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Updated: May 26, 2025
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.
Meanwhile, the petty but warlike monarchy founded by Gyges had preserved the Asiatic Greeks from dangers yet more formidable than its own ambition. From a remote period, savage and ferocious tribes, among which are pre-eminent the Treres and Cimmerians, had often ravaged the inland plains now for plunder, now for settlement.
True to that dark article of Grecian faith which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythian replied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the crimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master; that, for the rest, the declarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire, denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own, and the mule, Cyrus, was presiding over the Lydian realm: a mule might the Persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were of different ranks and nations.
Gyges allowed himself to be placed behind a half-opened door of the king's apartment, when the king retired to it for the night. There he was to remain while the queen began to unrobe herself for retiring, with a strict injunction to withdraw at a certain time which the king designated, and with the utmost caution, so as to prevent being observed by the queen. Gyges did as he was ordered.
"Will any one dare to give evidence in favor of such an outrageous criminal?" asked Cambyses, springing up and stamping his foot. "We will," "I," "we," shouted Araspes, Darius, Gyges and Zopyrus with one voice. "Traitors, knaves!" cried the king. But as he caught sight of Croesus' warning eye fixed upon him, he lowered his voice, and said: "What have you to bring forward in favor of this fellow?
The stranger looked at him with a smile and said: "Now, do I look like an impostor?" "No; your language proves that you are not a Persian, but yet you look like a nobleman." "I am a Greek, and have come hither to render Cambyses an important service. Gyges is my friend, and lent me his passport when he was in Egypt, in case I should ever come to Persia.
But he wished not to discuss more particularly than thus, as he had drawn up to himself a certain frontier of reticence; and so fell to petting a great black pig, of which he made an unseemly companion, and to talking idly." A Gyges ring they bear about them still, To be, and not, seen when and where they will;
The olive-tinted monsters shut Gyges up in an obscure portion of the palace, whence it was impossible that he could escape, or that his cries could be heard. He passed the remainder of the day there in a state of cruel anxiety, accusing the hours of being lame, and again of walking too speedily.
The circumstances were as follows: 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.
We brought him to this house at a slow footpace, and here a violent fever came on, he became delirious, talked all the nonsense that could possibly come into a human brain, and made us so awfully anxious, that the mere remembrance of that time brings the big drops of perspiration to my forehead." Bartja took his friend's hand: "I owe my life to him and Gyges," said he, turning to Darius.
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