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The herald reported this state of things to Alyattes. Alyattes then gave up all hopes of reducing Miletus by famine, and made a permanent peace, binding himself to its stipulations by a very solemn treaty. To celebrate the event, too, he built two temples to Minerva instead of one.
"The middle one is in memory of the princely pair Panthea and Abradatas, and the largest, that one to the left, was erected to the father of Croesus, Alyattes. It was raised by the tradesmen, mechanics, and girls, to their late king, and on the five columns, which stand on its summit, you can read how much each of these classes contributed to the work. The girls were the most industrious.
The only difference was that Cyaxares gained a friend and an ally where he had previously had a jealous enemy; since it was agreed that the two kings of Media and Lydia should swear a friendship, and that, to cement the alliance, Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Astyages, the son of Cyaxares.
These Cimmerians, having burned the great temple of Diana, at Ephesus, and destroyed the capital city of Sardis, were expelled from Lydia by Alyattes, the monarch against whom Cyaxares had made war. He seems to have resigned himself to the ordinary condition of Oriental kings—to effeminacy and luxury—brought about by the prosperity which he inherited.
A story is related by Herodotus of a remarkable escape made by Arion at sea, which occurred during the reign of Alyattes, the father of Croesus.
The name of Croesus's father, who was the monarch that immediately preceded him, was Alyattes. Alyattes waged war toward the southward, into the territories of the city of Miletus.
"The Corinthians," says he, "studiously helped this expedition of the Lacedaemonians to Samos, as having themselves also been formerly affronted by the Samians." The matter was this. Periander tyrant of Corinth sent three hundred boys, sons to the principal men of Corcyra, to King Alyattes, to be gelt.
The fall of the Median dynasty, with which the royal house of Lydia had been in close alliance since the Halys pact, was a disaster which Croesus, now king of Sardes in the room of Alyattes, was rash enough to attempt to repair.
And Croesus, the son of Alyattes, made himself master of the lands which are bounded by the river Halys, and he waxed in power and wealth, so that there was none like to him. To him came Solon, the Athenian, but would not hail him as the happiest of all men, saying that none may be called happy until his life's end.
At last, on one of these marauding excursions, some fires which were accidentally set in a field spread into a neighboring town, and destroyed, among other buildings, a temple consecrated to Minerva. After this, Alyattes found himself quite unsuccessful in all his expeditions and campaigns. He sent to a famous oracle to ask the reason.
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