to further his designs; then descending to the place of public assembly, he summoned the people to a conclave.  After a long and stormy debate, it was decided to consult the oracle at Delphi, which, corrupted by the gold from the Pactolus, enjoined on the Lydians to recognise Gyges as their king.  He married Toudo, and by thus espousing the widow of the Heraclid sovereign, obtained some show of right to the crown; but the decision of the oracle was not universally acceptable, and war broke out, in which Gyges was victorious, thanks to the bravery of his Carian mercenaries.  His career soon served as the fabric on which the popular imagination was continually working fresh embroideries.  He was reported at the outset to have been of base extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised himself by degrees to the highest posts and had finally supplanted his patron.  Herodotus, following the poet Archilochus of Paros, relates how the last of the Heraclidas, whom he calls by his private name of Kandaules, and not his official name of Sadyattes,* forcibly insisted on exposing to the admiration of Gyges the naked beauty of his wife; the queen, thus outraged, called upon the favourite to avenge the insult to her modesty by the blood of her husband, and then bestowed on him her hand, together with the crown.

* Schubert considers that the names Sadyattes and Kandaules belong to two distinct persons.  Kandaules, according to him, was probably a second son of Myrsos, who, after the murder of Sadyattes, disputed the possession of the crown with Gyges; in this case he was killed in battle by the Carian commander, Arselis, as related by Plutarch, and Gyges was not really king till after the death of Kandaules.

Plato made this story the groundwork of a most fantastic tale.  Gyges, according to him, was originally a shepherd, who, after a terrible storm, noticed a fissure in the ground, into which he crept; there he discovered an enormous bronze horse, half broken, and in its side the corpse of a giant with a gold ring on his finger.  Chance revealed to him that this ring rendered its wearer invisible:  he set out for the court in quest of adventures, seduced the queen, murdered the king and seized his crown, accomplishing all this by virtue of his talisman.*

* This version is curious, because it has preserved for us one of the earliest examples of a ring which renders its wearer invisible; it is well known how frequently such a talisman appears in Oriental tales of a later period.

According to a third legend, his crime and exaltation had been presaged by a wondrous prodigy.  Two eagles of supernatural size had alighted on the roof of Toudo’s room while she was still dwelling in her father’s house, and the soothsayers who were consulted prognosticated that the princess would be the wife of two kings in a single night; and, in fact, Gyges, having stabbed Sadyattes when his marriage was but just consummated, forced Toudo to become his