three years only.  Even then he had not despaired, and had warned Croesus by the voice of the oracles.  They had foretold him that, in crossing the Halys, the Lydians ^would destroy a great empire, and that their power would last till the day when a mule should sit upon the throne of Media.  Croesus, blinded by fate, could not see that Cyrus, who was of mixed race, Persian by his father and Median by his mother, was the predicted mule.  He therefore crossed the Halys, and a great empire fell, but it was his own.  At all events, the god might have desired to show that to honour his altars and adorn his temple was in itself, after all, the best of treasures.  “When Sardes, suffering the vengeance of Zeus, was conquered by the army of the Persians, the god of the golden sword, Apollo, was the guardian of Croesus.  When the day of despair arrived, the king could not resign himself to tears and servitude; within the brazen-walled court he erected a funeral pyre, on which, together with his chaste spouse and his bitterly lamenting daughters of beautiful locks, he mounted; he raised his hands towards the depths of the ether and cried:  ’Proud fate, where is the gratitude of the gods, where is the prince, the child of Leto?  Where is now the house of Alyattes?...  The ancient citadel of Sardes has fallen, the Pactolus of golden waves runs red with blood; ignominiously are the women driven from their well-decked chambers!  That which was once my hated foe is now my friend, and the sweetest thing is to die!’ Thus he spoke, and ordered the softly moving eunuch* to set fire to the wooden structure.

* The word translated “softly moving eunuch” is here perhaps a proper name:  the slave whose duty it was to kindle the pyre was called Abrobatas in the version of the story chosen by Bacchylides, while that adopted by the potter whose work is reproduced on the opposite page, calls him Euthymos.

The maidens shrieked and threw their arms around their mother, for the death before them was that most hated by mortals.  But just when the sparkling fury of the cruel fire had spread around, Zeus, calling up a black-flanked cloud, extinguished the yellow flame.

Nothing is incredible of that which the will of the gods has decreed:  Apollo of Delos, seizing the old man, bore him, together with his daughters of tender feet, into the Hyperborean land as a reward for his piety, for no mortal had sent richer offerings to the illustrious Pytho!”

[Illustration:  075.jpg CIMESUS ON HIS PYRE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph of the original in
     the Museum of the Louvre.