popular favour. Alyattes, however, was advancing in years, and was soon
about to rejoin his adversaries Cyaxares and Nebuchadrezzar in Hades.
Like the Pharaohs, the kings of Lydia were accustomed to construct
during their lifetime the monuments in which they were to repose after
death. Their necropolis was situated not far from Sardes, on the shores
of the little lake Gygaea; it was here, close to the resting-place of
his ancestors and their wives, that Alyattes chose the spot for his
tomb,** and his subjects did not lose the opportunity of proving to what
extent he had gained their affections.

* The fragment of Nicolas of Damascus does not speak of the
result of the war, but it was certainly favourable, for
Herodotus counts the Carians among Croesus' subjects.

** The only one of these monuments, besides that of
Alyattes, which is mentioned by the ancients, belonged to
one of the favourites of Gyges, and was called _the Tomb of
the Courtesan_. Strabo, by a manifest error, has applied
this name _to_ the tomb of Alyattes.

[Illustration: 050.jpg THE TUMULUS OF ALYATTES AND THE ENTRANCE TO THE
PASSAGE]

Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch by Spiegolthal.

His predecessors had been obliged to finish their work at their own
expense and by forced labour;* but in the case of Alyattes the three
wealthiest classes of the population, the merchants, the craftsmen, and
the courtesans, all united to erect for him an enormous tumulus, the
remains of which still rise 220 feet above the plains of the Hermus.

* This, at least, seems to be the import of the passage in Clearchus of
Soli, where that historian gives an account of the erection of the _Tomb
of the Courtesan_.

[Illustration: 051.jpg ONE OF THE LYDIAN ORNAMENTS IN THE LOUVRE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The sub-structure consisted of a circular wall of great blocks of
limestone resting on the solid rock, and it contained in the centre
a vault of grey marble which was reached by a vaulted passage. A huge
mound of red clay and yellowish earth was raised above the chamber,
surmounted by a small column representing a phallus, and by four stelae
covered with inscriptions, erected at the four cardinal points. It
follows the traditional type of burial-places in use among the old
Asianic races, but it is constructed with greater regularity than most
of them; Alyattes was laid within it in 561, after a