At this point things get a little weird. Kyaxares’s son Astyages becomes king of the Medes. He has no son, but instead a daughter named Mandane, about whom he dreamed a dreadfully prophetic dream. In the dream, Mandane peed and … Continue reading →
Herodotus warns us that he’s done his best to reconstruct Cyrus’s origin story from contemporary accounts, but that most of those accounts were pretty clearly written with the goal of flattering the Persians, so, who knows? Also for some reason … Continue reading →
Croesus shouted exhortations at the heavens, reminding the gods that he wasn’t the worst guy ever, and begging them to save him. Apollo or someone took pity on him, and sent a freak rainstorm that allowed the Persians to extinguish … 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 →
