Autumn flowering:—Yellow: C. Scharojani. Lilac: C. asluricus, cancellatus var., cilicicus, byzantinus (iridiflorus), longiflorus, medius, nudiflorus, pulchellus, Salzmanni, sativus vars. speciosus, zonatus. White: caspius, cancellatus, hadrialicus, marathonisius.
Winter flowering:—C. hyemaeis, laevigatus, vitellinus.
CROESUS, last king of Lydia, of the Mermnad dynasty, (560-546 B.C.), succeeded his father Alyattes after a war with his half-brother. He completed the conquest of Ionia by capturing Ephesus, Miletus and other places, and extended the Lydian empire as far as the Halys. His wealth, due to trade, was proverbial, and he used part of it in securing alliances with the Greek states whose fleets might supplement his own army. Various legends were told about him by the Greeks, one of the most famous being that of Solon’s visit to him with the lesson it conveyed of the divine nemesis which waits upon overmuch prosperity (Hdt. i. 29 seq.; but see [Solon]). After the overthrow of the Median empire (549 B.C.) Croesus found himself confronted by the rising power of Cyrus, and along with Nabonidos of Babylon took measures to resist it. A coalition was formed between the Lydian and Babylonian kings, Egypt promised troops and Sparta its fleet. But the coalition was defeated by the rapid movements of Cyrus and the treachery of Eurybatus of Ephesus, who fled to Persia with the gold that had been entrusted to him, and betrayed the plans of the confederates. Fortified with the Delphic oracles Croesus marched to the frontier of his empire, but after some initial successes fortune turned against him and he was forced to retreat to Sardis. Here he was followed by Cyrus who took the city by storm. We may gather from the recently discovered poem of Bacchylides (iii. 23-62) that he hoped to escape his conqueror by burning himself with his wealth on a funeral pyre, like Saracus, the last king of Assyria, but that he fell into the hands of Cyrus before he could effect his purpose.[1] A different version of the story is given (from Lydian sources) by Herodotus (followed by Xenophon), who makes Cyrus condemn his prisoner to be burnt alive, a mode of death hardly consistent with the Persian reverence for fire. Apollo, however, came to the rescue of his pious worshipper, and the name of Solon uttered by Croesus resulted in his deliverance. According to Ctesias, who uses Persian sources, and says nothing of the attempt to burn Croesus, he subsequently became attached to the court of Cyrus and received the governorship of Barene in Media. Fragments of columns from the temple of Attemis now in the British Museum have upon them a dedication by Croesus in Greek.
See R. Schubert, De Croeso et Solone fabula (1868); M. G. Radet, La Lydie et le monde grec au temps des Mermnades (1892-1893); A. S. Murray, Journ. Hell. Studies, x. pp. 1-10 (1889); for the supposition that Croesus did actually perish on his own pyre see G. B. Grundy, Great Persian War, p. 28; Grote, Hist. of Greece (ed. 1907), p. 104. Cf. [Cyrus]; [Lydia].
[1] This is probably a Greek legend (cf. the Attic vase of about 500 B.C. in Journ. of Hell. Stud., 1898, p. 268).
CROFT, SIR HERBERT, Bart. (1751-1816), English author, was born at Dunster Park, Berkshire, on the 1st of November 1751, son of Herbert Croft (see below) of Stifford, Essex. He matriculated at University College, Oxford, in March 1771, and was subsequently entered at Lincoln’s Inn. He was called to the bar, but in 1782 returned to Oxford with a view to preparing for holy orders. In 1786 he received the vicarage of Prittlewell, Essex, but he remained at Oxford for some years accumulating materials for a proposed English dictionary. He was twice married, and on the day after his second wedding day he was imprisoned at Exeter for debt. He then retired to Hamburg, and two years later his library was sold. He had succeeded in 1797 to the title, but not to the estates, of a distant cousin, Sir John Croft, the fourth baronet. He returned to England in 1800, but went abroad once more in 1802. He lived near Amiens at a house owned by Lady Mary Hamilton, said to have been a daughter of the earl of Leven and Melville. Later he removed to Paris, where he died on the 26th of April 1816. In some of his numerous literary enterprises he had the help of Charles Nodier. Croft wrote the Life of Edward Young inserted in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. In 1780 he published Love and Madness, a Story too true, in a series of letters between Parties whose names could perhaps be mentioned were they less known or less lamented. This book, which passed through seven editions, narrates the passion of a clergyman named James Hackman for Martha Ray, mistress of the earl of Sandwich, who was shot by her lover as she was leaving Covent Garden in 1779 (see the Case and Memoirs of the late Rev. Mr James Hackman, 1779). Love and Madness has permanent interest because Croft inserted, among other miscellaneous matter, information about Thomas Chatterton gained from letters which he obtained from the poet’s sister, Mrs Newton, under false pretences, and used without payment. Robert Southey, when about to publish an edition of Chatterton’s works for the benefit of his family, published (November 1799) details of Croft’s proceedings in the Monthly Review. To this attack Croft wrote a reply addressed to John Nichols in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and afterwards printed separately as Chatterton and Love and Madness ... (1800). This tract evades the main accusation, and contains much abuse of Southey. Croft, however, supplied the material for the exhaustive account of Chatterton in A. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica (vol. iv., 1789). In 1788 he addressed a letter to William Pitt on the subject of a new dictionary. He criticized Samuel Johnson’s efforts, and in 1790 he claimed to have collected 11,000 words used by excellent authorities but omitted by Johnson. Two years later he issued proposals for a revised edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, but subscribers were lacking and his 200 vols. of MS. remained unused. Croft was a good scholar and linguist, and the author of some curious books in French.
The Love Letters of Mr H. and Miss R. 1775-1779 were edited from Croft’s book by Mr Gilbert Burgess (1895). See also John Nichols’s Illustrations ... (1828), v. 202-218.