save the rival whose piety had been so frequently held
up to his admiration. The edges of the pyre had already taken light,
when the Lydian king sighed and thrice repeated the name of Solon. It
was a tardy recollection of a conversation in which the Athenian sage
had stated, without being believed, that none can be accounted truly
happy while they still live. Cyrus, applying it to himself, was seized
with remorse or pity, and commanded the bystanders to quench the fire,
but their efforts were in vain. Thereupon Croesus implored the pity of
Apollo, and suddenly the sky, which up till then had been serene and
clear, became overcast; thick clouds collected, and rain fell so
heavily that the burning pile was at once extinguished.*

* The story told by Nicolas of Damascus comes down probably
from Xanthus of Lydia, but with many additions borrowed
directly from Herodotus and rhetorical developments by the
author himself. Most other writers who tell the story depend
for their information, either directly or indirectly, on
Herodotus: in later times it was supposed that the Lydian
king was preserved from the flames by the use of some
talisman such as the Ephesian letters.

Well treated by his conqueror, the Lydian king is said to have become
his friend and most loyal counsellor; he accepted from him the fief of
Barene in Media, often accompanied him in his campaigns, and on more
than one occasion was of great service to him by the wise advice which
he gave.

We may well ask what would have taken place had he gained the decisive
victory over Cyrus that he hoped. Chaldaea possessed merely the semblance
of her former greatness and power, and if she still maintained her hold
over Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and parts of Arabia, it was because
these provinces, impoverished by the Assyrian conquest, and entirely
laid waste by the Scythians, had lost the most energetic elements
of their populations, and felt themselves too much enfeebled to
rise against their suzerain. Egypt, like Chaldaea, was in a state of
decadence, and even though her Pharaohs attempted to compensate for the
inferiority of their native troops by employing foreign mercenaries,
their attempts at Asiatic rule always issued in defeat, and just as the
Babylonian sovereigns were unable to reduce them to servitude, so they
on their part were powerless to gain an advantage over the sovereigns of
Babylon. Hence Lydia, in her yo