carried the woman-born lion, because he thought that no enemy would ever attempt to climb a rock so steep and rugged. But Hyroiades had seen some one come down and pick up his helmet which had rolled from the wall. By this same path he went up himself and other Persians with him; and so was Sardeis taken and Kroisos made prisoner, when he had reigned for fourteen years and had been besieged for fourteen days, and when, as the oracle had foretold, he had destroyed a great power, namely his own. Then Cyrus raised a great pile of wood and laid Kroisos upon it bound in chains with fourteen of the Lydians, either because he wished to offer them up as the firstfruits of the victory or to see if any of the gods would deliver Kroisos who, as he had learnt, was one who greatly honoured them. Then to Kroisos in his great agony came back the words which Solon had spoken to him that no living man was happy; and as he thought on this, he sighed and after a long silence thrice called out the name of Solon. Hearing this, Cyrus bade the interpreters ask him whom he called; but for a long time he would not answer them. At last when they pressed him greatly, he told them that long ago Solon the Athenian came to see him and thought nothing of all his wealth, and how the words had come to pass which Solon spake, not thinking of him more than of any others who fancy that they are happy. While Kroisos thus spake, the edge of the pile was already kindled: but Cyrus, hearing the tale, remembered that he too was but a man and that he was now giving alive to the flames one who had been not less wealthy than himself, and when he thought also how man abideth not ever in one stay, he charged his people to put out the fire and bring Kroisos and the other Lydians down from the pile. But the flame was now too strong; and when Kroisos saw that the mind of Cyrus was changed, but that the men were not able to quench the flames, he prayed to Phoibos Apollon to come and save him, if ever he had done aught to please him in the days that were past. Then suddenly the wind rose, and clouds gathered where none had been before, and there burst from the heaven a great storm of rain which put out the blazing fire. So Cyrus knew that Kroisos was a good man and that the gods loved him: and when Kroisos came down from the pile, Cyrus asked him, 'Who persuaded thee to march into my land and to become my enemy rather than my friend?' 'The god of the Greeks urged me on,' answered Kroisos, for no man is so senseless as of his own pleasure to choose war in which the fathers bury their children rather than peace in which the children bury their fathers.' Meanwhile, the city was given to storm and plunder, and Kroisos, standing by the side of Cyrus who had loosed him from his chains, asked him what the Persians were

doing down below. Surely,' said Cyrus, 'they are plundering thy city and spoiling thy people of their goods.' 'Nay,' answered Kroisos; but it is thy wealth and thy goods which they are taking as booty, for I and my people now have nothing. But take good heed. The man who may get the most of this wealth will assuredly rise up against thee: so place thy guards at all the gates and bid them take all the goods, saying that a tithe must first be paid of them to Zeus, and thus thou wilt avoid the peril and no hate shall accrue to thee thereby.' For this good counsel Cyrus bade him ask as a gift what he should most desire to have; and Kroisos said, 'Let me send these fetters to the god of the Greeks and ask him if it be his wont to cheat those who have done him good.' When Cyrus learnt the reason for this prayer, he laughed and said that Kroisos might do this and aught else that he might wish. So men were sent to Delphoi to show the chains and to ask if the Hellenic gods were wont to be ungrateful; and when they came into the temple, the priestess said, 'Not even a god can escape the lot which is prepared for him, and Kroisos in the fifth generation has suffered for the sin of him who at the bidding of a woman slew his lord and seized his power. Much did the god strive that the evil might fall in his children's days and not on Kroisos himself; but he could not turn aside the Moirai. For three years he put off the taking of Sardeis, for thus much only they granted to him; and he came to his aid when the flame had grown fierce on the blazing pile. And yet more, he is wrong in blaming the god for the answer that if he went against the Persians he would destroy a great power, for he should then have asked if the god meant his own power or that of Cyrus; and therefore is be the cause of his own sorrow. Neither, again, would he understand what the god spake about the mule, for Cyrus himself was this mule, being the son of a Median woman, the daughter of Astyages, and of a man born of the meaner race of the Persians.' This answer the Lydians brought to Sardeis; and Kroisos knew that the god was guiltless and that the fault was all his

own.

character of

The didactic purpose, not less than the materials of this story, strips its incidents of all historical character. The artless remark of Herodotos that until Kroisos was actually taken no Unhistorical one had paid the least attention to the plain warning, all the deuttered five generations before, that the fifth from tails. Gyges should atone the old wrong, proves at the least that the prediction grew up after the catastrophe, even if it proves no more; and the fabrication of one prophecy brings the rest under the same suspicion. But the narrative convicts itself in other ways. Unless when a literal acceptation of oracular responses is needed to

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nezzar, but which, if we are to believe Herodotos, was to Kroisos the strongest motive for measuring his strength against that of the Persian king. For Kyaxares himself the troubles of the Scythian inroad were followed, if we may believe the story, by a brilliant triumph when with the aid of the Babylonian Nabopolassar he overthrew the ancient dynasty of the Assyrian kings and made Nineveh a dependency of the sovereigns of Media. Over the vast territory thus brought under Median rule the Persian king became the lord, on the ending of the struggle which is described as the war between Cyrus and Astyages.

geography of Persia Proper.

The supremacy in Asia thus passed into the hands of a king whose chief strength lay in that comparatively small country which Physical still bears the name of Fars or Farsistan. This was the home of the dominant tribe in Iran or the land of the Aryans, a term already used in an indefinitely contracted meaning. By Herodotos this region is called a scanty and rugged land,2-a description not altogether unbefitting a country which, with the exception of the hot district or strip of plain lying between the mountains and the coast line, consists chiefly of the high plateau formed by the continuation of the mountain-system, which, having furnished a boundary to the Mesopotamian plain, turns eastwards and broadens out into the high land of Persia Proper. Of the whole of this country it may be said that where there is water, there is fertility; but much that is now desert was doubtless rich in grass and fruits in the days when Cyrus is said to have warned his people that, if they migrated to a wealthier soil, they must bid farewell to their supremacy among the nations. Strong in a mountain-barrier pierced by astonishingly precipitous gorges along which roads wind in zigzag or are thrown across furious torrents on bridges of a single span, this beautiful or desolate land was not rich in the number of its cities. Near Murgab, about sixty miles almost due north of Shiraz, are the ruins of Pasargadai, probably in its original form Parsa-gherd or the castle of the Persians.3 On a larger plain, about half-way between these two towns, rose the second capital Persepolis. The two streams by which this plain is watered maintain the exquisite verdure which a supply of water never fails to produce in Persia. But rugged in parts and sterile as this plateau may be, it must be distinguished from that vast region which at a height varying between 3000 and 5000 feet extends from the Zagros and Elburz ranges on

1 Herod. i. 73.

2 ix. 122.

3 Mr. Rawlinson compares the name Parsa-gherd with the names Darab-gherd, Lasjird, Burujird, as

well as with the Latinised names of the Parthian cities Tigranocerta, Carcathrocerta. This termination is found again in our girth and garth.

the west and north over an area of 1100 by 500 miles to the Suliman and Hala mountains on the east, and on the south to the great coast chain which continues the plateau of Persia Proper almost as far as the Indus. Of this immense region, nearly two-thirds are absolute desert, in which the insignificant streams fail before the summer heats instead of affording nourishment to vegetation. In such a country the habits of a large proportion of the population will naturally be nomadic; and the fresher pastures and more genial climate of the hills and valleys about Ekbatana would draw many a roving clan with their herds and tents from regions scorched by a heat which left them no water.

The Median and Lydian dynasties.

Into the vast empire ruled by the lord of these Aryan tribes there was now to be absorbed another kingdom which had grown up to great power and splendour on the west of the river Halys, the stream which, flowing from the Tauros range, discharges itself into the Euxine about sixty miles to the east of the Greek settlement of Sinôpê. This stream was the boundary which separated the Semitic inhabitants of Asia Minor on its eastern side from the non-Hellenic nations on the west, who acknowledged a certain brotherhood not only between themselves but with the Thrakian tribes beyond the Hellespont and the Chersonese. The conquests which had brought the Lydian king thus far placed him in dangerous proximity with a power not less aggressive and more formidable than his own. By a strange coincidence (if any trust at all may be placed on the narrative) the dynasty represented by Kroisos the last Lydian king had supplanted the ancient line of the Herakleidai (whatever this name may mean) about the same time when the Median power asserted its independence of the Assyrian empire. But the relations which existed between Kroisos and the Greeks of Asia Minor imparted to the catastrophe at Sardeis a significance altogether beyond that which could be attached to the mere transference of power from the despot Astyages to the despot Cyrus.

The Lydian kingdom had grown up in a country inhabited by a number of tribes, between most or perhaps all of whom there existed some sort of affinity. These tribes, whatever

Minor.

Geography may have been their origin, were spread over a region of Asia of whose loveliness Herodotos speaks with a proud enthusiasm. The beauty of climate, the richness of soil, and the splendour of scenery which made Ionia for him the most delightful of all earthly lands, were not confined to the exquisite valleys in which for the most part the Hellenic inhabitants of Asia Minor had fixed their homes; and the only drawback even to the colder

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1 Herod. i. 142.

parts of this vast peninsula was that, while they yielded grain, fruits, and cattle, they would not produce the olive. These colder parts lay on the large central plain to the north of the chain of Tauros which, starting from the Chelidonian or southeastern promontory of Lykia, extends its huge mountain-barrier to the north of the Kilikian country, until its chain is broken by the Euphrates a little below the point where this stream receives the waters of the Kappadokian Melas or black river. This great plateau runs off towards the north, west, and south, into a broken country whence the mountains slope down to the sea, bearing in their valleys the streams which keep up its perpetual freshness. Stretching in a southwesterly direction from the mouth of the Hellespont, the mountains of Ida, Gargaros, Plakos, and Temnos form the southern boundary of the lands through which the Granikos, Aisepos, and Rhyndakos find their way into the Propontis or sea of Marmora. Striking to the southeast from Mount Temnos until it meets the range of Tauros runs a mountain chain which sends out to the southwest a series of ridges between which lie the most celebrated plains of Asia Minor, each watered by its own stream and its tributaries. In the triangle formed by the mountains of Gargaros and Temnos on the north and mount Pelekas on the south, the streams of Kaikos and Euênos flow into the Elaiatic gulf between Elaia and Pitanê, the latter place being about ten miles distant from the rocks of Argennoussai (disastrous in later Athenian history), opposite to the southeastern promontory of Lesbos. Again between mount Pelekas on the north and the mountains of Sipylos and Tmolos on the south lies the valley of the Hermos which, a few miles to the north of the citadel of Sardeis, receives the waters of the Paktolos, and flowing westward past the Sipylan Magnesia, turns to the south near the city of Temnos and runs into the Egean about midway between Smyrna and Phokaia. To the east of Smyrna rise the heights of Olympos and Drakon, which may be regarded as a westward extension of mount Tmolos, between which and mount Messogis the Kaystros finds its way to the sea hard by Ephesos and about ten miles to the east of Kolophon. Finally beneath the southern slopes of Messogis the winding Maiandros, having received not far from Tralleis the waters of the Marsyas, goes on its westward way until, a little below the Maiandrian Magnesia, it turns like the Hermos to the south, and running by Thymbria and Myous on its left bank discharges itself into the gulf which bears its name, precisely opposite to the promontory of Miletos. From this point stretch to westward the Latmian hills where, as the tale went, Selênê came to gaze upon Endymion in his dreamless sleep. Thus each between its mountainwalls, the four streams, Kaïkos, Hermos, Kaystros, and Maiandros,