ess is yours to give."

[26] Cyrus answered, "Give me time to deliberate, Croesus. I bear in
mind your former happiness and I pity you. I give you back at once your
wife and your daughters (for they tell me you have daughters), and your
friends and your attendants; they are yours once more. And yours it is
to sit at your own table as you used to live. But battles and wars I
must put out of your power."

[27] "Now by the gods above us," cried Croesus, "you need take no
further thought about your answer: if you will do for me what you say,
I shall live the life that all men called the happiest of lives, and I
knew that they were right." [28] "And who," said Cyrus, "who was it that
lived that life of happiness?" "My own wife," said Croesus; "she shared
all my good things with me, my luxuries, my softest joys; but in the
cares on which those joys were based, in war and battle and strife, she
had no part or lot. Methinks, you will provide for me as I provided for
her whom I loved beyond all others in the world, and I must needs send
to Apollo again, and send thank-offerings."

[29] And as Cyrus listened he marvelled at the man's contentedness of
soul, and for the future wherever he went he took Croesus with him,
either because he thought he might be useful or perhaps because he felt
it was safer so.

[C.3] So for that night they rested. But the next day Cyrus called his
friends and generals together and told some to make an inventory of
their treasures and others to receive all the wealth that Croesus
brought in. First they were to set aside for the gods all that the
Persian priests thought fit, and then store the rest in coffers, weight
them, and pack them on waggons, distributing the waggons by lot to take
with them on the march, so that they could receive their proper share at
any convenient time. [2] So they set about the work.

Then Cyrus called some of his squires and said:

"Tell me, have any of you seen Abradatas? I wonder that he who used to
come to me so often is nowhere to be found."

[3] Then one of the squires made answer, "My lord, he is dead: he fell
in the battle, charging straight into the Egyptian ranks: the rest, all
but his own companions, swerved before their close array. [4] And now,"
he added, "we hear that his wife has found his body and laid it in her
own car, and has brought it here to the banks of the Pactolus. [5] Her
chamberlains and her attendants are digging a grave for the dead man
upo