wife on the spot without waiting for the morrow.  Other stories were current, in which the events were related with less of the miraculous element, and which attributed the success of Gyges to the unbounded fidelity shown him by the Carian Arselis.  In whatever manner it was brought about, his accession marked the opening of a new era for Lydia.  The country had always been noted for its valiant and warlike inhabitants, but the Heraclidse had not expended its abundant resources on foreign conquest, and none of the surrounding peoples suspected that it could again become the seat of a brilliant empire as in fabulous times.

[Illustration:  181.jpg LYDIAN HORSEMEN]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Lydian bas-relief now in the
     British Museum.

Gyges endeavoured to awaken the military instincts of his subjects.  If he were not actually the first to organise that admirable cavalry corps which for nearly a century proved itself invincible on the field of battle, at least he enlarged and disciplined it, giving it cohesion and daring; and it was well he did so, for a formidable danger already menaced his newly acquired kingdom.  The Cimmerians and Treres, so long as they did not act in concert, had been unable to overcome the resistance offered by the Phrygians; their raids, annually renewed, had never resulted in more than the destruction of a city or the pillaging of an ill-defended district.  But from 690 to 680 B.C. the Cimmerians, held in check by the bold front displayed by Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, had at last broken away from the seductions of the east, and poured down in force on the centre of the peninsula.  King Midas, after an heroic defence, at length gave way before their overwhelming numbers, and, rather than fall alive into the hands of the barbarians, poisoned himself by drinking the blood of a bull (676 B.C.).* The flower of his nobility perished with him, and the people of lower rank who survived were so terrified by the invasion, that they seemed in one day to lose entirely the brave and energetic character which had hitherto been their safeguard.  The Cimmerians seized town after town;** they descended from the basin of the Sangarios into that of the Bhyndakos; they laid waste the Troad, and, about 670 B.C., they established themselves securely in the stronghold of Antandros, opposite the magnificent AEolian island of Lesbos, and ere long their advanced posts were face to face on all sides with the outposts of Lydia.

* The date of 676 B.C. has been borrowed from Julius Africanus by the Christian chronologists of the Byzantine period; these latter made the fall of the Phrygian kingdom coincide with the reign of Amon in Judaea, and this date is accepted by most modern historians.

** One fact alone, probably taken from the Lydiaca of Xanthus, is known to us concerning their operations in Phrygia, namely, the taking of Syassos and the capture of enormous stores