t were unsuccessful in their efforts, and their
failure had discouraged all further attempts, when a Mardian soldier,
named Hyreades, on duty at the foot of the steep slopes overlooking the
Tmolus, saw a Lydian descend from rock to rock in search of his helmet
which he had lost, and regain the city by the same way without any great
difficulty. He noted carefully the exact spot, and in company with a few
comrades climbed up till he reached the ramparts; others followed, and
taking the besieged unawares, they opened the gates to the main body of
the army.*

* About three and a half centuries later Sardes was captured
in the same way by one of the generals of Antiochus the
Great.

Croesus could not bear to survive the downfall of his kingdom: he
erected a funeral pyre in the courtyard of his palace, and took up his
position on it, together with his wives, his daughters, and the noblest
youths of his court, surrounded by his most precious possessions.
He could cite the example of more than one vanquished monarch of the
ancient Asiatic world in choosing such an end, and one of the fabulous
ancestors of his race, Sandon-Herakles, had perished after this fashion
in the midst of the flames. Was the sacrifice carried out? Everything
leads us to believe that it was, but popular feeling could not be
resigned to the idea that a prince who had shown such liberality towards
the gods in his prosperity should be abandoned by them in the time
of his direst need. They came to believe that the Lydian monarch had
expiated by his own defeat the crime by the help of which his ancestor
Gyges had usurped the throne. Apollo had endeavoured to delay the
punishment till the next generation, that it might fall on the son of
his votary, but he had succeeded in obtaining from fate a respite of
three years only. Even then he had not despaired, and had warned Croesus
by the voice of the oracles. They had foretold him that, in crossing the
Halys, the Lydians ^would destroy a great empire, and that their power
would last till the day when a mule should sit upon the throne of Media.
Croesus, blinded by fate, could not see that Cyrus, who was of mixed
race, Persian by his father and Median by his mother, was the predicted
mule. He therefore crossed the Halys, and a great empire fell, but it
was his own. At all events, the god might have desired to show that to
honour his altars and adorn his temple was in itself, after all, the
best of tr