The Boys' Book of Rulers. Farmer Lydia Hoyt
The replies were all unsatisfactory, except the Delphic oracle. Crœsus now decided that this was the oracle upon which he must rely, and immediately made preparations to send most magnificent and costly presents to the Delphic shrine. Some of the treasures were to be deposited in the temple, and some were to be offered as a burnt sacrifice to the god.
After the ceremonies were completed, everything that had been used in the services, including gold and silver vessels, richly embroidered garments, and numerous other costly articles, were gathered into one vast funeral pile and burnt. So much gold had been employed in making these things, that it melted in the fire and ran into plates of great size. These were then collected and formed into an image of a lion, which was placed in the temple. Crœsus also presented the temple with a silver cistern, or tank, large enough to hold three thousand gallons of wine. There was one strange piece of statuary which he sent to this shrine, which we must not omit to mention. It was a statue of gold of a woman-servant in the household of Crœsus. It was called The Breadmaker. Its origin was this: —
When Crœsus was a child, his mother died, and his father married again. His stepmother desired to have one of her children succeed to the throne instead of Crœsus. So she gave some poison to the woman who was accustomed to make the bread for the family, telling her to put it in the portion intended for Crœsus. This servant, however, instead of minding the wicked queen, revealed the plot to Crœsus, and put the poison in the bread of the queen’s own children. In gratitude for his preservation by this slave, Crœsus ordered a statue of gold to be made in her honor, when he came to the throne; and this he sent to the temple at Delphi. After Crœsus had presented all these magnificent gifts to the shrine, he consulted the oracle. The answer was as follows: —
“If Crœsus crosses the Halys and prosecutes a war with Persia, a mighty empire will be overthrown. It will be best for him to form an alliance with the most powerful states of Greece.”
Crœsus was much pleased with this answer, and then asked furthermore, whether his power would ever decline.
The oracle replied, —
“Whenever a mule shall mount upon the Median throne, then, and not till then, shall great Crœsus fear to lose his own.”
These replies strengthened the belief of Crœsus that he should be victorious; but as the sequel shows, we will learn how vague and indefinite were the answers of the oracles, and so given that they could correspond with the event, whatever might be the result.
Crœsus now sent ambassadors to Sparta to seek their aid, and meanwhile went on making great preparations for his campaign. When all things were ready, the army commenced its march eastward until it reached the river Halys.
The army encamped upon its banks until some plan could be formed for crossing the river. Crœsus had with his army a very celebrated engineer named Thales. This engineer succeeded in getting the army of Crœsus over the river by ordering a large force of laborers to cut a new channel for the river behind the army, into which the water flowed, and Crœsus and his force passed on. Cyrus had heard of his approach, and soon the armies were face to face.
Cyrus had been conquering all the nations in his path, as he went forward to meet Crœsus, and thus had been reinforced by all of the neighboring people, except the Babylonians, who were allied with Crœsus against him. A great battle was fought at Pteria, which continued all day, and at its close the combatants separated without either of them having gained much advantage.
Crœsus thinking that this battle was enough for the present, and supposing that Cyrus would now go home, having found that he could not overcome him, determined to return to his own city Sardis, and there prepare for a more vigorous campaign in the spring.
Cyrus quietly remained in his position until Crœsus had time to return to Sardis. Whereupon, he followed with his entire army.
Crœsus was now thoroughly alarmed, and collecting all the forces he could command, he marched forth to a great plain just without the city, to meet Cyrus.
The Lydian army was superior to that of Cyrus in cavalry, and upon this plain they would have a much greater advantage. To avoid this, Cyrus ordered all his large train of camels, which had been employed as beasts of burden, to be drawn up in line in front of his army, each one having a soldier upon his back, armed with a spear.
It is said that horses cannot endure the sight or smell of a camel; and when the two armies met, the cavalry of Crœsus, riding furiously to the attack, were confronted by the line of huge, awkward camels, with their soldier riders. The horses were so frightened by the spectacle, that they turned and fled in dismay, trampling down their own forces, and causing complete confusion in the Lydian army. The army of Crœsus was totally defeated, and they fled into the city of Sardis and entrenched themselves there.
Cyrus now besieged the city for fourteen days, endeavoring to find some place to scale the walls which surrounded it. One part of the wall passed over rocky precipices which were considered impassable. At length one of the soldiers of Cyrus, named Hyræades, observed one of the sentinels, who was stationed on the wall overlooking the precipice, leave his post, and come partway down the rocks to get his helmet, which had dropped down. Hyræades reported this incident to Cyrus, and so an attempt was made to scale the walls at that point. It was successful, and thus the city was taken. It is reported that in the confusion and noise of storming the city the life of Crœsus was saved by the miraculous speaking of his deaf-and-dumb son. Cyrus had commanded his soldiers not to kill Crœsus, but that they should take him alive, and he should then be brought to him. As Crœsus was escaping with his son a party of Persian soldiers took him prisoner, and were about to kill him, not knowing who he was, when the dumb boy cried out, —
“It is Crœsus; do not kill him!”
Cyrus had not ordered Crœsus to be spared from any motives of kindness; but that he himself might determine his fate.
He commanded Crœsus to be put in chains, and a huge funeral pile to be built in a public square, and Crœsus and fourteen of the young Lydian nobles were placed upon the pile.
Just as the torch was applied, Crœsus cried out in a tone of anguish and despair, —
“Oh, Solon! Solon! Solon!”
The officers who had charge of the execution asked him what he meant, and Cyrus, also hearing him, and being desirous of receiving an explanation of his mysterious words, commanded the fires to be put out, and ordered Crœsus to be unbound and to be brought to him. Cyrus now treated Crœsus with much kindness.
Crœsus was very much incensed against the oracle at Delphi for having deceived him by false predictions; but the priests of the oracle replied that the destruction of the Lydian dynasty had long been decreed by fate on account of the guilt of Gyges, the founder of the line, who had murdered the rightful monarch, and usurped the crown. The oracles had foretold that a mighty empire would be overthrown, and Crœsus had wrongly imagined that it referred to the destruction of the kingdom of Cyrus. As to the other prediction made by the oracle, that when he should find a mule upon the throne of Media, he would lose his own, this had been fulfilled, as Cyrus, who was descended from the Persians on his father’s side, and from the Medians on his mother’s, had thus become a hybrid sovereign, represented by the mule.
In his advance towards the dominions of Crœsus in Asia Minor, Cyrus had passed to the northward of the great and celebrated city of Babylon. He had now conquered all the nations from the Ægean Sea to the river Euphrates. He then subdued Syria and Arabia. After this he entered into Assyria and advanced towards Babylon, the only large city of the East yet unsubdued.
The taking of Babylon is one of the greatest events in ancient history, and the principal circumstances with which it was attended were foretold in the Bible many years before it happened. Babylon, at this time, was the most magnificent city in the world. It was situated in a large plain, and was surrounded by walls which were eighty-seven feet thick, three hundred and fifty feet high, and sixty miles in circumference. These walls were in the form of a square, each side of which was fifteen miles long. They were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, which bound bricks so firmly together that the mortar soon became harder than the bricks themselves. This wall was surrounded by a deep, wide trench filled with water. The great wall of Babylon contained 200,000,000