The histories of Herodotus;

16-19] CONQUESTS OF THE LYDIANS 7
from Colophon, and invaded Clazomenae. From this place
he departed, not as he could wish, but signally defeated. He
also performed in the course of his reign the following actions
worthy of mention : he continued the war which his father
had begun against the Milesians, and leading his army
against Miletus, he invaded it in the following manner : when
their fruits were ripe on the ground, he led his army into their
territory, attended in his march with pipes, harps, and flutes,
masculine and feminine. On his arrival in Milesia, he neither
demolished nor burned their country houses, nor forced
off the doors, but let them stand as they were ; but when he
had destroyed their trees and the fruits on the ground, he returned
home; for the Milesians were masters of the sea, so
that there was no use in the army's besieging it. And the
Lydian king would not destroy their houses for this reason,
that the Milesians, having those habitations, might come out
to sow and cultivate the ground, and when they had cultivated
it, he might have something to ravage, when he should
invade them with his army. In this manner he carried on
the war eleven years, during which the Milesians received
two great blows, one in a battle at Limeneion in their own
territory, the other in the plain of the Maeander. Six of these
eleven years Sadyattes, the son of Ardys, was still king of
the Lydians, and during those he made incursions into the
Milesian territory (for this Sadyattes was the person that
began the war). But during the five years that succeeded
the six, Alyattes, the son of Sadyattes, who (as I have before
mentioned) received it from his father, earnestly applied himself
to it. None of the Ionians, except the Chians, assisted
the Milesians in bearing the burden of this war: they did it
in requital for succour they had received; for formerly the
Milesians had assisted the Chians in prosecuting the war
against the Erythraeans.
In the twelfth year, when the corn had been set on fire
by the army, an accident of the following nature occurred:
as soon as the corn had caught fire, the flames, carried by
the wind, caught a temple of Minerva, x called Assesian and
the temple, thus set on fire, was burned to the ground. No
notice was taken of this at the time ; but afterward, when the
army had returned to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick. When the
disease continued a considerable time, he sent messengers to
Delphi to consult the oracle, either from the advice of some
friend or because it appeared right to himself to send and
1 Assesus was a small town dependent on Miletus. Minerva had a
temple there, and hence took the name of the Assesian Minerva.—Larcher.
;