Lydians and Phrygians were exceeding rich, even to a proverb:  Midas & Croesus, saith [418] Pliny, infinitum possederant.  Jam Cyrus devicta Asia [auri] pondo xxxiv millia invenerat, praeter vasa aurea aurumque factum, & in eo folia ac platanum vitemque.  Qua victoria argenti quingenta millia talentorum reportavit, & craterem Semiramidis cujus pondus quindecim talentorum colligebat.  Talentum autem AEgyptium pondo octoginta capere Varro tradit. What the conqueror did with all this gold and silver appears by the Darics.  The Lydians, according to [419] Herodotus, were the first who coined gold and silver, and Croesus coined gold monies in plenty, called Croesei; and it was not reasonable that the monies of the Kings of Lydia should continue current after the overthrow of their Kingdom, and therefore Darius recoined it with his own effigies, but without altering the current weight and value:  he Reigned then from before the conquest of Sardes ’till after the conquest of Babylon.

And since the cup of Semiramis was preserved ’till the conquest of Croesus by Darius, it is not probable that she could be older than is represented by Herodotus.

This conquest of the Kingdom of Lydia put the Greeks into fear of the Medes:  for Theognis, who lived at Megara in the very times of these wars, writes thus, [420]

  [Greek:  Pinomen, charienta met’ alleloisi legontes,]
    [Greek:  Meden ton Medon deidiotes polemon.]

  Let us drink, talking pleasant things with one another,
    Not fearing the war of the Medes_._

And again, [421]

  [Greek:  Autos de straton hybristen Medon aperyke]
    [Greek:  Tesde poleus, hina soi laoi en euphrosynei]
  [Greek:  Eros eperchomenou kleitas pempos’ hekatombas,]
    [Greek:  Terpomenoi kithare kai eratei thaliei,]
  [Greek:  Paianonte chorois, iachosi te, son peri bomon.]
    [Greek:  E gar egoge dedoik’, aphradien esoron]
  [Greek:  Kai stasin Hellenon laophthoron; alla sy Phoibe,]
    [Greek:  Hilaos hemeteren tende phylasse polin.]

  Thou Apollo_ drive away the injurious army of the Medes_
    From this city, that the people may with joy
  Send thee choice hecatombs in the spring,
    Delighted with the harp and chearful feasting,
  And chorus’s of Poeans_ and acclamations about thy altar_.
    For truly I am afraid, beholding the folly
  And sedition of the Greeks_, which corrupts the people:  but thou
      Apollo,_
    Being propitious, keep this our city.

The Poet tells us further that discord had destroyed Magnesia, Colophon, and Smyrna, cities of Ionia and Phrygia, and would destroy the Greeks; which is as much as to say that the Medes had then conquered those cities.