opinion of Ladet on this point.

** Herodotus and Nicolas of Damascus confine themselves to
relating the capture of the city; adds that the Lydians
compelled the inhabitants to dwell in unfortified towns.
Schubert thinks that the passage in Strabo refers, not to
the time of Alyattes, but to a subsequent event in the fifth
century; he relies for this opinion on a fragment of Pindar,
which represents Smyrna as still flourishing in his time.
But, as Busolt has pointed out, the intention of the text of
Pindar is to represent the state of the city at about the
time of Homer's birth, and not in the fifth century.

*** The peace between Ephesus and Lydia must have been
troubled for a little while in the reign of Sadyattes, but
it was confirmed under Alyattes by the marriage of Melas II.
with one of the king's daughters.

Most of them had already taken place or were still proceeding when the
irruption of the Medes across the Halys obliged him to concentrate all
his energies on the eastern portion of his kingdom.

The current tradition in Lydia of a century later attributed the
conflict of the two peoples to a romantic cause. It related that
Cyaxares had bestowed his favour on the bands of Scythians who had
become his mercenaries on the death of Madyes, and that he had entrusted
to them the children of some of the noblest Medic families, that they
might train them to hunt and also teach them the use of the bow. One
day, on their returning from the chase without any game, Cyaxares
reproached them for their want of skill in such angry and insulting
terms, that they resolved on immediate revenge. They cut one of the
children in pieces, which they dressed after the same manner as that
in which they were accustomed to prepare the game they had killed, and
served up the dish to the king; then, while he was feasting upon it with
his courtiers, they lied in haste and took refuge with Alyattes. The
latter welcomed them, and refused to send them back to Cyaxares;
hence the outbreak of hostilities. It is, of course, possible that the
emigration of a nomad horde may have been the cause of the war,* but
graver reasons than this had set the two nations at variance.

* Grote has collected a certain number of examples in later
times to show that the journeying of a nomad horde from one
state to another may provoke wars, and he concludes
therefrom th