against the Tegeans, but in the time of Croesus and the kingship of Anaxandrides and Ariston in Lacedaemon the Spartans had gained the upper hand. This is how:

2when they kept being defeated by the Tegeans, they sent ambassadors to Delphi to ask which god they should propitiate to prevail against the Tegeans in war. The Pythia responded that they should bring back the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon.

3When they were unable to discover Orestes' tomb, they sent once more to the god to ask where he was buried. The Pythia responded in hexameter to the messengers:

4There is a place Tegea in the smooth plain of Arcadia, Where two winds blow under strong compulsion. Blow lies upon blow, woe upon woe. There the life-giving earth covers the son of Agamemnon. Bring him back, and you shall be lord of Tegea.

5When the Lacedaemonians heard this, they were no closer to discovery, though they looked everywhere. Finally it was found by Lichas, who was one of the Spartans who are called “doers of good deeds.”. These men are those citizens who retire from the knights, the five oldest each year. They have to spend the year in which they retire from the knights being sent here and there by the Spartan state, never resting in their efforts.

Chapter 68

1It was Lichas, one of these men, who found the tomb in Tegea by a combination of luck and skill. At that time there was free access to Tegea, so he went into a blacksmith's shop and watched iron being forged, standing there in amazement at what he saw done.

2The smith perceived that he was amazed, so he stopped what he was doing and said, “My Laconian guest, if you had seen what I saw, then you would really be amazed, since you marvel so at ironworking.

3I wanted to dig a well in the courtyard here, and in my digging I hit upon a coffin twelve feet long. I could not believe that there had ever been men taller than now, so I opened it and saw that the corpse was just as long as the coffin. I measured it and then reburied it.” So the smith told what he had seen, and Lichas thought about what was said and reckoned that this was Orestes, according to the oracle.

4In the smith's two bellows he found the winds, hammer and anvil were blow upon blow, and the forging of iron was woe upon woe, since he figured that iron was discovered as an evil for the human race.

5After reasoning this out, he went back to Sparta and told the Lacedaemonians everything. They made a pretence of bringing a charge against him and banishing him. Coming to Tegea, he explained his misfortune to the smith and tried to rent the courtyard, but the smith did not want to lease it.

6Finally he persuaded him and set up residence there. He dug up the grave and collected the bones, then hurried off to Sparta with them. Ever since then the Spartans were far superior to the Tegeans whenever they met each other in battle. By the time of Croesus' inquiry, the Spartans had subdued most of the Peloponnese.

Chapter 69

1Croesus, then, aware of all this, sent messengers to Sparta with gifts to ask for an alliance, having instructed them what to say. They came and said:

2“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, since I learn that you are the leaders of Hellas, I invite you, as the oracle bids; I would like to be your friend and ally, without deceit or guile.’”

3Croesus proposed this through 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 obliged by certain benefits which they had received before from the king.

4For the Lacedaemonians had sent to Sardis to buy gold, intending to use it for the statue of Apollo which now stands on Thornax in Laconia; and Croesus, when they offered to buy it, made them a free gift of it.

Chapter 70

1For this reason, and because he had chosen them as his friends before all the 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, engraved around the rim outside with figures, and large enough to hold twenty-seven hundred gallons, and brought it with the intention of making a gift in return to Croesus.

2This bowl never reached Sardis, for which 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;

3but the Samians themselves say that the Lacedaemonians who were bringing the bowl, coming 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 Hera. 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.

Chapter 71

1Croesus, mistaking the meaning of the oracle, invaded Cappadocia, expecting to destroy Cyrus and the Persian power.

2But while he was preparing to march against the Persians, a certain Lydian, who was already held to be a wise man, and who, from the advice which he now gave, won a great name among the Lydians, advised him as follows (his name was Sandanis): “O King, you are getting ready to march against men who wear trousers of leather and whose complete wardrobe is of leather, and who eat not what they like but what they have; for their land is stony.

3Further, they do not use wine, but drink water, have no figs to eat, or anything else that is good. Now if you conquer them, of what will you deprive them, since they have nothing? But if on the other hand you are conquered, then look how many good things you will lose; for once they have tasted of our blessings they will cling so tightly to them that nothing will pry them away.

4For myself, then, I thank the gods that they do not put it in the heads of the Persians to march against the Lydians.” Sandanis spoke thus but he did not persuade Croesus. Indeed, before they conquered the Lydians, the Persians had no luxury and no comforts.

Chapter 72

1Now 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.

2For 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 still flowing north, it separates the Cappadocian Syrians on the right from the Paphlagonians on the left.

3Thus the Halys river cuts off nearly 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 for a man traveling unencumbered is five days.

Chapter 73

1The reasons for Croesus' expedition against Cappadocia were these: he desired to gain territory in addition to his own, and (these were the chief causes) he trusted the oracle and wished to avenge Astyages on Cyrus; for Cyrus, son of Cambyses, had conquered Astyages and held him in subjection.

2Now Astyages, son of Cyaxares and the king of Media, was Croesus' brother-in-law: and this is how he came to be so.

3A 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 suppliants for his mercy; and, as he had a high regard for them, he entrusted boys to their tutelage to be taught their language and the skill of archery.

4As time went on, it happened that the Scythians, who were accustomed to go hunting and always to bring something back, once had taken nothing, and when they returned empty-handed, Cyaxares treated them very roughly and contemptuously (being, as appears from this, prone to anger).

5The Scythians, feeling themselves wronged by the treatment they had from Cyaxares, planned to take one of the boys who were their pupils and cut him in pieces; then, dressing the flesh as they were accustomed to dress the animals which they killed, to bring and give it to Cyaxares as if it were the spoils of the hunt; and after that, to make their way with all speed to Alyattes son of Sadyattes at Sardis. All this they did.

6Cyaxares and the guests who ate with him dined on the boy's flesh, and the Scythians, having done as they planned, fled to Alyattes for protection.

Chapter 74

1After this, since 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.

2They were still warring with equal success, when it happened, at an encounter which occurred 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.

3So when the Lydians and Medes saw the day turned to night, they stopped fighting, and both were the more eager to make peace. Those who reconciled them were Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian;

4they brought it about that there should be a sworn agreement and a compact of marriage between them: they judged that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, son of Cyaxares; for without strong constraint agreements will not keep their force.

5These nations make sworn compacts as do the Greeks; and besides, when they cut the skin of their arms, they lick each other's blood.

Chapter 75

1Cyrus had subjugated this Astyages, then, Cyrus' own mother's father, for the reason which I shall presently disclose.

2Having this reason to quarrel with Cyrus, Croesus sent to ask the oracles if he should march against the Persians; and when a deceptive answer came he thought it to be favorable to him, and so led his army into the Persian territory.

3When he came to the river Halys, he transported his army across it—by the bridges which were there then, as I maintain; but the general belief of the Greeks is that Thales of Miletus got the army across.

4The story is that, as Croesus did not know how his army could pass the river (as the aforesaid bridges did not yet exist then), Thales, who was in the encampment, made the river, which flowed on the left of the army, also flow on the right, in the following way.

5Starting from a point on the river upstream from the camp, he dug a deep semi-circular trench, so that the stream, turned from its ancient course, would flow in the trench to the rear of the camp and, passing it, would issue into its former bed, with the result that as soon as the river was thus divided into two, both channels could be forded.

6Some even say that the ancient channel dried up altogether. But I do not believe this; for in that case, how did they pass the river when they were returning?

Chapter 76

1Passing over with his army, Croesus then came to the part of Cappadocia called Pteria (it is the strongest part of this country and lies on the line of the city of Sinope on the Euxine sea ), where he encamped and devastated the farms of the Syrians;

2and he took and enslaved the city of the Pterians, and took all the places around it also, and drove the Syrians from their homes, though they had done him no harm. Cyrus, mustering his army, advanced to oppose Croesus, gathering to him all those who lived along the way.

3But before beginning his march, he sent heralds to the Ionians to try to draw them away from Croesus. The Ionians would not be prevailed on; but when Cyrus arrived and encamped face to face with Croesus, there in the Pterian country the armies had a trial of strength.

4The fighting was fierce, many on both sides fell, and at nightfall they disengaged with neither side victorious. The two sides contended thus.

Chapter 77

1Croesus was not content with the size of his force, for his army that had engaged was far smaller than that of Cyrus; therefore, when on the day after the battle Cyrus did not try attacking again, he marched away to Sardis, intending to summon the Egyptians in accordance with their treaty

2(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 at this time being their sovereign),

3and to summon the Lacedaemonians to join him at a fixed time. He had in mind to muster all these forces and assemble his own army, then to wait until the winter was over and march against the Persians at the beginning of spring.

4With such an intention, 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 mercenaries he discharged, never thinking that after a contest so equal Cyrus would march against Sardis.

Chapter 78

1This was how Croesus reasoned. Meanwhile, snakes began to swarm in the outer part of the city; and when they appeared the horses, leaving their accustomed pasture, devoured them. When Croesus saw this he thought it a portent, and so it was.

2He at once sent to the homes of the Telmessian interpreters, to inquire concerning it; but though his messengers came and learned from the Telmessians what the portent meant, they could not bring back word to Croesus, for he was a prisoner before they could make their voyage back to Sardis.

3Nonetheless, 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 subjugate the inhabitants of the land: for the snake, they said, was the offspring of the land, but the horse was an enemy and a foreigner. This was the answer which the Telmessians gave Croesus, knowing as yet nothing of the fate of Sardis and of the king himself; but when they gave it, Croesus was already taken.

Chapter 79

1When Croesus marched away after the battle in the Pterian country, Cyrus, learning that Croesus had gone intending to disband his army, deliberated and perceived that it would be opportune for him to march quickly against Sardis, before the power of the Lydians could be assembled again.

2This he decided, and this he did immediately; he marched his army into Lydia and so came himself to bring the news of it to Croesus. All had turned out contrary to Croesus' expectation, and he was in a great quandary; nevertheless, he led out the Lydians to battle.

3Now 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 skillful at managing horses.

Chapter 80

1So the armies met in the plain, wide and bare, that is before the city of Sardis: the Hyllus and other rivers flow across it and run violently together into the greatest of them, which is called Hermus (this flows from the mountain sacred to the Mother Dindymene and empties into the sea near the city of Phocaea ).

2When Cyrus saw the Lydians maneuvering their battle-lines here, he was afraid of their cavalry, and therefore at the urging of one Harpagus, a Mede, he did as I shall describe. Assembling all the camels that followed his army bearing food and baggage, he took off their burdens and mounted men upon them equipped like cavalrymen; having equipped them, he ordered them to advance before his army against Croesus' cavalry; he directed the infantry to follow the camels, and placed all his cavalry behind the infantry.

3When they were all in order, he commanded them to kill all the other Lydians who came in their way, and spare none, but not to kill Croesus himself, even if he should defend himself against capture.

4Such was his command. The reason for 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 intention of his maneuver, that Croesus' cavalry, on which the Lydian relied to distinguish himself, might be of no use.

5So when battle was joined, as soon as the horses smelled and saw the camels they turned to flight, and all Croesus' hope was lost.

6Nevertheless 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.

Chapter 81

1So then they were besieged. But Croesus, supposing that the siege would last a long time, again sent messengers 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 plead for help as quickly as possible.

Chapter 82

1So he sent to the Lacedaemonians as well as to the rest of the allies. Now at this very time the Spartans themselves were feuding with the Argives over the country called Thyrea;

2for 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 only the mainland, but the island of Cythera and the other islands.)

3The 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 would possess the land. The rest of each army was to go away to its own country and not be present at the battle, since, if the armies remained on the field, the men of either party might render assistance to their comrades if they saw them losing.

4Having agreed, the armies drew off, and picked men of each side remained and fought. Neither could gain advantage in the battle; at last, only three out of the six hundred were left, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these three were left alive at nightfall.

5Then the two Argives, believing themselves victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades the Lacedaemonian, after stripping the Argive dead and taking the arms to his camp, waited at his position. On the second day both armies came to learn the issue.

6For a while both claimed the victory, the Argives arguing that more of their men had survived, the Lacedaemonians showing that the Argives had fled, while their man had stood his ground and stripped the enemy dead.

7At last from arguing they fell to fighting; many of both sides fell, but the Lacedaemonians gained the victory. The Argives, who before had worn their hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads ever after and made a law, with a curse added to it, that no Argive grow his hair, and no Argive woman wear gold, until they recovered Thyreae;

8and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that they wear their hair long ever after; for until now they had not worn it so. Othryades, the lone survivor of the three hundred, was ashamed, it is said, to return to Sparta after all the men of his company had been killed, and killed himself on the spot at Thyreae.

Chapter 83

1The Sardian herald came after this had happened to the Spartans to ask for their help for Croesus, now besieged; nonetheless, when they heard the herald, they prepared to send help; but when they were already equipped and their ships ready, a second message came that the fortification of the Lydians was taken and Croesus a prisoner. Then, though very sorry indeed, they ceased their efforts.

Chapter 84

1This is how Sardis was taken. When Croesus had been besieged for fourteen days, Cyrus sent horsemen around in his army to promise to reward whoever first mounted the wall.

2After this the army made an assault, but with no success. Then, when all the others were stopped, a certain Mardian called Hyroeades attempted to mount by a part of the acropolis where no guard had been set, since no one feared that it could be taken by an attack made here.

3For here the height on which the acropolis stood is sheer and unlikely to be assaulted; 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 around the walls, Sardis could never be taken. Meles then carried the lion around 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.

4The day before, then, Hyroeades, this Mardian, had seen one of the Lydians come down by this part of the acropolis after a helmet that had fallen down, and fetch it; he took note of this and considered it.

5And now he climbed up himself, and other Persians after him. Many ascended, and thus Sardis was taken and all the city sacked.

Chapter 85

1I will now relate what happened to Croesus himself. He had a son, whom I have already mentioned, fine in other respects, but mute. Now in his days of prosperity past Croesus had done all that he could for his son; and besides resorting to other devices he had sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle concerning him.

2The Pythian priestess answered him thus: “Lydian, king of many, greatly foolish Croesus, Wish not to hear in the palace the voice often prayed for Of your son speaking. It were better for you that he remain mute as before; For on an unlucky day shall he first speak.”

3So at the taking of the fortification a certain Persian, not knowing who Croesus was, came at him meaning to kill him. Croesus saw him coming, but because of the imminent disaster he was past caring, and it made no difference to him whether he were struck and killed.

4But this mute son, when he saw the Persian coming on, in fear and distress broke into speech and cried, “Man, do not kill Croesus!” This was the first word he uttered, and after that for all the rest of his life he had power of speech.

Chapter 86

1The Persians gained Sardis and took Croesus prisoner. Croesus had ruled fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days. Fulfilling the oracle, he had destroyed his own great empire. The Persians took him and brought him to Cyrus,

2who erected a pyre and mounted Croesus atop it, bound in chains, with twice seven sons of the Lydians beside him. Cyrus may have intended to sacrifice him as a victory-offering to some god, or he may have wished to fulfill a vow, or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was pious and put him atop the pyre to find out if some divinity would deliver him from being burned alive.

3So Cyrus did this. As Croesus stood on the pyre, even though he was in such a wretched position it occurred to him that Solon had spoken with god's help when he had said that no one among the living is fortunate. When this occurred to him, he heaved a deep sigh and groaned aloud after long silence, calling out three times the name “Solon.”

4Cyrus heard and ordered the interpreters to ask Croesus who he was invoking. They approached and asked, but Croesus kept quiet at their questioning, until finally they forced him and he said, “I would prefer to great wealth his coming into discourse with all despots.” Since what he said was unintelligible, they again asked what he had said,

5persistently harassing him. He explained that first Solon the Athenian had come and seen all his fortune and spoken as if he despised it. Now everything had turned out for him as Solon had said, speaking no more of him than of every human being, especially those who think themselves fortunate. While Croesus was relating all this, the pyre had been lit and the edges were on fire.

6When Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus said, he relented and considered that he, a human being, was burning alive another human being, one his equal in good fortune. In addition, he feared retribution, reflecting how there is nothing stable in human affairs. He ordered that the blazing fire be extinguished as quickly as possible, and that Croesus and those with him be taken down, but despite their efforts they could not master the fire.

Chapter 87

1Then the Lydians say that Croesus understood Cyrus' change of heart, and when he saw everyone trying to extinguish the fire but unable to check it, he invoked Apollo, crying out that if Apollo had ever been given any pleasing gift by him, let him offer help and deliver him from the present evil.

2Thus he in tears invoked the god, and suddenly out of a clear and windless sky clouds gathered, a storm broke, and it rained violently, extinguishing the pyre. Thus Cyrus perceived that Croesus was dear to god and a good man. He had him brought down from the pyre and asked,

3“Croesus, what man persuaded you to wage war against my land and become my enemy instead of my friend?” He replied, “O King, I acted thus for your good fortune, but for my own ill fortune. The god of the Hellenes is responsible for these things, inciting me to wage war.

4No one is so foolish as to choose war over peace. In peace sons bury their fathers, in war fathers bury their sons. But I suppose it was dear to the divinity that this be so.”

Chapter 88

1Croesus said this, and Cyrus freed him and made him sit near and was very considerate to him, and both he and all that were with him were astonished when they looked at Croesus. He for his part was silent, deep in thought.

2Presently he turned and said (for he saw the Persians sacking the city of the Lydians), “O King, am I to say to you what is in my mind now, or keep silent?” When Cyrus urged him to speak up boldly, Croesus asked,

3“The multitude there, what is it at which they are so busily engaged?” “They are plundering your city,” said Cyrus, “and carrying off your possessions.” “No,” Croesus answered, “not my city, and not my possessions; for I no longer have any share of all this; it is your wealth that they are pillaging.”

Chapter 89

1Cyrus thought about what Croesus had said and, telling the rest to withdraw, asked Croesus what fault he saw in what was being done. “Since the gods have made me your slave,” replied the Lydian, “it is right that if I have any further insight I should point it out to you.

2The Persians being by nature violent men are poor; so if you let them seize and hold great possessions, you may expect that he who has got most will revolt against you. Therefore do this, if you like what I say.

3Have men of your guard watch all the gates; let them take the spoil from those who are carrying it out, and say that it must be paid as a tithe to Zeus. Thus you shall not be hated by them for taking their wealth by force, and they, recognizing that you act justly, will give up the spoil willingly.”

Chapter 90

1When Cyrus heard this, he was exceedingly pleased, for he believed the advice good; and praising him greatly, and telling his guard to act as Croesus had advised, he said: “Croesus, now that you, a king, are determined to act and to speak with integrity, ask me directly for whatever favor you like.”

2“Master,” said Croesus, “you will most gratify me if you will let me send these chains of mine to that god of the Greeks whom I especially honored and to ask him if it is his way to deceive those who serve him well.” When Cyrus asked him what grudge against the god led him to make this request,

3Croesus repeated to him the story of all his own aspirations, and the answers of the oracles, and more particularly his offerings, and how the oracle had encouraged him to attack the Persians; and so saying he once more insistently pled that he be allowed to reproach the god for this. At this Cyrus smiled, and replied, “This I will grant you, Croesus, and whatever other favor you may ever ask me.”

4When Croesus heard this, he sent Lydians to Delphi, telling them to lay his chains on the doorstep of the temple, and to ask the god if he were not ashamed to have persuaded Croesus to attack the Persians, telling him that he would destroy Cyrus' power; of which power (they were to say, showing the chains) these were the first-fruits. They should ask this; and further, if it were the way of the Greek gods to be ungrateful.

Chapter 91

1When the Lydians came, and spoke as they had been instructed, the priestess (it is said) made the following reply. “No one may escape his lot, not even a god. Croesus has paid for the sin of his ancestor of the fifth generation before, who was led by the guile of a woman to kill his master, though he was one of the guard of the Heraclidae, and who took to himself the royal state of that master, to which he had no right.

2And it was the wish of Loxias that the evil lot of Sardis fall in the lifetime of Croesus' sons, not in his own; but he could not deflect the Fates.

3Yet as far as they gave in, he did accomplish his wish and favor Croesus: for he delayed the taking of Sardis for three years. And let Croesus know this: that although he is now taken, it is by so many years later than the destined hour. And further, Loxias saved Croesus from burning.

4But as to the oracle that was given to him, Croesus is wrong to complain concerning it. For Loxias declared to him that if he led an army against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. Therefore he ought, if he had wanted to plan well, to have sent and asked whether the god spoke of Croesus' or of Cyrus' empire. But he did not understood what was spoken, or make further inquiry: for which now let him blame himself.

5When he asked that last question of the oracle and Loxias gave him that answer concerning the mule, even that Croesus did not understand. For that mule was in fact Cyrus, who was the son of two parents not of the same people, of whom the mother was better and the father inferior:

6for she was a Mede and the daughter of Astyages king of the Medes; but he was a Persian and a subject of the Medes and although in all respects her inferior he married this lady of his.” This was the answer of the priestess to the Lydians. They carried it to Sardis and told Croesus, and when he heard it, he confessed that the sin was not the god's, but his. And this is the story of Croesus' rule, and of the first overthrow of Ionia.

Chapter 92

1There are many offerings of Croesus' in Hellas, and not only those of which 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 Proneia at Delphi, a golden shield. All these survived to my lifetime; but other of the offerings were destroyed.

2And the offerings of Croesus at Branchidae of the Milesians, as I learn by inquiry, are equal in weight and like those at Delphi. Those which he dedicated at Delphi and the shrine of Amphiaraus were his own, the first-fruits 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.

3This Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes, and half-brother of Croesus: Croesus was Alyattes' son by a Carian and Pantaleon by an Ionian mother.

4So 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.

Chapter 93

1There are not many marvellous things in Lydia to record, in comparison with other countries, except the gold dust that comes down from Tmolus.

2But there is one building to be seen there which is much the greatest of all, except those of Egypt and Babylon. In Lydia is the tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, the base of which is made of great stones and the rest of it of mounded earth. It was built by the men of the market and the craftsmen and the prostitutes.

3There survived until my time five corner-stones set on the top of the tomb, and in these was cut the record of the work done by each group: and measurement showed that the prostitutes' share of the work was the greatest.

4All the daughters of the common people of Lydia ply the trade of prostitutes, to collect dowries, until they can get themselves husbands; and they themselves offer themselves in marriage.

5Now this tomb has a circumference of thirteen hundred and ninety yards, and its breadth is above four hundred and forty yards; and there is a great lake hard by the tomb, which, the Lydians say, is fed by ever-flowing springs; it is called the Gygaean lake. Such then is this tomb.

Chapter 94

1The customs of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, except that they make prostitutes of their female children. They were the first men whom we know who coined and used gold and silver currency; and they were the first to sell by retail.

2And, according to what they themselves say, the games 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 colonized Tyrrhenia. This is their story:

3In 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 the famine did not abate, they looked for remedies, and different plans were devised by different men. Then it was that they invented the games of dice and knuckle-bones and ball and all other forms of game except dice, which the Lydians do not claim to have discovered.

4Then, using their discovery to lighten the famine, every other day they would play for the whole day, so that they would not have to look for food, and the next day they quit their play and ate. This was their way of life for eighteen years.

5But the famine did not cease to trouble them, and instead afflicted them even more. At last their king divided the people into two groups, and made them draw lots, so that the one group 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.

6Then the one group, having drawn the lot, left the country and came down to Smyrna and built ships, in which they loaded all their goods that could be transported aboard ship, and sailed away to seek a livelihood and a country; until at last, after sojourning with one people after another, they came to the Ombrici, where they founded cities and have lived ever since.

7They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king's son who had led them there.The Lydians, then, were enslaved by the Persians.

Chapter 95

1But the next business of my history is to inquire who this Cyrus was who took down the power of Croesus, and how the Persians came to be the rulers of Asia. I mean then to be guided in what I write by some of the Persians who desire not to magnify the story of Cyrus but to tell the truth, though there are no less than three other accounts of Cyrus which I could give.

2After the Assyrians had ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, the Medes were the first who began to revolt from them. These, it would seem, proved their bravery 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.

Chapter 96

1All of those on the mainland were now free men; but they came to be ruled by monarchs again, as I will now relate. There was among the Medes a clever man called Deioces: he was the son of Phraortes.

2Deioces was infatuated with sovereignty, and so he set about gaining it. Already a notable man in his own town (one of the many towns into which Media was divided), he began to profess and practice justice more constantly and zealously than ever, and he did this even though there was much lawlessness throughout the land of Media, and though he knew that injustice is always the enemy of justice. Then the Medes of the same town, seeing his behavior, chose him to be their judge, and he (for he coveted sovereign power) was honest and just.

3By acting so, he won no small praise from his fellow townsmen, to such an extent that when the men of the other towns learned that Deioces alone gave fair judgments (having before suffered from unjust decisions), they came often and gladly to plead before Deioces; and at last they would submit to no arbitration but his.

Chapter 97

1The number of those who came grew ever greater, for they heard that each case turned out in accord with the truth. Then Deioces, seeing that everything now depended on 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 day judging the cases of his neighbors.

2This caused robbery and lawlessness to increase greatly in the towns; and, gathering together, the Medes conferred about their present affairs, and said (here, as I suppose, the main speakers were Deioces' friends),

3“Since we cannot go on living in the present way in the land, come, let us set up a king over us; in this way the land will be well governed, and we ourselves shall attend to our business and not be routed by lawlessness.” With such words they persuaded themselves to be ruled by a king.

Chapter 98

1The question was at once propounded: Whom should they make king? Then every man was loud in putting Deioces forward and praising Deioces, until they agreed that he should be their king.

2He ordered them to build him houses worthy of his royal power, and strengthen him with a bodyguard. The Medes did so. They built him a big and strong house wherever in the land he indicated to them, and let him choose a bodyguard out of all the Medes.

3And having obtained power, he forced the Medes to build him one city and to fortify and care for this more strongly than all the rest. The Medes did this for him, too. So he built the big and strong walls, one standing inside the next in circles, which are now called Ecbatana.

4This fortress is so designed that each circle of walls is higher than the next outer circle by no more than the height of its battlements; to which plan the site itself, on a hill in the plain, contributes somewhat, but chiefly it was accomplished by skill.

5There are seven circles in all; within the innermost circle are the palace 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:

6thus the battlements of five circles are painted with colors; and the battlements of the last two circles are coated, the one with silver and the other with gold.

Chapter 99

1Deioces built these walls for himself and around his own quarters, and he ordered the people to dwell outside the wall. And when it was all built, Deioces was first to establish the rule that no one should come into the presence of the king, but everything should be done by means of messengers; that the king should be seen by no one; and moreover that it should be a disgrace for anyone to laugh or to spit in his presence.

2He was careful to hedge himself with all this so that the men of his own age (who had been brought up with him and were as nobly born as he and his equals in courage), instead of seeing him and being upset and perhaps moved to plot against him, might by reason of not seeing him believe him to be different.

Chapter 100

1When he had made these arrangements and strengthened himself with sovereign power, he was a hard man in the protection of justice. They would write down their pleas and send them in to him; then he would pass judgment on what was brought to him and send his decisions out.

2This was his manner of deciding cases at law, and he had other arrangements too; for when he heard that a man was doing violence he would send for him and punish him as each offense deserved: and he had spies and eavesdroppers everywhere in his domain.

Chapter 101

1Deioces, then, united the Median nation by itself and ruled it. The Median tribes are these: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, the Magi. Their tribes are this many.

Chapter 102

1Deioces had a son, Phraortes, who inherited the throne when Deioces died after a reign of fifty-three years. Having inherited it, 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.

2Then, with these two strong nations at his back, he subjugated one nation of Asia after another, until he marched against the Assyrians; that is, against those of the Assyrians who held Ninus. These had formerly been rulers of all; but now their allies had deserted them and they were left alone, though well-off themselves. Marching against these Assyrians, then, Phraortes and most of his army perished, after he had reigned twenty-two years.

Chapter 103

1At his death he was succeeded by his son Cyaxares. He is said to have been a much greater soldier than his ancestors: it was he who first organized the men of Asia in companies and posted each arm apart, the spearmen and archers and cavalry: before this they were all mingled together in confusion.

2This 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 of Asia that is beyond the river Halys. Collecting all his subjects, he marched against Ninus, wanting to avenge his father and to destroy the city.

3He defeated the Assyrians in battle; but while he was besieging their city, a great army of Scythians came down upon him, led by their king Madyes son of Protothyes. They had invaded Asia after they had driven the Cimmerians out of Europe: pursuing them in their flight, the Scythians came to the Median country.

Chapter 104

1It is a thirty days' journey for an unencumbered 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 only one nation between, the Saspires; to pass these is to be in Media.

2Nevertheless, it was not by this way that the Scythians entered; they turned aside and came by the upper and much longer way, keeping the Caucasian mountains on their right. There, the Medes met the Scythians, who defeated them in battle, deprived them of their rule, and made themselves masters of all Asia.

Chapter 105

1From there 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.

2So 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.

3This temple, I discover from making inquiry, 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.

4But the Scythians who pillaged the temple, and all their descendants after them, were afflicted by the goddess with the “female” sickness: and so the Scythians say that they are afflicted as a consequence of this and also that those who visit Scythian territory see among them the condition of those whom the Scythians call “Hermaphrodites”.

Chapter 106

1The Scythians, then, ruled Asia for twenty-eight years: and the whole land was ruined because of their violence and their pride, for, besides exacting from each the tribute which was assessed, they rode about the land carrying off everyone's possessions.

2Most of them were entertained and made drunk and then slain by Cyaxares and the Medes: so thus the Medes took back their empire and all that they had formerly possessed; and they took Ninus (how, I will describe in a later part of my history), and brought all Assyria except the province of Babylon under their rule.

Chapter 107

1Afterwards, Cyaxares died after a reign of forty years (among which I count the years of the Scythian domination) and his son Astyages inherited the sovereignty. Astyages had a daughter, whom he called Mandane: he dreamed that she urinated so much that she filled his city and flooded all of Asia. He communicated this vision to those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and when he heard what they told him he was terrified;

2and presently, when Mandane was of marriageable age, he feared the vision too much to give her to any Mede worthy to marry into his family, but married her to a Persian called Cambyses, a man whom he knew to be wellborn and of a quiet temper: for Astyages held Cambyses to be much lower than a Mede of middle rank.

Chapter 108

1But during the first year that Mandane was married to Cambyses, Astyages saw a second vision. He dreamed that a vine grew out of the genitals of this daughter, and that the vine covered the whole of Asia.

2Having seen this vision, and communicated it to the interpreters of dreams, he sent to the Persians for his daughter, who was about to give birth, and when she arrived kept her guarded, meaning to kill whatever child she bore: for the interpreters declared that the meaning of his dream was that his daughter's offspring would rule in his place.

3Anxious to prevent this, Astyages, when Cyrus was born, summoned Harpagus, a man of his household who was his most faithful servant among the Medes and was administrator of all that was his, and he said:

4“Harpagus, whatever business I turn over to you, do not mishandle it, and do not leave me out of account and, giving others preference, trip over your own feet afterwards. Take the child that Mandane bore, and carry him to your house, and kill him; and then bury him however you like.”

5“O King,” Harpagus answered, “never yet have you noticed anything displeasing in your man; and I shall be careful in the future, too, not to err in what concerns you. If it is your will that this be done, then my concern ought to be to attend to it scrupulously.”

Chapter 109

1Harpagus answered thus. The child was then given to him, consigned to its death, and he went to his house weeping. When he came in, he told his wife the entire speech uttered by Astyages.

2“Now, then,” she said to him, “what do you propose to do?” “Not to obey Astyages' instructions,” he answered, “not even if he should lose his mind and be more frantic than he is now: I will not lend myself to his plan or be an accessory to such a murder.

3There are many reasons why I will not kill him: because the child is related to me, and because Astyages is old and has no male children.

4Now if the sovereignty passes to this daughter of his after his death, whose son he is now killing by means of me, what is left for me but the gravest of all dangers? For the sake of my safety this child has to die; but one of Astyages' own people has to be the murderer and not one of mine.”

Chapter 110

1So saying, he sent a messenger at once to one of Astyages' cowherds, who he knew pastured his herds in the likeliest spots and where the mountains were most infested with 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 word for dog.

2The foothills of the mountains where this cowherd pastured his cattle are north of Ecbatana, 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.

3So when the cowherd came in haste at the summons, Harpagus said: “Astyages wants you to take this child and leave it in the most desolate part of the mountains so that it will perish as quickly as possible. And he wants me to tell you that if you do not kill it, but preserve it somehow, you will undergo the most harrowing death; and I am ordered to see it exposed.”

Chapter 111

1Hearing this, the cowherd took the child and went back the same way and came to his dwelling. Now as it happened his wife too had been on the verge of delivering every day, and as the divinity would have it, she did in fact give birth while the cowherd was away in the city. Each of them was anxious for the other, the husband being afraid about his wife's labor, and the wife because she did not know why Harpagus had so unexpectedly sent for her husband.

2So when he returned and stood before her, she was startled by the unexpected sight and asked him before he could speak why Harpagus had so insistently summoned him. “Wife,” he said, “when I came to the city, I saw and heard what I ought never to have seen, and what ought never to have happened to our masters. Harpagus' whole house was full of weeping; astonished, I went in;

3and immediately I saw a child lying there struggling and crying, adorned in gold and embroidered clothing. And when Harpagus saw me, he told me to take the child in haste and bring it away and leave it where the mountains are the most infested with wild beasts. It was Astyages, he said, who enjoined this on me, and Harpagus threatened me grievously if I did not do it.

4So I took him and brought him away, supposing him to be the child of one of the servants; for I could never have guessed whose he was. But I was amazed at seeing him adorned with gold and clothing, and at hearing, too, the evident sound of weeping in the house of Harpagus.

5Very soon on the way I learned the whole story from the servant who brought me out of the city and gave the child into my custody: namely, that it was the son of Mandane the king's daughter and Cambyses the son of Cyrus, and that Astyages gave the command to kill him. And now, here he is.”

Chapter 112

1And as he said this the cowherd uncovered it and showed it. But when the woman saw how fine and fair the child was, she began to cry and laid hold of the man's knees and begged him by no means to expose him. But the husband said he could not do otherwise; for, he said, spies would be coming from Harpagus to see what was done, and he would have to die a terrible death if he did not obey.

2Being unable to move her husband, the woman then said: “Since I cannot convince you not to expose it, then, if a child has to be seen exposed, do this: I too have borne a child, but I bore it dead.

3Take this one and put it out, but the child of the daughter of Astyages let us raise as if it were our own; this way, you won't be caught disobeying our masters, and we will not have plotted badly. For the dead child will have royal burial, and the living will not lose his life.”

Chapter 113

1Thinking that his wife advised him excellently in his present strait, the cowherd immediately did as she said. He gave his wife the child whom he had brought to kill, and his own dead child he put into the chest in which he carried the other,

2and dressed it with all the other child's finery and left it out in the most desolate part of the mountains. Then on the third day after leaving the child out, the cowherd left one of his herdsmen to watch it and went to the city, where he went to Harpagus' house and said he was ready to show the child's dead body.

3Harpagus sent the most trusted of his bodyguard, and these saw for him and buried the cowherd's child. So it was buried: and the cowherd's wife kept and raised the boy who was afterwards named Cyrus; but she did not give him that name, but another.

Chapter 114

1Now when the boy was ten years old, the truth about him was revealed in some such way as this. He was playing in the village where these herdsmen's quarters were, playing in the road with others of his age. The boys while playing chose to be their king this one who was supposed to be the son of the cowherd.

2Then he assigned some of them to the building of houses, some to be his bodyguard, one doubtless to be the King's Eye; to another he gave the right of bringing him messages; to each he gave his proper work.

3Now one of these boys playing with him was the son of Artembares, a notable Mede; when he did not perform his assignment from Cyrus, Cyrus told the other boys to seize him, and when they did so he handled the boy very roughly and whipped him.

4As soon as he was let go, very upset about the indignity he had suffered, he went down to his father in the city and complained of what he had received at the hands of the son of Astyages' cowherd—not calling him Cyrus, for that name had not yet been given.

5Artembares, going just as angry as he was to Astyages and bringing his son along, announced that an impropriety had been committed, saying, “O King, by your slave, the son of a cowherd, we have been outraged thus”: and with that he bared his son's shoulders.

Chapter 115

1When Astyages heard and saw, he was ready to avenge the boy in view of Artembares' rank: so he sent for the cowherd and his son. When they were both present, Astyages said, fixing his eyes on Cyrus,

2“Is it you, then, the child of one such as this, who have dared to lay hands on the son of the greatest of my courtiers?” Cyrus answered, “Master, what I did to him I did with justice. The boys of the village, of whom he was one, chose me while playing to be their king, for they thought me the most fit for this.

3The other boys then did as assigned: but this one was disobedient and cared nothing for me, for which he got what he deserved. Now, if I deserve punishment for this, here I am to take it.”

Chapter 116

1While the boy spoke, it seemed to Astyages that he recognized him; the character of his face was like his own, he thought, and his manner of answering was freer than customary: and the date of the exposure seemed to agree with the boy's age.

2Astonished at this, he sat a while silent; but when at last with difficulty he could collect his wits, he said (for he wanted to be rid of Artembares and question the cowherd with no one present), “I shall act in such a way, Artembares, that you and your son shall have no cause of complaint.”

3So he sent Artembares away, and the attendants led Cyrus inside at Astyages' bidding. When the cowherd was left quite alone, Astyages asked him where he had got the boy and who had been the giver.

4The cowherd answered that Cyrus was his own son and that the mother was still with him. Astyages said that he was not well advised if he wished to find himself in a desperate situation, and as he said this made a sign to the spearbearers to seize him.

5Then, under stress of necessity, the cowherd disclosed to him the whole story, telling everything exactly as it had happened from the beginning, and at the end fell to entreaty and urged the king to pardon him.

Chapter 117

1When the cowherd had disclosed the true story, Astyages took less interest in him, but he was very angry with Harpagus and had the guards summon him.

2Harpagus came, and Astyages asked him “Harpagus, how did you kill the boy, my daughter's son, whom I gave you?” Harpagus, when he saw the cowherd was there, did not take the way of falsehood, lest he be caught and confuted:

3“O King,” he said,” when I took the boy, I thought and considered how to do what you wanted and not be held a murderer by your daughter or by you even though I was blameless toward you.

4So I did this: I summoned this cowherd here, and gave 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 instructions that the cowherd was to lay it on a desolate mountainside and wait there and watch until it was dead; and I threatened all sorts of things if he did not accomplish this.

5Then, when he had done what he was told, and the child was dead, I sent the most trusted of my eunuchs and had the body viewed and buried. This, O king, is the story, and such was the end of the boy.”

Chapter 118

1Harpagus told the story straight, while Astyages, hiding the anger that he felt against him for what had been done, first repeated the story again to Harpagus exactly as he had heard it from the cowherd, then, after repeating it, ended by saying that the boy was alive and that the matter had turned out well.

2“For,” he said, “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, then, in this good turn of fortune, send your own son to this boy newly come, and (since I am about to sacrifice for the boy's safety to the gods to whom this honor is due) come here to dine with me.”

Chapter 119

1When Harpagus heard this, he bowed and went to his home, very pleased to find that his offense had turned out for the best and that he was invited to dinner in honor of this fortunate day.

2Coming in, he told 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 everything that had happened.

3But when Harpagus' son came, Astyages cut his throat and tore him limb from limb, roasted some of the flesh and boiled some, and kept it ready after he had prepared it.

4So when the hour for dinner came and the rest of the guests and Harpagus were present, Astyages and the others were served dishes of lamb's meat, but Harpagus that of his own son, all but the head and hands and feet, which lay apart covered up in a wicker basket.

5And when Harpagus seemed to have eaten his fill, Astyages asked him, “Did you like your meal, Harpagus?” “Exceedingly,” Harpagus answered. Then those whose job it was brought him the head of his son and hands and feet concealed in the basket, and they stood before Harpagus and told him to open and take what he liked.

6Harpagus did; he opened and saw what was left of his son: he saw this, but mastered himself and did not lose his composure. Astyages asked him, “Do you know what beast's meat you have eaten?”

7“I know,” he said, “and all that the king does is pleasing.” With that answer he took the remains of the meat and went home. There he meant, I suppose, after collecting everything, to bury it.

Chapter 120

1Thus Astyages punished Harpagus. But, to help him to decide about Cyrus, he summoned the same Magi who had interpreted his dream as I have said: and when they came, Astyages asked them how they had interpreted his dream. They answered as before, and said that the boy must have been made king had he lived and not died first.

2Then Astyages said, “The boy is safe and alive, and when he was living in the country the boys of his village made him king, and he duly did all that is done by true kings: for he assigned to each individually the roles of bodyguards and sentinels and messengers and everything else, and so ruled. And what do you think is the significance of this?”

3“If the boy is alive,” said the Magi, “and has been made king without premeditation, then be confident on this score and keep an untroubled heart: he will not be made king a second time. Even in our prophecies, it is often but a small thing that has been foretold and the consequences of dreams come to nothing in the end.”

4“I too, Magi,” said Astyages, “am very much of your opinion: 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 will be safest both for my house and for you.”

5The Magi said, “O King, we too are very anxious that your sovereignty prosper: for otherwise, it passes from your nation to this boy who is a Persian, and so we Medes are enslaved and held of no account by the Persians, as we are of another blood, but while you, our countryman, are established king, we have our share of power, and great honor is shown us by you.

6Thus, then, we ought by all means to watch out for you and for your sovereignty. And if at the present time we saw any danger we would declare everything to you: but now the dream has had a trifling conclusion, and we ourselves are confident and advise you to be so also. As for this boy, send him out of your sight to the Persians and to his parents.”

Chapter 121

1Hearing this, Astyages was glad, and calling Cyrus, said, “My boy, I did you wrong because of a vision I had in a dream, that meant nothing, but by your own destiny you still live; now therefore, go to the Persians, and good luck go with you; I will send guides with you. When you get there you will find a father and mother unlike the cowherd, Mitradates, and his wife.”

Chapter 122

1After saying this, Astyages sent Cyrus away. When he returned to Cambyses' house, his parents received him there, and learning who he was they welcomed him enthusiastically, for they had supposed that long ago he had been killed, and they asked him how his life had been saved.

2Then he told them, and said that until now he had known nothing but been very deceived, but that on the way he had heard the whole 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 the whole story.

3And he had been raised, he said, by the cowherd's wife, and he was full of her praises, and in his tale he was constantly speaking of Cyno. Hearing this name, his parents circulated a story that Cyrus was suckled by a dog when exposed, thinking in this way to make the story of his salvation seem more marvellous to the Persians.

Chapter 123

1This then was the beginning of that legend. But as Cyrus grew up to be 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 for a private man like himself of punishing Astyages, but as he saw Cyrus growing up, he tried to make him an ally, for he likened Cyrus' misfortune to his own.

2Even before this the following had been done by him: since Astyages was harsh toward the Medes, he associated with each of the chief Medes and persuaded them to make Cyrus their leader and depose Astyages.

3So much being ready and done, Harpagus wanted to reveal his intent to Cyrus, who then lived among the Persians. But the roads were guarded, and he had no plan for sending a message but this:

4he carefully 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 best. Then he sewed up the hare's belly, and sent it to Persia by the most trusted of his servants, giving him nets to carry as if he were a huntsman. The messenger was instructed to give Cyrus the hare and tell him by word of mouth to cut it open with his own hands, with no one else present.

Chapter 124

1All 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, since the gods watch over you (otherwise you would not have prospered so) avenge yourself now on Astyages, your murderer;

2for thanks to his intention you are dead, while thanks to the gods, and me, you live. I expect that long ago you heard the story of what was done concerning you and how Astyages treated me because I did not kill you but gave you to the cowherd. If, then, you will listen to 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;

3then you have your wish, whether I am appointed to command the army against you or some other notable man among the Medes: for they will of themselves revolt from Astyages and join you and try to pull him down. Seeing then that all is ready here, do as I say and do it quickly.”

Chapter 125

1When Cyrus read this, he deliberated as to what was the shrewdest way to persuade the Persians to revolt; and what he thought to be most effective, he did:

2writing what he liked on a paper, he assembled the Persians, and then unfolded the paper and declared that in it Astyages appointed him leader of the Persian armies. “Now,” he said in his speech, “I command you, men of Persia, to come, each provided with a sickle.” This is what Cyrus said.

3Now there are many tribes in Persia: those of them that Cyrus assembled and persuaded to revolt from the Medes were the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, and the Maspii. On these all the other Persians depend. The chief tribe is that of the Pasargadae; to them belongs the clan of the Achaemenidae, the royal house of Persia.

4The 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.

Chapter 126

1So when they all came with sickles as ordered, Cyrus commanded them to reclaim in one day a thorny tract of Persia, of two and one quarter or two and one half miles each way in extent.

2The Persians accomplished the task appointed; Cyrus then commanded them to wash themselves and come the next day; meanwhile, collecting his father's goats and sheep and oxen in one place, he slaughtered and prepared them as a feast for the Persian host, providing also wine and all the foods that were most suitable.

3When the Persians came on the next day he had them sit and feast in a meadow. After dinner he asked them which they liked more: their task of yesterday or their present pastime.

4They answered that the difference was great: all yesterday they had had nothing but evil, to-day nothing but good. Then, taking up their word, Cyrus laid bare his whole purpose, and said:

5“This is your situation, 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 labors unnumbered like your toil of yesterday.

6Now, then, do as I tell you, and win your freedom. For I think that I myself was born by a divine chance to undertake this work; and I hold you fully as good men as the Medes in war and in everything else. All this is true; therefore revolt from Astyages quickly now!”

Chapter 127

1The Persians had long been discontent that the Medes ruled them, and now having got a champion they were glad to win their freedom. But when Astyages heard that Cyrus was about this business, he sent a messenger to summon him;

2Cyrus told the messenger to take back word that Astyages would see him sooner than he liked. Hearing this, Astyages armed all his Medes, and was distracted by Providence so that he forgot what he had done to Harpagus, and appointed him to command the army.

3So when the Medes marched out and engaged with the Persians, those who were not in on the plan fought, while others deserted to the enemy, and most were deliberate cowards and ran.

Chapter 128

1Thus the Median army was shamefully scattered. As soon as Astyages heard, he sent a threatening message to Cyrus: “Nevertheless, Cyrus shall not rejoice”;

2and with that he took the Magi who interpreted dreams, who had persuaded him to let Cyrus go free, and impaled them; then he armed the Medes who were left in the city, the very young and very old men.

3Leading these out, and engaging the Persians, he was beaten: Astyages himself was taken prisoner, and lost the Median army which he led.

Chapter 129

1When Astyages was a captive, Harpagus came and exulted over him and taunted him, and besides much other bitter mockery he recalled his banquet, when Astyages had fed Harpagus his son's flesh, and asked Astyages what it was like to be a slave after having been a king.

2Fixing his gaze on Harpagus, Astyages asked, “Do you imagine 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 rightly mine.”

3“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 is indeed your doing; most unjust, in enslaving the Medes because of that banquet.

4For if in any event another and not you had to possess the royal power, then in justice some Mede should have had 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.”

Chapter 130

1Thus Astyages was deposed from his sovereignty after a reign of thirty-five years: and the Medes had to bow down before the Persians because of Astyages' cruelty. They had ruled all Asia beyond the Halys for one hundred and twenty-eight years, from which must be subtracted the time when the Scythians held sway.

2At 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.

3As for Astyages, Cyrus did him no further harm, and kept him in his own house until Astyages died.This is the story of the birth and upbringing of Cyrus, and of how he became king; and afterwards, as I have already related, he subjugated Croesus in punishment for the unprovoked wrong done him; and after this victory he became sovereign of all Asia.

Chapter 131

1As to the customs 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 do such things they think foolish, because, I suppose, they have never believed the gods to be like men, as the Greeks do;

2but they call the whole circuit of heaven Zeus, and to him they sacrifice on the highest peaks of the mountains; they sacrifice also to the sun and moon and earth and fire and water and winds.

3From the beginning, these are the only gods to whom they have ever sacrificed; they learned 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.

Chapter 132

1And this is their method of sacrifice to the aforesaid gods: when about to sacrifice, they do not build altars or kindle fire, employ libations, or music, or fillets, or barley meal: when a man wishes to sacrifice to one of the gods, he leads a beast to an open space and then, wearing a wreath on his tiara, of myrtle usually, calls on the god.

2To pray for blessings for himself alone is not lawful for the sacrificer; rather, he prays that the king and all the Persians be well; for he reckons himself among them. He then cuts the victim limb from limb into portions, and, after boiling the flesh, spreads the softest grass, trefoil usually, and places all of it on this.

3When he has so arranged it, a Magus 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 Magus. Then after a little while the sacrificer carries away the flesh and uses it as he pleases.

Chapter 133

1The day which every man values most is his own birthday. On this day, he thinks it right to serve a more abundant meal than on other days: oxen or horses or camels or asses, roasted whole in ovens, are set before the rich; the poorer serve the lesser kinds of cattle.

2Their courses are few, the dainties that follow many, and not all served together. This is why the Persians say of Greeks that they rise from table still hungry, because not much dessert is set before them: were this too given to Greeks (the Persians say) they would never stop eating.

3They are very partial to wine. No one may vomit or urinate in another's presence: this is prohibited among them. Moreover, it is their custom to deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk;

4and what they approve in their deliberations is proposed to them the next day, when they are sober, by the master of the house where they deliberate; and if, being sober, they still approve it, they act on it, but if not, they drop it. And if they have deliberated about a matter when sober, they decide upon it when they are drunk.

Chapter 134

1When one man meets another on the road, it is easy to see if the two are equals; for, if they are, they kiss each other on the lips without speaking; if the difference in rank is small, the cheek is kissed; if it is great, the humbler bows and does obeisance to the other.

2They honor most of all those who live nearest them, next those who are next nearest, and so going ever onwards they assign honor by this rule: those who dwell farthest off they hold least honorable of all; for they think that they are themselves in all regards by far the best of all men, that the rest have only a proportionate claim to merit, until those who live farthest away have least merit of all.

3Under the rule of the Medes, one tribe would even govern another; the Medes held sway over all alike and especially over those who lived nearest to them; these ruled their neighbors, and the neighbors in turn those who came next to them, on the same scheme by which the Persians assign honor; for the nation kept advancing its rule and dominion.

Chapter 135

1But the Persians more than all men welcome foreign customs. They wear the Median dress, thinking 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 pederasty. Every Persian marries many lawful wives, and keeps still more concubines.

Chapter 136

1After valor in battle it is accounted noble to father the greatest number of sons: the king sends gifts yearly to him who gets most. Strength, they believe, is in numbers.

2They educate their boys from five to twenty years old, and teach them only three things: riding and archery and honesty. A boy is not seen by his father before he is five years old, but lives with the women: the point of this is that, if the boy should die in the interval of his rearing, the father would suffer no grief.

Chapter 137

1This is a law which I praise; and it is a praiseworthy law, too, which does not allow the king himself to slay any one for a single offense, or any other Persian to do incurable harm to one of his servants for one offense. Not until an accounting shows that the offender's wrongful acts are more and greater than his services may a man give rein to his anger.

2They say that no one has ever yet killed his father or mother; when such a thing has been done, it always turns out on inquest that the doer is shown to be a changeling or the fruit of adultery; for it is not to be believed (say they) that a son should kill his true parent.

Chapter 138

1Furthermore, of what they may not do, they may not speak, either. They hold lying to be the most disgraceful thing of all and next to that debt; for which they have many other reasons, but this in particular: it is inevitable (so they say) that the debtor also speak some falsehood. The citizen who has leprosy or the white sickness may not come into town or mingle with other Persians. They say that he is so afflicted because he has sinned in some way against the sun.

2Every stranger who gets such a disease, many drive out of the country; and they do the same to white doves, for the reason given. Rivers they especially revere; they will neither urinate nor spit nor wash their hands in them, nor let anyone else do so.

Chapter 139

1There is another thing that always happens among them; we have noted it although 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 Ionians sigma; you will find, if you search, that not some but all Persian names alike end in this letter.

Chapter 140

1So much I can say of them from 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 birds or dogs.

2That this is the way of the Magi, I know for certain; 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 Magi are as unlike the priests of Egypt as they are unlike all other men:

3for the priests consider it sacrilege to kill anything that lives, except what they sacrifice; but the Magi kill with their own hands every creature, except dogs and men; they kill all alike, ants and snakes, creeping and flying things, and take great pride in it. Leaving this custom to be such as it has been from the first, I return now to my former story.

Chapter 141

1As soon as the Lydians had been subjugated 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. After hearing what they proposed, Cyrus told them a story. Once, he said, there was a flute-player who saw fish in the sea and played upon his flute, thinking that they would come out on to the land.

2Disappointed of his hope, he cast a net and gathered it in and took out a great multitude of fish; and seeing them leaping, “You had best,” he said, “stop your dancing now; you would not come out and dance before, when I played to you.”

3The 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.

4So he answered them in anger. But when the message came to the Ionians in their cities, they fortified themselves with walls, and assembled in the Panionion, all except the Milesians, with whom alone Cyrus 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.

Chapter 142

1Now these Ionians possessed the Panionion, and of all men whom we know, they happened to found their cities in places with the loveliest of climate and seasons.

2For neither to the north of them nor to the south does the land effect the same thing as in Ionia [nor to the east nor to the west], affected here by the cold and wet, there by the heat and drought.

3They do not all have 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 have a common language; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, all of them in Lydia,

4have a language in common which is wholly different from the speech of the three former cities. There are yet three Ionian cities, two of them situated 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 no one else's. It is thus seen that there are four modes of speech.

Chapter 143

1Among these Ionians, the Milesians were safe 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 mariners.

2But those of Asia were cut off from the rest of the Ionians only in the way that I shall show. The whole Hellenic stock was then small, and the last of all its branches and the least regarded was the Ionian; for it had no considerable city except Athens.

3Now the Athenians and the rest would not be called Ionians, but spurned the name; 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 themselves to allow no other Ionians to use it (nor in fact did any except the men of Smyrna ask to be admitted);

Chapter 144

1just as the Dorians of what is now the country of the “Five Cities”—formerly the country of the “Six Cities”—forbid admitting any of the neighboring Dorians to the Triopian temple, and even barred from using it those of their own group who had broken the temple law.

2For long ago, in the games in honor of Triopian Apollo, they offered certain bronze tripods to the victors; and those who won these were not to carry them away from the temple but dedicate them there to the god.

3Now when a man of Halicarnassus called Agasicles won, he disregarded this law, and, carrying the tripod away, nailed it to the wall of his own house. For this offense 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.

Chapter 145

1As for the Ionians, the reason why they made twelve cities and would admit no more was in my judgment this: there were twelve divisions of them when they dwelt in the Peloponnese, 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, where 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.

Chapter 146

1For this reason, and for no other, the Ionians too made twelve cities; for it would be foolishness to say that these are more truly Ionian or better born than the other Ionians; since not the least part of them are Abantes from Euboea, who are not Ionians even in name, and there are mingled with them Minyans of Orchomenus, Cadmeans, Dryopians, Phocian renegades from their nation, Molossians, Pelasgian Arcadians, Dorians of Epidaurus, and many other tribes;

2and as for those who came from the very town-hall of Athens and think they are 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.

3For this slaughter, these women made a custom and bound themselves by oath (and enjoined it on their daughters) that no one would sit at table with her husband or call him by his name, because the men had married them after slaying their fathers and husbands and sons. This happened at Miletus.

Chapter 147

1And as 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 since they set more store by the name than the rest of the Ionians, let it be granted that those of pure birth are Ionians;

2and all are Ionians who are of Athenian descent and keep the feast Apaturia. All do keep it, except the men of Ephesus and Colophon; these are the only Ionians who do not keep it, and these because, they say, of a certain pretext of murder.

Chapter 148

1The Panionion is a sacred ground in Mykale, facing north; it was set apart for Poseidon of Helicon by the joint will of the Ionians. Mykale is a western promontory of the mainland opposite Samos; the Ionians used to assemble there from their cities and keep the festival to which they gave the name of Panionia.

2Not only the Ionian festivals, but all those of all the Greeks alike, end in the same letter, just as do the names of the Persians.

Chapter 149

1Those are the Ionian cities, and these are the Aeolian: Cyme (called “Phriconian”), Lerisae, Neon Teichos, Temnos, Cilla, Notion, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegaeae, Myrina, Gryneia. These are the ancient Aeolian cities, eleven in number; but one of them, Smyrna, was taken away by the Ionians; for these too were once twelve, on the mainland.

2These Aeolians had settled where the land was better than the Ionian territory, but the climate was not so good.

Chapter 150

1Now this is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. Some men of Colophon, the losers in civil strife and exiles 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; then they shut the gates and so got the city.

2Then all the Aeolians came to recover it; and an agreement was made, whereby the Aeolians would receive back their movable goods from the Ionians, and leave the city. After this was done, the other eleven cities divided the Smyrnaeans among themselves and made them citizens of their own.

Chapter 151

1These then are the Aeolian cities on the mainland, besides those that are situated on Ida and are separate.

2Among those on the islands, five divide Lesbos among them (there was a sixth on Lesbos, Arisba, but its people were enslaved by their kinfolk of Methymna ); there is one on Tenedos, and one again in the “Hundred Isles,” as they are called.

3The men of Lesbos and Tenedos, then, like the Ionian islanders, had nothing to fear. The rest of the cities deliberated together and decided to follow the Ionians' lead.

Chapter 152

1So when the envoys of the Ionians and Aeolians came to Sparta (for they set about this in haste) they chose a Phocaean, whose name was Pythennos, to speak for all. He then put on a purple cloak, so that as many Spartans as possible might assemble to hear him, and stood up and made a long speech asking aid for his people.

2But the Lacedaemonians would not listen to him and refused to help 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) the situation with Cyrus and Ionia.

3These, after 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 was to harm no city on Greek territory, or else the Lacedaemonians would punish him.

Chapter 153

1When the herald had proclaimed this, Cyrus is said to have asked the Greeks who were present who and how many in number these Lacedaemonians were who made this declaration. When he was told, he said to the Spartan herald, “I never yet feared men who set apart a place in the middle of their city where they perjure themselves and deceive each other. They, if I keep my health, shall talk of their own misfortunes, not those of the Ionians.”

2He uttered this threat against all the Greeks, because they have markets and buy and sell there; for the Persians themselves were not used to resorting to markets at all, nor do they even have a market of any kind.

3Presently, entrusting Sardis to a Persian called Tabalus, and instructing Pactyes, a Lydian, to take charge of the gold of Croesus and the Lydians, he himself marched away to Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him, and at first taking no notice of the Ionians.

4For he had Babylon on his hands and the Bactrian nation and the Sacae and Egyptians; he meant to lead the army against these himself, and to send another commander against the Ionians.

Chapter 154

1But no sooner had Cyrus marched away from Sardis than Pactyes made the Lydians 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 undertaking. Then, marching to Sardis, he penned Tabalus in the acropolis and besieged him there.

Chapter 155

1When Cyrus heard of this on his journey, he said to Croesus, “What end to this business, Croesus? It seems that the Lydians will never stop making trouble for me and for themselves. It occurs to me that it may be best to make slaves of them; for it seems I have acted like one who slays the father and spares the children.

2So 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 indeed I marvel that they revolt!” So Cyrus uttered his thought; but Croesus feared that he would destroy Sardis, and answered him thus:

3“O King, what you say is reasonable. But do not ever yield to anger, or destroy an ancient city that is innocent both of the former and of the present offense. For the former I am responsible, and bear the punishment on my head; while Pactyes, in whose charge you left Sardis, does this present wrong; let him, then, pay the penalty.

4But pardon the Lydians, and give them this command so that they not revolt or pose a danger to you: send and forbid them to possess weapons of war, and order them to wear tunics under their cloaks and knee-boots on their feet, and to teach their sons lyre-playing and song and dance and shop-keeping. And quickly, O king, you shall see them become women instead of men, so that you need not fear them, that they might revolt.”

Chapter 156

1Croesus proposed this to him, 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 mind, and feared that even if the Lydians should escape this time they might later revolt and be destroyed by the Persians.

2Cyrus was pleased by this counsel; he relented in his anger and said he would follow Croesus' advice. Then calling Mazares, a Mede, he told him to give the Lydians the commands that Croesus advised; further, to enslave all the others who had joined the Lydians in attacking Sardis; and as for Pactyes himself, by all means to bring him into his presence alive.

Chapter 157

1After giving these commands on his journey, he marched away into the Persian country. But Pactyes, learning that an army sent against him was approaching, was frightened and fled to Cyme.

2Mazares the Mede, when he came to Sardis with the part that he had of Cyrus' host 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 way of life.

3After this, he sent messengers to Cyme demanding that Pactyes be surrendered. The Cymaeans resolved to make the god at Branchidae their judge as to what course they should take; for there was an ancient place of divination there, which all the Ionians and Aeolians used to consult; the place is in the land of Miletus, above the harbor of Panormus.

Chapter 158

1The men of Cyme, then, sent to Branchidae to inquire of the shrine what they should do in the matter of Pactyes that would be most pleasing to the gods; and the oracle replied that they must surrender Pactyes to the Persians.

2When this answer came back to them, they set about surrendering him. But while the greater part were in favor of doing this, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a notable man among the citizens, stopped the men of Cyme from doing it; for he did not believe the oracle and thought that those who had inquired of the god spoke falsely; until at last a second band of inquirers was sent to inquire concerning Pactyes, among whom was Aristodicus.

Chapter 159

1When they came to Branchidae, Aristodicus, speaking for all, put this question to the oracle: “Lord, Pactyes the Lydian has come to us a suppliant fleeing a violent death at the hands of the Persians; and they demand him of us, telling the men of Cyme to surrender him.

2But we, as much as we fear the Persian power, have not dared give up this suppliant of ours until it is clearly made known to us by you whether we are to do this or not.” Thus Aristodicus inquired; and the god again gave the same answer, that Pactyes should be surrendered to the Persians.

3With that Aristodicus did as he had already decided; he went around the temple, and took away the sparrows and all the families of nesting birds that were in it. But while he was doing so, a voice (they say) came out of the inner shrine calling to Aristodicus, and saying, “Vilest of men, how dare you do this? Will you rob my temple of those that take refuge with me?”

4Then Aristodicus had his answer ready: “Lord,” he said, “will you save your own suppliants, yet tell the men of Cyme to deliver up theirs?” But the god replied, “Yes, I do command them, so that you may perish all the sooner for your impiety, and never again come to inquire of my oracle about giving up those that seek refuge with you.”

Chapter 160

1When the Cymaeans heard this answer, they sent Pactyes away to Mytilene; for they were anxious not to perish for delivering him up or to be besieged for keeping him with them.

2Then Mazares sent a message to Mytilene demanding the surrender of Pactyes, and the Mytilenaeans prepared to give him, for a price; I cannot say exactly how much it was, for the bargain was never fulfilled;

3for when the Cymaeans learned what the Mytilenaeans were about, they sent a ship to Lesbos and took Pactyes away to Chios. From there he was dragged out of the temple of City-guarding Athena and delivered up by the Chians,

4who received in return Atarneus, which is a district in Mysia opposite Lesbos. The Persians thus received Pactyes and kept him guarded, so that they might show him to Cyrus;

5and for a long time no one would use barley meal from this land of Atarneus in sacrifices to any god, or make sacrificial cakes of what grew there; everything that came from that country was kept away from any sacred rite.

Chapter 161

1The Chians, then, surrendered Pactyes, and afterwards Mazares 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 to his army to pillage and Magnesia likewise. Immediately after this he died of an illness.

Chapter 162

1After his death, Harpagus, a Mede like Mazares, came down to succeed him in his command; this is the Harpagus who was entertained by Astyages the king of the Medes at that unnatural feast, and who helped win the kingship for Cyrus.

2This man was now made general by Cyrus. When he came to Ionia, he took the cities by means of earthworks; he would drive the men within their walls and then build earthworks against the walls and so take the cities.

Chapter 163

1Phocaea was the first Ionian town that he attacked. These Phocaeans were the earliest of the Greeks to make long sea-voyages, and it was they who discovered the Adriatic Sea, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus,

2not sailing in round freightships 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 a hundred and twenty.

3The Phocaeans won this man's friendship to such a degree that he invited them to leave Ionia and settle in his country wherever they liked; and then, when he could not persuade them to, and learned from them how the Median power was increasing, he gave them money to build a wall around their city.

4He gave it generously: for the circuit of the wall is of not a few stades, and all this is made of great stones well fitted together.

Chapter 164

1In such a manner the Phocaeans' wall was built. 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 rampart of the wall and dedicate one house.

2But the Phocaeans, very indignant at the thought of slavery, said they wanted to deliberate for a day, and then they would answer; but while they were deliberating, Harpagus must withdraw his army from the walls, they said. Harpagus said that he well knew what they intended to do, but that nevertheless he would allow them to deliberate.

3So when Harpagus withdrew his army from the walls, the Phocaeans launched their fifty-oared ships, embarked their children and women and all their movable goods, besides the statues from the temples and everything dedicated in them except bronze or stonework or painting, and then embarked themselves and set sail for Chios; and the Persians took Phocaea, left thus uninhabited.

Chapter 165

1The Phocaeans would have bought the islands called Oenussae from the Chians; 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 trade: so the Phocaeans prepared to sail to Cyrnus, where at the command of an oracle they had built a city called Alalia twenty years before.

2Arganthonius was by this time dead. While getting ready for their voyage, they first sailed to Phocaea, where they destroyed the Persian guard to whom Harpagus had entrusted the defense of the city; and when this was done, they called down mighty curses on any one of them who should stay behind when the rest sailed.

3Not only this, but they sank a mass of iron in the sea, and swore never to return to Phocaea before the iron should appear again. But while they prepared to sail to Cyrnus, more than half of the citizens were overcome with longing and 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 put out to sea from the Oenussae.

Chapter 166

1And when they came to Cyrnus they lived there for five years as one community with those who had come first, and they founded temples there. But they harassed and plundered all their neighbors, as a result of which the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians made common cause against them, and sailed to attack them with sixty ships each.

2The Phocaeans also manned their ships, sixty in number, and met the enemy in the sea called Sardonian. They engaged and the Phocaeans won, yet it was only a kind of Cadmean victory; for they lost forty of their ships, and the twenty that remained were useless, their rams twisted awry.

3Then sailing to Alalia they took their children and women and all of their possessions that their ships could hold on board, and leaving Cyrnus they sailed to Rhegium.

Chapter 167

1As for the crews of the disabled ships, the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians drew lots for them, and of the Tyrrhenians the Agyllaioi were allotted by far the majority and these they led out and stoned to death. But afterwards, everything from Agylla that passed the place where the stoned Phocaeans lay, whether sheep or beasts of burden or men, became distorted and crippled and palsied.

2The Agyllaeans sent to Delphi, wanting to mend their offense; and the Pythian priestess told them to do what the people of Agylla do to this day: for they pay great honors to the Phocaeans, with religious rites and games and horse-races.

3Such was the end of this part of the Phocaeans. Those of them who fled to Rhegium set out from there and gained possession of that city in the Oenotrian country which is now called Hyele;

4they founded this because they learned from a man of Posidonia that the Cyrnus whose establishment the Pythian priestess ordained was the hero, and not the island.

Chapter 168

1Thus, then, it went with the Ionian Phocaea. The Teians did the same things as the Phocaeans: when Harpagus had taken their walled city by building an earthwork, they all embarked aboard ship 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 profit of it, but was driven out by the Thracians. This Timesius is now honored as a hero by the Teians of Abdera.

Chapter 169

1These were the only Ionians who left their native lands, unable to endure slavery. The rest of the Ionians, except the Milesians, though they faced Harpagus in battle as did the exiles, and conducted themselves well, each fighting for his own country, yet, when they were defeated and their cities taken, they remained where they were and did as they were told.

2The Milesians, as I have already said, made a treaty with Cyrus himself and struck no blow. Thus Ionia was enslaved for the second time: and when Harpagus had conquered the Ionians of the mainland, the Ionians of the islands, fearing the same fate, surrendered to Cyrus.

Chapter 170

1When the Ionians, despite their evil plight, nonetheless assembled at the Panionion, Bias of Priene, I have learned, gave them very useful advice, and had they followed it they might have been the most prosperous of all Greeks:

2for he advised 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 ruling others, they would be rid of slavery and have prosperity; but if they stayed in Ionia he could see (he said) no hope of freedom for them.

3This was the advice which Bias of Priene gave after the destruction of the Ionians; and that given before the destruction by Thales of Miletus, a Phoenician by descent, was good too; he advised that the Ionians have one place of deliberation, and that it be in Teos (for that was the center of Ionia ), and that the other cities be considered no more than demes.Thus Bias and Thales advised.

Chapter 171

1Harpagus, after subjugating Ionia, made an expedition against the Carians, Caunians, and Lycians, taking Ionians and Aeolians with him.

2Of these, the Carians have come to the mainland from the islands; for in the past they were islanders, called Leleges and under the rule of Minos, not (as far as I can learn by report) paying tribute, but manning ships for him when he needed them.

3Since Minos had subjected a good deal of territory for himself and was victorious in war, this made the Carians too at that time by far the most respected of all nations.

4They invented three things in which they were followed by the Greeks: it was the Carians who originated wearing crests on their helmets and devices on their shields, and who first made grips for their shields; until then all who used shields carried them without these grips, and guided them with leather belts which they slung round the neck and over the left shoulder.

5Then, 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 the Carians themselves do not subscribe to it, but believe that they are aboriginal inhabitants of the mainland and always bore the name which they bear now;

6and they point to an ancient shrine of Carian Zeus at Mylasa, to which Mysians and Lydians, as brethren of the Carians (for Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car), are admitted, but not those who spoke the same language as the Carians but were of another people.

Chapter 172

1I think the Caunians are aborigines of the soil, but they say that they came from Crete. Their speech has become like the Carian, or the Carian like theirs (for I cannot clearly decide), but in their customs they diverge widely from the Carians, as from all other men. Their chief pleasure is to assemble for drinking-bouts in groups according to their ages and friendships: men, women, and children.

2Certain foreign rites of worship were established among them; but afterwards, when they were inclined otherwise, and wanted to worship only the gods of their fathers, all Caunian men of full age put on their armor and went together as far as the boundaries of Calynda, striking the air with their spears and saying that they were casting out the alien gods.

Chapter 173

1Such are their ways. The Lycians were from Crete in ancient times (for in the past none that lived on Crete were Greek).

2Now there was a dispute in Crete about the royal power between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europa; Minos prevailed in this dispute and drove out Sarpedon and his partisans; who, after being driven out, came to the Milyan land in Asia. What is now possessed by the Lycians was in the past Milyan, and the Milyans were then called Solymi.

3For 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 neighbors; but after Lycus son of Pandion came from Athens —banished as well by his brother, Aegeus—to join Sarpedon in the land of the Termilae, they came in time to be called Lycians after Lycus.

4Their customs are partly Cretan and partly 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,

5and when one is asked by his neighbor who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and rehearse the mothers of his mother. Indeed, if a female citizen marries a slave, her children are considered pure-blooded; but if a male citizen, even the most prominent of them, takes an alien wife or concubine, the children are dishonored.

Chapter 174

1Neither the Carians nor any Greeks who dwell in this country did any thing notable before they were all enslaved by Harpagus.

2Among 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 small part of the Cnidian territory is washed by the sea

3(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 two-thirds of a mile wide, in order that 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.

4Many of them were at this work; and seeing that the workers were injured when breaking stones more often and less naturally than usual, some in other ways, but most in the eyes, the Cnidians sent envoys to Delphi to inquire what it was that opposed them.

5Then, as they themselves say, the priestess gave them this answer in iambic verse: “Do not wall or trench the isthmus: Zeus would have given you an island, if he had wanted to.”

6At this answer from the priestess, the Cnidians stopped their digging, and when Harpagus came against them with his army they surrendered to him without resistance.

Chapter 175

1There were Pedaseans dwelling inland above Halicarnassus; when any misfortune was approaching them or their neighbors, the priestess of Athena grew a long 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.

Chapter 176

1The Pedaseans were at length taken, and when Harpagus led his army into the plain of Xanthus, the Lycians came out to meet him, and showed themselves courageous fighting few against many; but being beaten and driven into the city, they gathered their wives and children and goods and servants into the acropolis, and then set the whole acropolis on fire.

2Then they swore great oaths to each other, and sallying out fell fighting, all the men of Xanthus.

3Of the Xanthians who claim now to be Lycians the greater number, all except eighty households, are of foreign descent; these eighty families as it happened were away from the city at that time, and thus survived. So Harpagus gained Xanthus, and Caunus too in a somewhat similar manner, the Caunians following for the most part the example of the Lycians.

Chapter 177

1Harpagus, then, made havoc of lower Asia; in the upper country, Cyrus himself vanquished every nation, leaving none untouched. Of the greater part of these I will say nothing, but will speak only of those which gave Cyrus the most trouble and are most worthy of being described.

Chapter 178

1When Cyrus had made all the mainland submit to him, he attacked the Assyrians. In Assyria there are many other great cities, but the most famous and the strongest was Babylon, where the royal dwelling had been established after the destruction of Ninus. Babylon was a city such as I will now describe.

2It lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side fifteen miles in length; thus sixty miles make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was planned like no other city of which we know.

3Around it runs first a moat deep and wide and full of water, and then a wall eighty three feet thick and three hundred thirty three feet high. The royal measure is greater by three fingers' breadth than the common measure.

Chapter 179

1Further, I must relate where the earth was used as it was dug from the moat and how the wall was constructed. As they dug the moat, 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;

2then using hot bitumen for cement and interposing layers of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the border of the moat and then the wall itself in the same fashion.

3On the top, along the edges of the wall, they built houses of a single room, facing each other, with space enough between to drive a four-horse chariot. There are a hundred gates in the circuit of the wall, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of the same.

4There is another city, called Is, eight days' journey from Babylon, where there is a little river, also named Is, a tributary of the Euphrates river; from the source of this river Is, many lumps of bitumen rise with the water; and from there the bitumen was brought for the wall of Babylon.

Chapter 180

1Thus, then, this wall was 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.

2The angles of the wall, then, on either side are built quite down to the river; here they turn, and from here a fence of baked bricks runs along each bank of the stream.

3The city itself is full of houses three and four stories high; and the ways that traverse it, those that run crosswise towards the river and the rest, are all straight.

4Further, 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.

Chapter 181

1These walls are the city's outer armor; within them there is another encircling wall, nearly as strong as the other, but narrower.

2In the middle of one division of the city stands the royal palace, surrounded by a high and strong wall; and in the middle of the other is still to this day the sacred enclosure of Zeus Belus, a square of four hundred and forty yards each way, with gates of bronze.

3In the center of this sacred enclosure a solid tower has been built, two hundred and twenty yards long and broad; a second tower rises from this and from it yet another, until at last there are eight.

4The way up them mounts spirally outside the height of the towers; about halfway up is a resting place, with seats for repose, where those who ascend sit down and rest.

5In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it stands a great and well-covered couch, and a golden table nearby. But no image has been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie there for the night, except one native woman, chosen from all women by the god, as the Chaldaeans say, who are priests of this god.

Chapter 182

1These same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say

2(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 does the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever she is 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.

Chapter 183

1In the Babylonian temple there is another shrine below, where there is a great golden image of Zeus, sitting at a great golden table, and the footstool and the chair are also gold; the gold of the whole was said by the Chaldeans to be eight hundred talents' weight.

2Outside the temple is a golden altar. There is also another great altar, on which are sacrificed the full-grown of the flocks; only nurslings 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 enclosure a statue of solid gold twenty feet high.

3I myself have not seen it, but I relate what is told by the Chaldeans. Darius son of Hystaspes proposed to take this statue but dared not; Xerxes his son took it, and killed the priest who warned him not to move the statue. Such is the furniture of this temple, and there are many private offerings besides.

Chapter 184

1Now among the many rulers of this city of Babylon (whom I shall 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 dikes on the plain, a notable work; before that the whole plain used to be flooded by the river.

Chapter 185

1The 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 kingdom of Media was great and restless and Ninus itself among other cities had fallen to it, she took such precautions as she could for her protection.

2First she dealt with the river Euphrates, which flows through the middle of her city; this had been straight before; but by digging canals higher up she made the river so crooked that its course now passes one of the Assyrian villages three times; the village which is so approached by the Euphrates is called Ardericca. And now those who travel from our sea to Babylon must spend three days as they float down the Euphrates coming three times to the same village.

3Such was this work; and she built an embankment along either shore of the river, marvellous for its greatness and height.

4Then a long way above Babylon she dug the reservoir of a lake, a little way off from the river, always digging deep enough to find water, and making the circumference a distance of fifty two miles; what was dug out of this hole, she used to embank either edge of the river;

5and when she had it all dug, she brought stones and made a quay all around the lake.

6Her purpose in making the river wind and turning the hole into marsh was this: that the current might be slower because of the many windings that broke its force, and that the passages to Babylon might be crooked, and that right after them should come also the long circuit of the lake.

7All this work was done in that part of the country where the passes are and the shortest road from Media, so that the Medes might not mix with her people and learn of her affairs.

Chapter 186

1So she made the deep river her protection; and this work led to another which she added to it. Her city was divided into two parts by the river that flowed through the middle. In the days of the former rulers, when one wanted to go from one part to the other, one had to cross in a boat; and this, I suppose, was a nuisance. But the queen also provided for this; she made another monument of her reign out of this same work when the digging of the basin of the lake was done.

2She had very long blocks of stone cut; and when these were ready and the place was dug, she turned the course of the river into it, and while it was filling, the former channel now being dry, she bricked the borders of the river in the city and the descent from the gate leading down to the river with baked bricks, like those of the wall; and near the middle of the city she built a bridge with the stones that had been dug up, binding them together with iron and lead.

3Each morning, she laid square-hewn logs across it, on which the Babylonians crossed; but these logs were removed at night, lest folk always be crossing over and stealing from one another.

4Then, 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 made for them.

Chapter 187

1There was a trick, too, that this same queen contrived. She had a tomb made for herself and set high over the very gate of that entrance of the city which was used most, with writing engraved on the tomb, which read:

2“If any king of Babylon in the future is in need of money, let him open this tomb and take as much as he likes: but let him not open it unless he is in need; for it will be the worse for him.”

3This tomb remained untouched until the kingship fell to Darius. He thought it a very strange thing that he should never use this gate, or take the money when it lay there and the writing itself invited him to.

4The reason he did not use the gate was that the dead body would be over his head as he passed through.

5After opening the tomb, he found no money there, only the dead body, with writing which read: “If you were ever satisfied with what you had and did not disgrace yourself seeking more, you would not have opened the coffins of the dead.” Such a woman, it is recorded, was this queen.

Chapter 188

1Cyrus, then, marched against Nitocris' son, who inherited the name of his father Labynetus and the sovereignty of Assyria. Now when the Great King campaigns, he marches well provided with food and flocks from home; and water from the Choaspes river that flows past Susa is carried with him, the only river from which the king will drink.

2This water of the Choaspes is boiled, and very many four-wheeled wagons drawn by mules carry it in silver vessels, following the king wherever he goes at any time.

Chapter 189

1When Cyrus reached the Gyndes river on his march to Babylon, which rises in the mountains of the Matieni and flows through the Dardanean country into another river, the Tigris, that again passes the city of Opis and empties into the Red Sea —when, I say, Cyrus tried to cross the Gyndes, which was navigable there, one of his sacred white horses dashed recklessly into the river trying to get through it, but the current overwhelmed him and swept him under and away.

2At this violence of the river Cyrus was very angry, and he threatened to make it so feeble that women could ever after cross it easily without wetting their knees.

3After uttering this threat, he paused in his march against Babylon, and, dividing his army into two parts, drew lines planning out a hundred and eighty canals running every way from either bank of the Gyndes; then he organized his army along the lines and made them dig.

4Since a great multitude was at work, it went quickly; but they spent the whole summer there before it was finished.

Chapter 190

1Then at the beginning of the following spring, when Cyrus had punished the Gyndes by dividing it among the three hundred and sixty canals, he marched against Babylon at last. The Babylonians sallied out and awaited him; and when he came near their city in his march, they engaged him, but they were beaten and driven inside the city.

2There they had stored provisions enough for very many years, because they knew already that Cyrus was not a man of no ambitition, and saw that he attacked all nations alike; so now they were indifferent to the siege; and Cyrus did not know what to do, being so long delayed and gaining no advantage.

Chapter 191

1Whether someone advised him in his difficulty, or whether he perceived for himself what to do, I do not know, but he did the following.

2He posted his army at the place where the river goes into the city, and another part of it behind the city, where the river comes out of the city, and told his men to enter the city by the channel of the Euphrates when they saw it to be fordable. Having disposed them and given this command, he himself marched away with those of his army who could not fight;

3and 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 a marsh, he made the stream sink until its former channel could be forded.

4When this happened, the Persians who were posted with this objective made their way into Babylon by the channel of the Euphrates, which had now sunk to a depth of about the middle of a man's thigh.

5Now if the Babylonians had known beforehand or learned what Cyrus was up to, they would have let the Persians enter the city and have destroyed them utterly; for then they would have shut all the gates that opened on the river and mounted the walls that ran along the river banks, and so caught their enemies in a trap.

6But as it was, the Persians took them unawares, and because of the great size of the city (those who dwell there say) those in the outer parts of it were overcome, but the inhabitants of the middle part knew nothing of it; all this time they were dancing and celebrating a holiday which happened to fall then, until they learned the truth only too well.

Chapter 192

1And Babylon, then for the first time, was taken in this way. I shall show how great the power of Babylon is by many other means, but particularly by this. All the land that the great King rules is parcelled out to provision him and his army, and pays tribute besides: now the territory of Babylon feeds him for four of the twelve months in the year, the whole of the rest of Asia providing for the other eight.

2Thus the wealth of Assyria is one third of the entire wealth of Asia. The governorship of this land, which the Persians call “satrapy,” is by far the most powerful of all the governorships, since the daily income of Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus, who governed this province by the king's will, was an artaba full of silver

3(the artaba is a Persian measure, containing more than an Attic medimnus by three Attic choenixes), and besides warhorses he had eight hundred stallions in his stables, and sixteen thousand brood mares, each stallion servicing twenty mares.

4Moreover 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 exempted from all other burdens. Such were the riches of the governor of Babylon.

Chapter 193

1There is little rain in Assyria. This nourishes the roots of the grain; but it is irrigation from the river that ripens the crop and brings the grain to fullness. In Egypt, the river itself rises and floods the fields; in Assyria, they are watered by hand and by swinging beams.

2For 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, on which stood the city of Ninus. This land is by far the most fertile in grain which we know.

3It does not even try to bear trees, fig, vine, or olive, but Demeter's grain is so abundant there 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;

4and for millet and sesame, I will not say to what height they grow, though it is known to me; for I am well aware that even what I have said regarding grain is wholly disbelieved by those who have never visited Babylonia. They use no oil except 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.

5The 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, so that 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.

Chapter 194

1I am going to indicate what seems to me to be the most marvellous thing in the country, next to the city itself. Their boats which ply the river and go to Babylon are all of skins, and round.

2They 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.

3Two 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 large; the largest of them are of as much as five thousand talents burden. There is a live ass in each boat, or more than one in the larger.

4So 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,

5for it is not by any means possible to go upstream by water, because 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.

Chapter 195

1Such 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.

2Every man has a seal and a carved 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 an image.

Chapter 196

1This is the equipment of their persons. I will now speak of their established customs. The wisest of these, in our judgment, is one which I have learned by inquiry is also a custom of the Eneti in Illyria. It is this: once a year in every village all the maidens as they attained marriageable age were collected and brought together into one place, with a crowd of men standing around.

2Then 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 most attractive, selling all the maidens as lawful wives. Rich men of Assyria who desired to marry would outbid each other for the fairest; the ordinary people, who desired to marry and had no use for beauty, could take the ugly ones and money besides;

3for when the crier had sold all the most attractive, he would put up the one that was least beautiful, or crippled, and offer her to whoever would take her to wife for the least amount, until she fell to one who promised to accept least; the money came from the sale of the attractive ones, who thus paid the dowry of the ugly and the crippled. But a man could not give his daughter in marriage to whomever he liked, nor could one that bought a girl take her away without giving security that he would in fact make her his wife.

4And if the couple 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.

5This, then, was their best custom; but it does not continue at this time; they have invented a new one lately [so that the women not be wronged or taken to another city]; since the conquest of Babylon made them afflicted and poor, everyone of the people that lacks a livelihood prostitutes his daughters.

Chapter 197

1I 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 illness 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 from it or seen others recover. No one may pass by the sick man without speaking and asking after his sickness.

Chapter 198

1The dead are embalmed in honey for burial, and their dirges are like 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 in Arabia also.

Chapter 199

1The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants.

2But 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 men pass and make their choice.

3Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go 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 invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite).

4It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her.

5So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus.

Chapter 200

1These are established customs among the Babylonians. Furthermore, there are three tribes in the country that eat nothing but fish, which they catch and dry in the sun; then, after throwing it into a mortar, they pound it with pestles and strain everything through linen. Then whoever desires kneads as it were a cake of it and eats it; others bake it like bread.

Chapter 201

1When Cyrus had conquered this nation, too, he wanted to subject the Massagetae. These are said to be a great and powerful people dwelling towards the east and the sunrise, beyond the Araxes and opposite the Issedones; and some say that they are a Scythian people.

Chapter 202

1The Araxes is said by some to be greater and by some to be less than the Ister. It is reported that there are many islands in it as big as Lesbos, and men on them who in summer live on roots of all kinds that they dig up, and in winter on fruit that they have got from trees when it was ripe and stored for food;

2and they know (it is said) of trees bearing a fruit whose effect is this: gathering in groups and kindling a fire, the people sit around it and throw the fruit into the flames; then the fumes of it as it burns make them drunk as the Greeks are with wine, and more and more drunk as more fruit is thrown on the fire, until at last they rise up to dance and even sing. Such is said to be their way of life.

3The 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, of which all except one issue into bogs and swamps, where men are said to live whose food is raw fish, and their customary dress sealskins.

4The one remaining stream of the Araxes flows in a clear channel into the Caspian sea.This is a sea by itself, not joined to the other sea. For that on which the Greeks sail, and the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which they call Atlantic, and the Red Sea, are all one:

Chapter 203

1but 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 peaks than any other range. Many and all kinds of nations dwell in the Caucasus, and the most of them live on the fruits of the forest.

2Here, it is said, are trees growing leaves that men crush and mix with water and use for painting 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.

Chapter 204

1This 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 the eye can see. The greater part of this wide plain is the country of the Massagetae, against whom Cyrus was eager to lead his army.

2For there were many weighty reasons that impelled and encouraged him to do so: first, his birth, because of which he seemed to be something more than mortal; and next, his victories in his wars: for no nation that Cyrus undertook to attack could escape from him.

Chapter 205

1Now at this time the Massagetae were ruled by a queen called Tomyris, whose husband was dead. Cyrus sent a message with a pretence of wanting her for his wife, but Tomyris would have none of his advances, well understanding that he wanted not her but the kingdom of the Massagetae.

2So when guile was of no avail, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and openly prepared to attack the Massagetae; he bridged the river for his army to cross, and built towers on the pontoons bridging the river.

Chapter 206

1But while he was busy at this, Tomyris sent a herald to him with this message: “O king of the Medes, stop hurrying on what you are hurrying on, for you cannot know whether the completion of this work will be for your advantage. Stop, and be king of your own country; and endure seeing us ruling those whom we rule.

2But if you will not take this advice, and will do anything rather than remain at peace, then if you so greatly desire to try the strength of the Massagetae, stop your present work of bridging the river, and let us withdraw three days' journey from the Araxes; and when that is done, cross into our country.

3Or if you prefer to receive us into your country, then withdraw yourself as I have said.” Hearing this, Cyrus called together the leading Persians and laid the matter before them, asking them to advise him which he should do. They all spoke to the same end, urging him to let Tomyris and her army enter his country.

Chapter 207

1But Croesus the Lydian, who was present, was displeased by their advice and spoke against it. “O King,” he said, “you have before now heard from me that since Zeus has given me to you I will turn aside to the best of my ability whatever misadventure I see threatening your house. And disaster has been my teacher.

2Now, if you think that you and the army that you lead are immortal, I have no business giving you advice; but if you know that you and those whom you rule are only men, then I must first teach you this: men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning does not allow the same man to prosper forever.

3So, if that is the case, I am not of the same opinion about the business in hand as these other counsellors of yours. This is the danger if we agree to let the enemy 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 but will march against your provinces.

4And 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 weigh your chances against theirs, and suppose that when you have beaten your adversaries you will march for the seat of Tomyris' power.

5And besides what I have shown, it would be a shameful thing and not to be endured if Cyrus the son of Cambyses should yield and give ground before a woman. Now then, it occurs to me that we should cross and go forward as far as they draw back, and that then we should endeavor to overcome them by doing as I shall show.

6As I understand, the Massagetae have no experience of the good things of Persia, and have never fared well as to what is greatly desirable. Therefore, I advise you to cut up the meat of many of your sheep and goats into generous portions for these men, and to cook it and serve it as a feast in our camp, providing many bowls of unmixed wine and all kinds of food.

7Then let your army withdraw to the river again, leaving behind that part of it which is of least value. For if I am not mistaken in my judgment, when the Massagetae see so many good things they will give themselves over to feasting on them; and it will be up to us then to accomplish great things.”

Chapter 208

1So these opinions clashed; and Cyrus set aside his former plan and chose that of Croesus; consequently, he told Tomyris to draw her army off, for he would cross (he said) and attack her; so she withdrew as she had promised before. Then he entrusted Croesus to the care of his own son Cambyses, to whom he would leave his sovereignty, telling Cambyses to honor Croesus and treat him well if the crossing of the river against the Massagetae should not go well. With these instructions, he sent the two back to Persia, and he and his army crossed the river.

Chapter 209

1After he had crossed the Araxes, he dreamed that night while sleeping in the country of the Massagetae that he saw the eldest of Hystapes' sons with wings on his shoulders, the one wing overshadowing Asia and the other Europe.

2Hystaspes son of Arsames was an Achaemenid, and Darius was the eldest of his sons, then about twenty years old; this Darius had been left behind in Persia, not yet being of an age to go on campaign.

3So when Cyrus awoke he considered his vision, and because it seemed to him to be of great importance, he sent for Hystaspes and said to him privately, “Hystaspes, I have caught your son plotting against me and my sovereignty; and I will tell you how I know this for certain.

4The gods care for me and show me beforehand all that is coming. Now then, 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.

5From this vision, there is no way that he is not plotting against me. Therefore hurry back to Persia, and see that when I come back after subjecting this country you bring your son before me to be questioned about this.”

Chapter 210

1Cyrus said this, thinking that Darius was plotting against him; but in fact, heaven was showing him that he himself was to die in the land where he was and Darius inherit his kingdom.

2So then Hystaspes replied with this: “O King, may there not be any Persian born who would plot against you! But if there is, may he perish suddenly; for you have made the Persians free men instead of slaves and rulers of all instead of subjects of any.

3But if your vision does indeed signify that my son is planning revolution, I give him to you to treat as you like.”

Chapter 211

1After having given this answer and crossed the Araxes, Hystaspes went to Persia to watch his son for Cyrus; and Cyrus, advancing a day's journey from the Araxes, acted according to Croesus' advice.

2Cyrus and the sound portion of the Persian army marched back to the Araxes, leaving behind those that were useless; a third of the Massagetae forces attacked those of the army who were left behind and destroyed them despite resistance; then, when they had overcome their enemies, seeing the banquet spread they sat down and feasted, and after they had had their fill of food and wine, they fell asleep.

3Then the Persians attacked them, killing many and taking many more alive, among whom was the son of Tomyris the queen, Spargapises by name, the leader of the Massagetae.

Chapter 212

1When Tomyris heard what had happened to her army and her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus with this message:

2“Cyrus who can never get enough blood, do not be elated by what you have done; it is nothing to be proud of if, by the fruit of the vine—with which you Persians fill yourselves and rage so violently that evil words rise in a flood to your lips when the wine enters your bodies—if, by tricking him with this drug, you got the better of my son, and not by force of arms in battle.

3Now, then, take a word of good advice from me: give me back my son and leave this country unpunished, even though you have savaged a third of the Massagetae army. But if you will not, then I swear to you by the sun, lord of the Massagetae, that I shall give even you who can never get enough of it your fill of blood.”

Chapter 213

1Cyrus dismissed this warning when it was repeated to him. But Spargapises, the son of the queen Tomyris, after the wine wore off and he recognized his evil plight, asked Cyrus to be freed from his bonds; and this was granted him; but as soon as he was freed and had the use of his hands, he did away with himself.

Chapter 214

1Such was the end of Spargapises. Tomyris, when Cyrus would not listen to her, collected all her forces and engaged him. This fight I judge to have been the fiercest ever fought by men that were not Greek; and indeed I have learned that this was so.

2For first (it is said) they shot arrows at each other from a distance; then, when their arrows were all spent, they rushed at each other and fought with their spears and swords; and for a long time they stood fighting and neither would give ground; but at last the Massagetae got the upper hand.

3The greater part of the Persian army was destroyed there on the spot, and Cyrus himself fell there, after having reigned for one year short of thirty years.

4Tomyris filled a skin with human blood, and searched among the Persian dead for Cyrus' body; and when she found it, she pushed his head into the skin, and insulted the dead man in these words:

5“Though I am alive and have defeated you in battle, you have destroyed me, taking my son by guile; but just as I threatened, I give you your fill of blood.” Many stories are told of Cyrus' death; this, that I have told, is the most credible.

Chapter 215

1These Massagetae are like the Scythians in their dress and way of life. They are both cavalry and infantry (having some of each kind), and spearmen and archers; and it is their custom to carry battle-axes. They always use gold and bronze; all their spear-points and arrow-heads and battle-axes are bronze and the adornment of their headgear and belts and girdles is gold.

2They equip their horses similarly, protecting their chests with bronze breastplates and putting gold on reins, bits, and cheekplates. But they never use iron and silver, for there is none at all in their country, but gold and bronze abound.

Chapter 216

1Now 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, but a custom of the Massagetae. There, when a man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver before her wagon, and has intercourse with her without fear.

2Though they fix no certain term to life, yet when a man is very old all his family meet together and kill him, with beasts of the flock besides, then boil the flesh and feast on it.

3This is held to be the happiest death; when a man dies of an illness, they do not eat him, but bury him in the earth, and lament that he did not live to be killed. They never plant seed; their fare is their livestock and the fish which they take in abundance from the Araxes.

4Their drink is milk. The sun is the only god whom they worship; they sacrifice horses to him; the reasoning is that he is the swiftest of the gods, and therefore they give him the swiftest of mortal things.