Chapter IV.
Crœsus.
B.C. 718-545
The wealth of Crœsus.
The scene of our narrative must now be changed, for a time, from Persia and Media, in the East, to Asia Minor, in the West, where the great Crœsus, originally King of Lydia, was at this time gradually extending his empire along the shores of the Ægean Sea. The name of Crœsus is associated in the minds of men with the idea of boundless wealth, the phrase "as rich as Crœsus" having been a common proverb in all the modern languages of Europe for many centuries. It was to this Crœsus, king of Lydia, whose story we are about to relate, that the proverb alludes.
The Mermnadæ.
Origin of the Mermnadean dynasty.
The country of Lydia, over which this famous sovereign originally ruled, was in the western part of Asia Minor, bordering on the Ægean Sea. Crœsus himself belonged to a dynasty, or race of kings, called the Mermnadæ. The founder of this line was Gyges, who displaced the dynasty which preceded him and established his own by a revolution effected in a very remarkable manner. The circumstances were as follows:
Candaules and Gyges.
Infamous proposal of Candaules.
Remonstrance of Gyges.
The name of the last monarch of the old dynasty—the one, namely, whom Gyges displaced—was Candaules. Gyges was a household servant in Candaules's family—a sort of slave, in fact, and yet, as such slaves often were in those rude days, a personal favorite and boon companion of his master. Candaules was a dissolute and unprincipled tyrant. He had, however, a very beautiful and modest wife, whose name was Nyssia. Candaules was very proud of the beauty of his queen, and was always extolling it, though, as the event proved, he could not have felt for her any true and honest affection. In some of his revels with Gyges, when he was boasting of Nyssia's charms, he said that the beauty of her form and figure, when unrobed, was even more exquisite than that of her features; and, finally, the monster, growing more and more excited, and having rendered himself still more of a brute than he was by nature by the influence of wine, declared that Gyges should see for himself. He would conceal him, he said, in the queen's bed-chamber, while she was undressing for the night. Gyges remonstrated very earnestly against this proposal. It would be doing the innocent queen, he said, a great wrong. He assured the king, too, that he believed fully all that he said about Nyssia's beauty, without applying such a test, and he begged him not to insist upon a proposal with which it would be criminal to comply.