easures. "When Sardes, suffering the vengeance of Zeus, was
conquered by the army of the Persians, the god of the golden sword,
Apollo, was the guardian of Croesus. When the day of despair arrived,
the king could not resign himself to tears and servitude; within the
brazen-walled court he erected a funeral pyre, on which, together with
his chaste spouse and his bitterly lamenting daughters of beautiful
locks, he mounted; he raised his hands towards the depths of the ether
and cried: 'Proud fate, where is the gratitude of the gods, where is the
prince, the child of Leto? Where is now the house of Alyattes?... The
ancient citadel of Sardes has fallen, the Pactolus of golden waves
runs red with blood; ignominiously are the women driven from their
well-decked chambers! That which was once my hated foe is now my friend,
and the sweetest thing is to die!' Thus he spoke, and ordered the softly
moving eunuch* to set fire to the wooden structure.

* The word translated "softly moving eunuch" is here perhaps
a proper name: the slave whose duty it was to kindle the
pyre was called Abrobatas in the version of the story chosen
by Bacchylides, while that adopted by the potter whose work
is reproduced on the opposite page, calls him Euthymos.

The maidens shrieked and threw their arms around their mother, for the
death before them was that most hated by mortals. But just when the
sparkling fury of the cruel fire had spread around, Zeus, calling up a
black-flanked cloud, extinguished the yellow flame.

Nothing is incredible of that which the will of the gods has decreed:
Apollo of Delos, seizing the old man, bore him, together with his
daughters of tender feet, into the Hyperborean land as a reward for
his piety, for no mortal had sent richer offerings to the illustrious
Pytho!"

[Illustration: 075.jpg CIMESUS ON HIS PYRE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph of the original in
the Museum of the Louvre.

This miraculous ending delighted the poets and inspired many fine
lines, but history could with difficulty accommodate itself to such a
materialistic intervention of a divine being, and sought a less
fabulous solution. The legend which appeared most probable to the worthy
Herodotus did not even admit that the Lydian king took his own life;
it was Cyrus who condemned him, either with a view of devoting the
first-fruits of his victory to the immortals, or to test whether the
immortals would