Herodotus tells us two facts respecting the Cimmerian emigrants into Asia Minor. They committed destructive, though transient, ravages in many parts of Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia,—and they occupied permanently the northern peninsula,[478] whereon the Greek city of Sinôpê was afterwards planted. Had the elegies of the contemporary Ephesian poet Kallinus been preserved, we should have known better how to appreciate these trying times: he strove to keep alive the energy of his countrymen against the formidable invaders.[479] From later authors, who probably, had these poems before them, we learn that the Cimmerian host, having occupied the Lydian chief town Sardis (its inaccessible acropolis defied them), poured with their wagons into the fertile valley of the Kaïster, took and sacked Magnêsia on the Mæander, and even threatened the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. But the goddess so well protected her own town and sanctuary,[480] that Lygdamis the leader of the Cimmerians, whose name marks him for a Greek, after a season of prosperous depredation in Lydia and Ionia, conducting his host into the mountainous regions of Kilikia, was there overwhelmed and slain. But though these marauders perished, the Cimmerian settlers in the territory near Sinôpê remained; and Ambrôn, the first Milesian œkist who tried to colonize that spot, was slain by them, if we may believe Skymnus. They are not mentioned afterwards, but it seems not unreasonable to believe that they appear under the name of the Chalybes, whom Herodotus mentions along that coast between the Mariandynians and Paphlagonians, and whom Mela notices as adjacent to Sinôpê and Amisus.[481] Other authors place the Chalybes on several different points, more to the east, though along the same parallel of latitude,—between the Mosynœki and Tibarêni,—near the river Thermôdôn,—and on the northern boundary of Armenia, near the sources of the Araxês; but it is only Herodotus and Mela who recognize Chalybes westward of the river Halys and the Paphlagonians, near to Sinôpê. These Chalybes were brave mountaineers, though savage in manners; distinguished as producers and workers of the iron which their mountains afforded. In the conceptions of the Greeks, as manifested in a variety of fabulous notices, they are plainly connected with Scythians or Cimmerians; whence it seems probable that this connection was present to the mind of Herodotus in regard to the inland population near Sinôpê.[482]
Herodotus seems to have conceived only one invasion of Asia by the Cimmerians, during the reign of Ardys in Lydia. Ardys was succeeded by his son Sadyattês, who reigned twelve years; and it was Alyattês, son and successor of Sadyattês, according to Herodotus, who expelled the Cimmerians from Asia.[483] But Strabo seems to speak of several invasions, in which the Trêres, a Thracian tribe, were concerned, and which are not clearly discriminated; while Kallisthenês affirmed that Sardis had been taken by the Trêres and Lykians.[484] We see only that a large and fair portion of Asia Minor was for much of this seventh century B. C. in possession of these destroying nomads, who, while on the one hand they afflicted the Ionic Greeks, on the other hand indirectly befriended them by retarding the growth of the Lydian monarchy.
The invasion of Upper Asia by the Scythians appears to have been nearly simultaneous with that of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians, but more ruinous and longer protracted. The Median king Kyaxarês, called away from the siege of Nineveh to oppose them, was totally defeated; and the Scythians became full masters of the country. They spread themselves over the whole of Upper Asia, as far as Palestine and the borders of Egypt, where Psammetichus the Egyptian king met them, and only redeemed his kingdom from invasion by prayers and costly presents. In their return, a detachment of them sacked the temple of Aphroditê at Askalon; an act of sacrilege which the goddess avenged both upon the plunderers and their descendants, to the third and fourth generation. Twenty-eight years did their dominion in Upper Asia continue,[485] with intolerable cruelty and oppression; until, at length, Kyaxarês and the Medes found means to entrap the chiefs into a banquet, and slew them in the hour of intoxication. The Scythian host once expelled, the Medes resumed their empire. Herodotus tells us that these Scythians returned to the Tauric Chersonese, where they found that, during their long absence, their wives had intermarried with the slaves, while the new offspring which had grown up refused to readmit them. A deep trench had been drawn across a line[486] over which their march lay, and the new-grown youth defended it with bravery, until at length,—so the story runs,—the returning masters took up their whips instead of arms, and scourged the rebellious slaves into submission.
Little as we know about the particulars of these Cimmerian and Scythian inroads, they deserve notice as the first—at least the first historically known—among the numerous invasions of cultivated Asia and Europe by the nomads of Tartary. Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, etc., are found in subsequent centuries repeating the same infliction, and establishing a dominion both more durable, and not less destructive, than the transient scourge of the Scythians during the reign of Kyaxarês.
After the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia, the full extent and power of the Median empire was reëstablished; and Kyaxarês was enabled again to besiege Nineveh. He took that great city, and reduced under his dominion all the Assyrians except those who formed the kingdom of Babylon. This conquest was achieved towards the close of his reign, and he bequeathed the Median empire, at the maximum of its grandeur, to his son Astyagês, in 595 B. C.[487]
As the dominion of the Scythians in Upper Asia lasted twenty eight years before they were expelled by Kyaxarês, so also the inroads of the Cimmerians through Asia Minor, which had begun during the reign of the Lydian king Ardys, continued through the twelve years of the reign of his son Sadyattês (629-617 B. C.), and were finally terminated by Alyattês, son of the latter.[488] Notwithstanding the Cimmerians, however, Sadyattês was in a condition to prosecute a war against the Grecian city of Milêtus, which continued during the last seven years of his reign, and which he bequeathed to his son and successor. Alyattês continued the war for five years longer. So feeble was the sentiment of union among the various Grecian towns on the Asiatic coast, that none of them would lend any aid to Milêtus except the Chians, who were under special obligations to Milêtus for previous aid in a contest against Erythræ: and the Milesians unassisted were no match for the Lydian army in the field, though their great naval strength placed them out of all danger of a blockade; and we must presume that the erection of those mounds of earth against the walls, whereby the Persian Harpagus vanquished the Ionian cities half a century afterwards, was then unknown to the Lydians. For twelve successive years the Milesian territory was annually overrun and ravaged, previous to the gathering in of the crop. The inhabitants, after having been defeated in two ruinous battles, gave up all hope of resisting the devastation, so that the task of the invaders became easy, and the Lydian army pursued their destructive march to the sound of flutes and harps. They ruined the crops and the fruit-trees, but Alyattês would not allow the farm-buildings or country-houses to be burnt, in order that the means of production might still be preserved, to be again destroyed during the following season. By such unremitting devastation the Milesians were reduced to distress and famine, in spite of their command of the sea; and the fate which afterwards overtook them during the reign of Crœsus, of becoming tributary subjects to the throne of Sardis, would have begun half a century earlier, had not Alyattês unintentionally committed a profanation against the goddess Athênê. Her temple at Assêssus accidentally took fire, and was consumed, when his soldiers on a windy day were burning the Milesian standing corn. Though no one took notice of this incident at the time, yet Alyattês on his return to Sardis was smitten with prolonged sickness. Unable to obtain relief, he despatched envoys to seek humble advice from the god at Delphi; but the Pythian priestess refused to furnish any healing suggestions until he should have rebuilt the burnt temple of Athênê,—and Periander, at that time despot of Corinth, having learned the tenor of this reply, transmitted private information of it to Thrasybulus, despot of Milêtus, with whom he was intimately allied. Presently there arrived at Milêtus a herald on the part of Alyattês, proposing a truce for the special purpose of enabling him to rebuild the destroyed temple,—the Lydian monarch believing the Milesians to be so poorly furnished with subsistence that they would gladly embrace this temporary relief. But the herald on his arrival found abundance of corn heaped up in the agora, and the citizens engaged in feasting and enjoyment: for Thrasybulus had caused all the provision in the town, both public and private, to be brought out, in order that the herald might see the Milesians in a condition of apparent plenty, and carry the news of it to his master. The stratagem succeeded. Alyattês, under the persuasion that his repeated devastations inflicted upon the Milesians no sensible privations, abandoned his hostile designs, and concluded with them a treaty of amity and alliance. It was his first proceeding to build two temples to Athênê, in place of the one which had been destroyed, and he then, forthwith, recovered from his protracted malady. His gratitude for the cure was testified by the transmission of a large silver bowl, with an iron footstand welded together by the Chian artist Glaukus,—the inventor of the art of thus joining together pieces of iron.[489]
Alyattês is said to have carried on other operations against some of the Ionic Greeks: he took Smyrna, but was defeated in an inroad on the territory of Klazomenæ.[490] But on the whole, his long reign of fifty-seven years was one of tranquillity to the Grecian cities on the coast, though we hear of an expedition which he undertook against Karia.[491] He is reported to have been during youth of overweening insolence, but to have acquired afterwards a just and improved character. By an Ionian wife he became father of Crœsus, whom, even during his lifetime, he appointed satrap of the town of Adramyttium, and the neighboring plain of Thêbê. But he had also other wives and other sons, and one of the latter, Adramytus, is reported as the founder of Adramyttium.[492] How far his dominion in the interior of Asia Minor extended, we do not know, but very probably his long and comparatively inactive reign may have favored the accumulation of those treasures which afterwards rendered the wealth of Crœsus so proverbial. His monument, an enormous pyramidal mound upon a stone base, erected near Sardis, by the joint efforts of the whole Sardian population, was the most memorable curiosity in Lydia during the time of Herodotus; it was inferior only to the gigantic edifices of Egypt and Babylon.[493]
Crœsus obtained the throne, at the death of his father, by appointment from the latter. But there was a party among the Lydians who had favored the pretensions of his brother Pantaleon; one of the richest chiefs of which party was put to death afterwards by the new king, under the cruel torture of a spiked carding-machine,—his property confiscated.[494] The aggressive reign of Crœsus, lasting fourteen years (559-545 B. C.), formed a marked contrast to the long quiescence of his father during a reign of fifty-seven years.
Pretences being easily found for war against the Asiatic Greeks, Crœsus attacked them one after the other. Unfortunately, we know neither the particulars of these successive aggressions, nor the previous history of the Ionic cities, so as to be able to explain how it was that the fifth of the Mermnad kings of Sardis met with such unqualified success, in an enterprise which his predecessors had attempted in vain. Milêtus alone, with the aid of Chios, had resisted Alyattês and Sadyattês for eleven years,—and Crœsus possessed no naval force, any more than his father and grandfather. But on this occasion, not one of the towns can have displayed the like individual energy. In regard to the Milesians, we may perhaps suspect that the period now under consideration was comprised in that long duration of intestine conflict which Herodotus represents (though without defining exactly when) to have crippled the forces of the city for two generations, and which was at length appeased by a memorable decision of some arbitrators invited from Paros. These latter, called in by mutual consent of the exhausted antagonist parties at Milêtus, found both the city and her territory in a state of general neglect and ruin. But on surveying the lands, they discovered some which still appeared to be tilled with undiminished diligence and skill; to the proprietors of these lands they consigned the government of the town, in the belief that they would manage the public affairs with as much success as their own.[495] Such a state of intestine weakness would partly explain the easy subjugation of the Milesians by Crœsus; while there was little in the habits of the Ionic cities to present the chance of united efforts against a common enemy. These cities, far from keeping up any effective political confederation, were in a state of habitual jealousy of each other, and not unfrequently in actual war.[496] The common religious festivals,—the Deliac festival as well as the Pan-Ionia, and afterwards the Ephesia in place of the Delia,—seem to have been regularly frequented by all the cities throughout the worst of times. But these assemblies had no direct political function, nor were they permitted to control that sentiment of separate city-autonomy which was paramount in the Greek mind,—though their influence was extremely precious in calling forth social sympathies. Apart from the periodical festival, meetings for special emergencies were held at the Pan-Ionic temple; but from such meetings any city, not directly implicated, kept aloof.[497] As in this case, so in others not less critical throughout the historical period, the incapacity of large political combination was the source of constant danger, and ultimately proved the cause of ruin, to the independence of all the Grecian states. Herodotus warmly commends the advice given by Thalês to his Ionic countrymen,—and given, to use his remarkable expression, “before the ruin of Ionia,”[498]—that a common senate, invested with authority over all the twelve cities, should be formed within the walls of Teôs, as the most central in position; and that all the other cities should account themselves mere demes of this aggregate commonwealth, or polis. Nor can we doubt that such was the unavailing aspiration of many a patriot of Milêtus or Ephesus, even before the final operations of Crœsus were opened against them.
That prince attacked the Greek cities successively, finding or making different pretences for hostility against each. He began with Ephesus, which is said to have been then governed by a despot of harsh and oppressive character, named Pindarus, whose father Melas had married a daughter of Alyattês, and who was, therefore, himself nephew of Crœsus.[499] The latter, having in vain invited Pindarus and the Ephesians to surrender the town, brought up his forces and attacked the walls: one of the towers being overthrown, the Ephesians abandoned all hope of defending their town, and sought safety by placing it under the guardianship of Artemis, to whose temple they carried a rope from the walls,—a distance not less than seven furlongs. They at the same time sent a message of supplication to Crœsus, who is said to have granted them the preservation of their liberties, out of reverence to the protection of Artemis; exacting at the same time that Pindarus should quit the place. Such is the tale of which we find a confused mention in Ælian and Polyænus; but Herodotus, while he notices the fact of the long rope whereby the Ephesians sought to place themselves in contact with their divine protectress, does not indicate that Crœsus was induced to treat them more favorably. Ephesus, like all the other Grecian towns on the coast, was brought under subjection and tribute to him.[500] How he dealt with them, and what degree of coercive precaution he employed either to insure subjection or collect tribute, the brevity of the historian does not acquaint us. But they were required partially at least, if not entirely, to raze their fortifications; for on occasion of the danger which supervened a few years afterwards from Cyrus, they are found practically unfortified.[501]