United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sadyattes, the son of Ardys, and grandson of Gyges, following the example of his father and grandfather, made war upon Miletus; and Alyattes, his son and successor, pursued the same policy of aggression. Besides pressing Miletus, he besieged and took Smyrna, and ravaged the territory of Clazomenae.
Gyges reigned thirty-eight years, and was succeeded by his son Ardys, during whose reign was an extensive invasion of the Cimmerians, and a collision between the inhabitants of Lydia and those of Upper Asia, under the Median kings, who first acquired importance about the year 656 B.C. under a king called, by the Greeks, Phraortes, son of Deioces, who built the city of Ecbatana.
Under the reign of Ardys, his successor, Asia Minor was devastated by the Cimmerians, a people who came from the regions north of the Black Sea, between the Danube and the Sea of Azov, being driven away by an inundation of Scythians, like that which afterward desolated Media.
On the right of the throne were Alcseus, son of the hero and of Omphale; Ninus, Belus, Argon, the earlier kings of the dynasty of the Heracleidae, then all the line of intermediate kings, terminating with Ardys, Alyattes, Meles or Myrsus, father of Candaules, and finally Candaules himself.
Assyria was well and quickly avenged; and Ardys, the new monarch, hastened to resume the deferential attitude toward Asshur-bani-pal which his father had unwisely relinquished. Asshur-bani-pal's next important war was against the Arabs.
His successor Ardys continued this warfare, but was obliged to desist because of an invasion of the Cimmerians, barbarians from beyond the Caucasus, driven away from their homes by the Scythians. His grandson Alyattes, greatest of the Lydian monarchs, succeeded in expelling the Cimmerians from Lydia.
The Greeks, who seem to have known more of Asshur-bani-pal than of any other Assyrian monarch, in consequence of his war in Asia Minor and his relations with Gyges and Ardys, are not unlikely to have given his name to any Assyrian monument which they found in these parts, whether in the local tradition it was regarded as his work or no.
Word Of The Day