[Illustration:  398.jpg ONE OF THE PROCESSIONS IN THE RAVINE OF PTERIA]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Chantre.

Long processions of priests and votaries defile before figures of the gods and goddesses standing erect upon their sacred animals; in one scene, a tall goddess, a Cybele or an Anaitis, leans affectionately upon her chosen lover, and seems to draw him with her towards an image with a lion’s body and the head of a youth.*

     * These bas-reliefs seem to me to have been executed at
     about the time with which we are dealing, or perhaps a few
     years later—­in any case, before the Persian conquest.

Pteria and its surrounding hills formed a kind of natural fortress which overlooked the whole bend of the Halys; it constituted, in the land of the Lydians, an outpost which effectually protected their possessions in Phrygia and Papnlagonia against an attack from the East; in the hands of the Medes it would be a dominant position which would counteract the defensive features of the Halys, and from it they might penetrate into the heart of Asia Minor without encountering any serious obstacles.  The struggle between the two sovereigns was not so unequal as might at first appear.  No doubt the army of Alyattes was inferior in numbers, but the bravery of its component forces and the ability of its leaders compensated for its numerical inferiority, and Cyaxares had no troop to be compared with the Carian lancers, with the hoplites of Ionia, or with the heavy Maeonian cavalry.  During six years the two armies met again and again—­fate sometimes favouring one and sometimes the other—­and were about to try their fortune once more, after several indecisive engagements, when an eclipse of the sun suspended operations (585).  The Iranian peoples would fight only in full daylight, and their adversaries, although warned, so it is said, by the Milesian philosopher Thaies of the phenomenon about to take place in the heavens, were perhaps not completely reassured as to its significance, and the two hosts accordingly separated without coming to blows.*

* This eclipse was identified at one time with that of Sept. 30, 610, at another with that of May 28, 585.  The latter of these two dates appears to me to be the correct one, and is the only one which agrees with what we know of the general history of the sixth century.

Nebuchadrezzar had followed, not without some misgivings, the vicissitudes of the campaign, and his anxiety was shared by the independent princes of Asia Minor, who were allies of the Lydians; he and they alike awaited with dread a decisive action, which, by crushing one of the belligerents beyond hope of recovery, would leave the onlookers at the mercy of the victor in the full flush of his success.  Tradition relates that Syennesis of Cilicia and the Babylonian Nabonidus had taken advantage of the alarm produced by the eclipse