over them; and when the expulsion was
completed, gratitude or habit made them willing to continue in the
subject position which they had assumed in order to effect it. Cyaxares
within less than ten years from his capture of Nineveh had added to his
empire the fertile and valuable tracts of Armenia and Cappadocia--never
really subject to Assyria--and may perhaps have further mastered the
entire region between Armenia and the Caucasus and Euxine.

The advance of their western frontier to the river Halys, which was
involved in the absorption of Cappadocia into the Empire, brought the
Medes into contact with a new power--a power which, like Media, had been
recently increasing in greatness, and which was not likely to submit to
a foreign yoke without a struggle. The Lydian kingdom was one of great
antiquity in this part of Asia. According to traditions current among
its people, it had been established more than seven hundred years at the
time when Cyaxares pushed his conquests to its borders. Three dynasties
of native kings--Atyadse, Heraclidse, and Mermnadae--had successively
held the throne during that period. The Lydians could repeat the names
of at least thirty monarchs who had borne sway in Sardis, their capital
city, since its foundation. They had never been conquered. In the old
times, indeed, Lydus, the son of Atys, had changed the name of the
people inhabiting the country from Maeonians to Lydians--a change which
to the keen sense of an historical critic implies a conquest of one race
by another. But to the people themselves this tradition conveyed no such
meaning; or, if it did to any, their self-complacency was not disturbed
thereby, since they would hug the notion that they belonged not to the
conquered race but to the conquerors. If a Ramcsos or a Sesostris had
ever penetrated to their country, he had met with a brave resistance,
and had left monuments indicating his respect for their courage.
Neither Babylon nor Assyria had ever given a king to the Lydians--on the
contrary, the Lydian tradition was, that they had themselves sent forth
Belus and Ninus from their own country to found dynasties and cities in
Mesopotamia. In a still more remote age they had seen their colonists
embark upon the western waters, and start for the distant Hesperia,
where they had arrived in safety, and had founded the great Etruscan
nation. On another occasion they had carried their arms beyond the
limits of Asia Minor, and had marched