The story of Croesus' downfall and the subsequent sparing of his life by Cyrus is taken from Herodotus I 86-88.
It is clear from his poetry that Ovid had a good knowledge of at least the first book of Herodotus:
(1) Met III 135-37 'sed scilicet ultima semper / expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus / ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet' may have been drawn from Solon's advice to Croesus at Herodotus I 32 7: 'εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι [if in addition to having prosperity while alive] ἔτι τελευτήσει τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, [ὁ add Stein] ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιός ἐστι· πρὶν δ' ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄλβιον, ἀλλ' εὐτυχέα'.
(2) At Fast II 79-118 Ovid tells the story of Arion found at Herodotus I 23-24.
(3) At Fast II 663-66 there occurs the clearest instance of borrowing: Ovid uses the story of the border dispute between Sparta and Argos (Herodotus I 82) in the course of his discussion of the god Terminus: 'si tu signasses olim Thyreatida terram, / corpora non leto missa trecenta forent, / nec foret Othryades congestis lectus [Barth: tectus codd] in armis. / o quantum patriae sanguinis ille dedit!'.
37. AVDITA EST CVI NON. Compare Met XV 319-20 'cui non audita est obscenae Salmacis undae / Aethiopesque lacus?'.
38. NEMPE TAMEN VITAM CAPTVS AB HOSTE TVLIT. 'Even so, it is undeniable that he became a prisoner, and received his life as a gift from his enemy'. Vitam ferre also at EP II i 45 (from a description of Germanicus' triumph of AD 12) 'maxima pars horum uitam ueniamque tulerunt'.
39. ILLE ... FORMIDATVS. Equivalent to ille with a defining qui-clause: 'The famous man who had once been feared ...'. Ovid is referring to Dionysius II, the student of Plato, who was expelled from Syracuse in 344 and became a schoolmaster in Corinth. Valerius Maximus (VI ix ext 6) also gives Dionysius as an example of unexpected disaster, and Plutarch (Timoleon 14) cites him as an example of the operations of Fortune. For an account of Dionysius' life at Corinth, see Justinus XXI v. There was a Greek proverb 'Διονύσιος ἐν Κορίνθῳ' (Cic Att IX ix 1; Quintilian VIII vi 52), apparently referring to his continued lust for power: 'Dionysius ... Syracusis expulsus Corinthi pueros docebat: usque eo imperio carere non poterat' (Cic Tusc III 27). Discussions of the proverb at Otto Dionysius and Shackleton Bailey on Att IX ix 1.
39. SYRACOSIA ... IN VRBE. Restored by Heinsius from the manuscripts' unmetrical SYRACVSIA, as at Fast VI 277. The same confusion between Συρακόσιος and Συρακούσιος is found in the manuscripts of Pindar (Ol I 23), the Attic form supplanting the original Doric. The same corruption is found in some ninth-century manuscripts of Virgil at Ecl VI 1 'Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere uersu' and in the Veronese scholia, and in the manuscripts of Claudian carm min LI 6 (Housman 1273).
40. HVMILI ... ARTE. For the low social position of the schoolmaster in antiquity, see Bonner 146-62, and compare especially Juvenal VII 197-98 'si Fortuna uolet, fies de rhetore consul; / si uolet haec eadem, fiet de consule rhetor' and Pliny Ep IV xi 1 'nunc eo decidit ut exul de senatore, rhetor de oratore fieret'.