The Rise of Athens

He mobilized his army and led it northeastwards. He found Cyrus in Paphlagonia and an indecisive battle ensued. He attributed his lack of success to his army being much smaller than that of Cyrus. He decided to return to the safety of Sardis and disband his troops, who were all mercenaries. Winter was approaching, when wars were not usually fought, and he would spend the interval before spring seeking allies and reinforcements. He concluded a military alliance with the Bab;ylonians, who could imagine themselves being next on Cyrus’s imperial shopping list if Lydia fell. Apparently he also sent embassies to Egypt, which might regard the emergence of a new and aggressive power in the Middle East with alarm, and to the Spartans, who had no obvious locus in the conflict and were not interested.

Cyrus liked to fight a war of movement, and saw the Lydian withdrawal and demobilization as an opportunity. He followed hot on Croesus’s heels and, much to the king’s dismay, soon appeared outside Sardis. A new army was swiftly raised and Croesus led it out against the Persians. Cyrus unexpectedly used camels as cavalry. They frightened the Lydian horses, which turned around and fled as soon as they caught the camels’ scent. The Lydian infantry fought on bravely, but the day belonged to Cyrus, who now placed Sardis under siege.

Nothing happened for a time. Then one day a Lydian guard on the city’s citadel accidentally dropped his helmet down a cliffside, so precipitous that it had not been fortified. The man scrambled down the slope, retrieved his helmet, and climbed back up without difficulty. A Persian happened to be watching and realized he had witnessed a way into the city. He passed the word to Cyrus.

In this period siege machines and artillery were incapable of destroying strongly built walls, but once a few men had managed by trickery, treachery, or clever observation to bypass the defenses, a city’s fate was usually sealed. Cyrus made good use of the intelligence he had received and Sardis fell.

A legend grew that Cyrus intended to burn Croesus alive, but that a timely rainstorm doused the flames. Perhaps it was the doing of Apollo, feeling a little guilty at having so comprehensively hoodwinked a loyal admirer. What happened to him in truth is unknown. He may have become an adviser at the Persian court. But the Babylonians told a different story.

Cyrus, king of Persia, called up his army and crossed the Tigris….In the month of Aiaru (May/June) he marched against the country of Lydia…killed its king, took his possessions, put there a garrison of his own.

But of one thing there could be no doubt. Croesus had allowed himself to be misled by Apollo’s crooked words. A mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey; in the oracle this signified Cyrus himself, also a mongrel, for his mother was a Mede and his father a Persian. And the empire Croesus had destroyed was his own.

What was to be the fate of the Ionian city-states now? Cyrus had invited them to join him in the conquest of Lydia, but they had declined. Instead, they sided with their ruler, Croesus, for they could not believe that he would be totally overthrown and feared his vengeance once the Persians had gone away. After the debacle they put out feelers to Cyrus, but he was still irritated at having been snubbed and did not respond (although he agreed to a treaty with the great mercantile city of Miletus, which had been neutral).

At this point the Ionians would have been wise to unite and plan a common resistance to the Persians, who would surely launch an invasion. The greatest philosopher of the age, Thales of Miletus, intervened. He rejected religious and mythological explanations of the universe and applied reason to the question.

Turning to political matters, Thales argued that the Ionians should unite into a single political entity and set up a governing council on the island of Teos. As a more extreme variation on this idea it was further suggested that all the Ionians should emigrate to Sardinia and found an integrated state there, far beyond the Great King’s reach.

The Ionians met together at their general assembly, the Pan-Ionium, but agreed on little except to make a general appeal for assistance to the international Hellenic community. The Spartans sent a herald to Cyrus, telling him not to attack the Ionians, “for the Spartans will not tolerate it.” A bemused Cyrus asked his officials: “Who are the Spartans? And how many of them are there?” Having received an answer, the Great King dismissed the herald with the comment that he was not afraid of anyone who had a marketplace in the center of his city where people swore false oaths and cheated each other.

Having failed to hang together, the Ionians were, of course, hanged separately. Cyrus took on each polis one by one and reduced them all. They now had a new master.

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