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He accordingly assembled his forces, and, taking leave of his capital of Susa with much parade and many ceremonies, he advanced toward Asia Minor. Entering and traversing Asia Minor, he crossed the Halys, which had been, in former times, the western boundary of the empire, though its limits had now been extended very far beyond.
Their adroitness and dexterity. There were, in fact, three inducements which combined their influence on the mind of Croesus, in leading him to cross the Halys, and invade the dominions of the Medes and Persians: first, he was ambitious to extend his own empire; secondly, he feared that if he did not attack Cyrus, Cyrus would himself cross the Halys and attack him; and, thirdly, he felt under some obligation to consider himself the ally of Astyages, and thus bound to espouse his cause, and to aid him in putting down, if possible, the usurpation of Cyrus, and in recovering his throne.
On the opposite side, the province of Cilicia was terminated by the mountains of Syria: the inland country, separated from the Roman Asia by the River Halys, and from Armenia by the Euphrates, had once formed the independent kingdom of Cappadocia.
More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When Cyaxares was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated.
The waters of how many rivers were stained with human gore? Antioch was besieged and the other cities, past which the Halys, the Cydnus, the Orontes, the Euphrates flow. Herds of captives were dragged away; Arabia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, were led captive by fear." The Huns, however, were not the only depredators at whose hands the provinces of Asia Minor and Syria suffered.
We may readily believe the statement of Nicolaus that the nations previously subject to the Medes vied with each other in the celerity and zeal with which they made their submission to the Persian conqueror. Cyrus succeeded at once to the full inheritance of which he had dispossessed Astyages, and was recognized as king by all the tribes between the Halys and the desert of Khorassan.
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.
There were also three or four great rivers, which the army would be unable to pass the Thermôdôn and the Iris, each 300 feet in breadth the Halys, nearly a quarter of a mile in breadth the Parthenius, also very considerable.
Such was the political position in the regions west and south of the Halys, when Cyaxares completed his absorption of Cappadocia, and looking across the river that divided the Cappadocians from the Phrygians, saw stretched before him a region of great fertile plains, which seemed to invite an invader.
You omitted to mention, for instance, whether Croesus 'the Halys crossed' should destroy his own or Cyrus's mighty realm. It might be either, so far as the oracle goes. Zeus. Apollo was angry with Croesus. When Croesus boiled that lamb and tortoise together in the cauldron, he was making trial of Apollo. Cyn. Gods ought not to be angry.
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