Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/261

THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 245 in 650 B.C. ; but neither his death nor his defeat were fraught with grave consequences. The invaders, after having ravaged the peninsula, retired as suddenly as they had come ; and, once the storm was over, the Lydian monarchy resumed the work- momentarily interrupted at the point where it had been left. Ionia had suffered quite as much as Lydia ; but the latter, with Ardys and his three successors, Sadyattes, Alyattes, and Crcesus, was not only able to reconstitute her military power, but to harass the Greek maritime cities with repeated and frequent attacks for the space of a hundred years. Jealousy of one another prevented these small communities banding together for the purpose of opposing a stout resistance against the common foe ; singly they could not levy a sufficient number of troops to oppose with any hope of success the cavalry squadrons which the Lydian princes, at all times, were able to pour into their territory. Miletus, despite the gallantry and excellence of her infantry, was compelled to renounce keeping the field ; for at each fresh attack her soldiers had to withdraw behind the walls, whence they beheld the burning of their homesteads and their crops, the falling of their olive trees under the axe. No courage is proof against a long-enforced inactivity. The fall of Smyrna was followed by that of Ephesus, and, if we except Miletus, there was scarcely a town that did not pay tribute towards the end of Croesus's reign. On the other hand, the Lydian empire had by degrees spread as far as the Taurus range and the Halys, and the latter would thenceforth form its boundary line towards the Median empire. The treaty of 585 B.C., between Cyaxares and Alyattes, after years of warfare, provided a family alliance between the two dynasties, and fixed the great river as frontier of the two empires. 1 Thus Lydia belonged to Asia, be it from the despotic character of her monarchy supported by a large army, or the relations she had opened in the day of Gyges with Asur-nat-Sirpal, or those she subsequently entered into with the Medes, inheritors of the Assyrians, along with the Babylonian successors of Nebuchad- 1 Herodotus (L 73, 74) specifies all the peoples subject to Croesus as if they had been subdued by him ; Croesus, however, did but complete the work com- menced by his predecessors. Nicholas of Damascus (Fr. 65) speaks of the war Alyattes waged against the Carians ; but the long struggle he likewise carried on with the Medes must have taken place near the Halys, perhaps on the eastern bank.