Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/213

FATE OF CRCESUS. 195 of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own, un- recorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the historical web being in part put together, in part originally spun, for the purpose of setting forth the religious sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess predicts to Gyges that the crime which he had committed in assassinating his mas- ter would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as Herod- otus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was at last fulfilled : l we see thus that the history of the first Mermnad king is made up after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the main facts of the history of Croesus profoundly striking to the Greek mind : a king at the summit of wealth and power, pious in the extreme, and munificent towards the gods, the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia, then precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much towards the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story (discussed in a former chapter 2 ) of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction, because he thought himself the happiest of mankind, the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except them- selves ; 3 and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative ol Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was ruined, but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moeras could be invoked to ex- plain so stupendous a result. It is rarely that these supreme goddesses, or hyper-goddesses since the gods themselves must submit to them are brought into such distinct light and action. Usually, they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling-block 1 Ilerodot. i, 13. 1 See above, chap, xi, vol. iii, pp. 149-153. ' Herodot. vii, 10. oil -/up ly. Qpovzetv a/J.ov (ieya 6 t?cof ;} i