rue or
no--and most probably it is an anticipation of later occurrences--it
is certain that, instead of folding his hands, Cyrus proceeded with
scarcely a pause on a long career of conquest, devoting his whole life
to the carrying out of his plans of aggression, and leaving a portion
of his schemes, which were too extensive for one life to realize, as a
legacy to his successor. The quarter to which he really first turned
his attention seems to have been the north-west. There, in the somewhat
narrow but most fertile tract between the river Halys and the Egean Sea,
was a state which seemed likely to give him trouble--a state which had
successfully resisted all the efforts of the Medes to reduce it, and
which recently, under a warlike prince, had shown a remarkable power
of expansion. An instinct of danger warned the scarce firmly-settled
monarch to fix his eye at once upon Lydia; in the wealthy and successful
Croesus, the Lydian king, he saw one whom dynastic interests might
naturally lead to espouse the quarrel of the conquered Mede, and whose
power and personal qualities rendered him a really formidable rival.

The Lydian monarch, on his side, did not scruple to challenge a contest.
The long strife which his father had waged with the great Cyaxares
had terminated in a close alliance, cemented by a marriage, which made
Croesus and Astyages brothers. The friendship of the great power of
Western Asia, secured by this union, had set Lydia free to pursue
a policy of self-aggrandizement in her own immediate, neighborhood.
Rapidly, one after another, the kingdoms of Asia Minor had been reduced;
and, excepting the mountain districts of Lycia and Cilicia, all Asia
within the Halys now owned the sway of the Lydian king. Contented with
his successes, and satisfied that the tie of relationship secured him
from attack on the part of the only power which he had need to fear,
Croesus had for some years given himself up to the enjoyment of his
gains and to an ostentatious display of his magnificence. It was a rude
shock to the indolent and self-complacent dreams of a sanguine optimism,
which looked that "to-morrow should be as to-day, only much more
abundant," when tidings came that revolution had raised its head in the
far south-east, and that an energetic prince, in the full vigor of life,
and untrammelled by dynastic ties, had thrust the aged Astyages from
his throne, and girt his own brows with the Imperial diadem. Croesus,
accordi