Woo! As the title of this post says, I’m the listener sponsor of this week’s War Rocket Ajax, or, more properly, Arthur Dies at the End is. I really should have come up with some better ad copy, but Matt and … Continue reading →
So let me remind you where we are in the narrative: Croesus, king of Lydia, had decided to invade Syria with the aid of his allies the Lacedemonians, better known to us as the Spartans. Syria or maybe southern Turkey, … Continue reading →
And now the Spartans! A while back, they’d had just a terrible code of laws, total bull, but then Lycurgos (no relation to the Lycurgos who was Peisistratos’s political enemy) visited the Oracle of Delphi and they proclaimed him to … Continue reading →
Once upon a time, Croesus said (Herodotus says), a group of Scythian refugees came to the land of Medes, at the time ruled by Kyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deïokes. Kyaxares initially was a great host to these refugees: … Continue reading →
Croesus’s question for the Oracle of Delphi was actually a two-parter: A) Should Croesus attack the Persians? B) If so, whom should he ally himself with? The Oracles (suddenly they are plural) accepted the gifts and heard Croesus’s questions, delivered … Continue reading →
Adrastos, Atys, and a picked crew of young men with dogs went out boar-hunting. They circled Mount Olympus (which is where the boar was), found the boar, cornered it, and readied to kill. And then, as I’m sure you totally … Continue reading →
And then the gods punished Croesus for his arrogance, says Herodotus, in a rare bit of editorializing. The gods sent him a prophetic dream, in which his son and heir, Atys, was slain with an iron spear-point. Croesus awoke confined … Continue reading →
Once in office, Croesus invaded his neighbors, straight away. Specifically he attacked the Ephesians, because they handy, on some pretext Herodotus doesn’t bother to report. He attacked other city-states one after another, each time finding some excuse that put him … Continue reading →
According to Herodotus, Gyges’s son and grandson did not lead terribly interesting lives. War, invasion, yadda yadda. But his great-grandson (Croesus’s father) Atyattes was a little better; he performed other deeds very worthy of mention. He inherited a war with … Continue reading →
The next morning Candi warned all the household servants that she thought were loyal to her about how something was up. She summoned Gyges, who came in whistling nonchalantly, hands in his pockets, like he had no reason to be … Continue reading →
