Happy Saturday. Crisus came up a couple of times in our episode on the Battle of the Eclipse not too long ago, so our episode on him is Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out September seventh, twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Crisus is a name that is now most commonly referenced when someone wants to shorthand that a person is ridiculously wealthy. That is a thing that it happens sometimes in English language, but other languages use it all the time, and I think possibly a little bit more than English speakers. And he is one of those historical figures who was both real and has taken on a mythical status, also mythical. Aesop was a member of his court, and there's all kinds of mythical swirlings around him. But the story of the ridiculously wealthy Cresus, which was likely fictionalized in a number of ways, and we'll talk about that, also becomes this sort of cautionary tale about pride and hubris and what really has value in life. So Crisus was born into the royal family of Lydia. Lydia was a kingdom that occupied the western section of Anatolia. Roughly speaking in modern shorthand, we're talking about the left half of the Asia Minor peninsula, so it's part of modern day Turkey. To the west sat the Greeks, and to the east or the lands of Persia. The Lydia that Crisus was born into was very prosperous. When Phrygia, which had been the dominant power on the peninsula since around twelve hundred BCE, was attacked by Samerians and fell from power circus seven hundred BCE, Lydia became the most powerful kingdom in the region. It's kind of filled that power vacuum at that point. It was ruled by King Jaijis from the newly established Lydian capital of Sardis. This also established the Merbnad dynasty after Jaiji's came Artists in the mid seventh century BCE, followed by Sidides and then Alioities. Aliities was Criesus's father, and it's under Aliites that Lydia is said to have really hit its apex in terms of power and prosperity. The exact dates for the reigns of those kings are pretty fuzzy. The main source that's used for them is from Herodotus, but if you do the math based on the counts of the years that he uses, that math is not quite add up. Also, just in general, Herodotus sometimes would like to say this is how I heard it, Yes, one hundred percent. It's one of those things where he is listed as a great historian. But as we'll discuss later, there's definitely some flexibility with the record, like what serves his purpose. But what is less fuzzy is the fact that during the years from seven hundred BCE to Creases becoming king circa five sixty BCE, Lydia had established itself as a very prosperous commercial culture. It is one of the earliest cultures known to have instituted the concept of retail shops like permanent stores, and the Lydians were minting coinage way ahead of the rest of the Western world. There is evidence of Chinese coinage that predates the Lydians, although the coins that were minted specifically under Creasus more closely resemble what we would think of today as coinage. When Aliantes died in five sixty BCE, Cresus became king and he was thirty five at the time. And Cresus was, like a lot of people in his day, very into using things like dreams and oracles to predict the future. He had two sons, one of them is described again by Herodotus as having a very minor disability, and this is treated just horribly within the text, says quote. Since he is ruined, he doesn't exist for me. Yeah, there's a whole side story about his son that I'm maybe gonna save for our casual Friday chat. It's a weird thing. But the other son that he had, Adis, was much beloved and was the king's pride. And when Cresus had a dream that showed Adis being killed by an iron spear, Crisus then did everything in his power to shelter his son. He arranged for a speedy marriage to give him a home life, and he stopped tasking him with going out into battle, and he basically tried to keep him safe and at home all the time. But ultimately Crisus did allow Addis to go on a hunt, and this was at his son's request and after much debate, because Adis was sort of feeling like, hey, I don't have anything to be proud of in our culture at this point because you won't let me go to war and I can't even go outside the stinks. So he allowed him to go on this hunt, and of course, an hunter's spear missed the wild board that they were hunting and killed Attis, and Creasus reportedly mourned this sun for two full years. Lydia is usually cited as the first kingdom to mint metal coinage. Under Creasus, the first silver and gold coins for Lydia were made, And this is kind of reminding us a little bit of the many episodes where we have talked about the gold standard being challenged by the silver standard in the United States and how much strife came out of all that those precious metals were part of tender going all the way back to the sixth century BCE. Yeah, and the coin type known as a cresad, featuring a face off between a lion and a bowl was developed during this time, and the representation of the lion actually served as a means to indicate the purity and the value of the coin. So a smaller piece of the lion's body would be stamped on a coin to indicate that that coin was a smaller denomination than one with a larger, more complete image of a lion. And the Lydians really made great strides under creases in the purification of gold, enabling them to ensure accuracy in these different coins. This is basically the beginning of the gold standard, and the wealth was incredible. Another name that you've almost certainly heard in connection with ridiculous levels of riches as King Midas, and Crisus's very great wealth is said to have come from Midas. In a way, the Mermnad dynasty allegedly got its extraordinary riches in part by collecting it from the river Pactulus, where Midas is said to have washed his hands. There were also some taxes plundering other kingdoms, including enslaving people from those kingdoms. Yeah, they actually gained their riches in a number of ways, but that Midas story is one that persists, and what defines much of what we know of the rule of Cresus is war. And it's said that conflict was ultimately what brought Cresus out of his mourning state over his son. Once he was refocused on military leadership, Creesus was eager to expand his power, and he could be ruthless in this quest. Herodotus wrote this of him, quote this, Crisus was the first foreigner whom we know who subjugated some Greeks and took tribute from them and won the friendship of others, the former being the Ionians, the Aeolians and the Dorians of Asia, and the latter the Lacedaemonians. Before the reign of Cresus, all Greeks were free for the Samerian host which invaded Ionia before his time did not subjugate the cities that raided and robbed them. Yeah, so keep in mind as we talk about Cresus, and he's an interesting figure, but he was very big on enslavement as something new that was not a tradition, that was something he instituted in his war making. So we mentioned a moment ago that Cresus believed in oracles, but he really wanted to run a test to ensure that the oracle that he would patronize was going to be the best one. So Herodotus wrote that Crisus sent men out to various shrines, but after they left the palace at Sartis, they had to bide their time for one hundred days, so they didn't know what Crisus was doing before going to these shrines. And then on the one hundredth day, each oracle was supposed to be asked to divine what Crisus was doing at that very moment, and then all of these messengers would bring back the divinations and it would be obvious which oracle or oracles were the real deal. The men who had visited the Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo came back with the following verse quote, I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea, and understand the mute and hear the voiceless. The smell has come to my senses of a strong shelled tortoise boiling in a cauldron, together with a lamb's flesh under witch's bronze and overwitch's bronze. We don't know what any of the others divined, because this one was apparently spot on. Crisus said that the oracle of Amphiarus had also given a quote true answer, but we don't know the wording of what that answer specifically was. But in an effort to concoct a strange enough event that it would be impossible to guess what he had been doing, Crisus had cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together in a covered bronze cauldron. So let's move along from that less than pleasant image and take a quick break and have a word from some of the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed in history class going. So, Crisus was devoted to the Oracle of Delphi after it had successfully uh passed this test. He sacrificed literally thousands of animals and burned almost every valuable thing he could lay hands on. He also commanded the citizens of Lyddy to do the same, and he sent so much gold to the temple. There is a line in the translation that I read that stated quote. Moreover, he dedicated his own wife's necklaces and girdles, which I just found funny as things to sacrifice to Apollo. So the goal of all of these offerings was to ensure that Crisus got good advice from the oracle regarding his military plans, and the people he tasked with bringing his many gifts to the temple were instructed to get this advice. Two points came back. One was that if Criesus were to attack the Persians, crossing a river to do so, he would destroy a great empire, and two that he should make friends with the most powerful Greeks. So, at this point in time, the power of the Persians, led by Cyrus the Second also known as Cyrus the Great, was expanding. We actually talked at some length about Cyrus the Second in our episode on the Achemenid Empire in twenty sixteen. Crisus, of course wanted to curtail the expansion of the Persian Empire, and he started a campaign of his own to make sure that Cyrus the Second's forces did not get close to Lydia. So Crisus asked the oracle to once again tell him the future. They sent messengers to Delphi to ask if his reign would be a long one, and the reply was quote, when the medics have a mule as king, just then, tenderfooted Lydian by the stone, shrewn hermus flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward. Crisus took this pretty literally, and he thought, well, a mule is never going to be a king, so this must be telling me that my rule is going to be very, very long, and I have a lot of power ahead of me. So, bolstered and confident, he continued his military campaigning. Over the course of his rule, Crisus had attacked Ephesus, than Ionian cities, than the cities of Aeolia. According to Herodotus, all all of these attacks were based on some sort of reason, and in his words quote, he found graver charges where he could, but sometimes alleged very pettygrounds of offence. Yeah, the justified invasions were pretty lightly justified in some cases. So next, Crisus set his sights on the islands of Greece as a target, and he knew that he was going to need to assemble a navy fleet to conquer them, so he started up a shipbuilding project. But while this was all under way, he was approached by a man from the Lesbos capital of Middelein, whose name was either Prianna or Pitcus, depending on the source that you read, and this man told Crisus that the islanders were actually amassing their own ground forces to attack Criesus at Sartis. Crisus replied, essentially that he wished they would do that because his troops would destroy the Islanders, who had no experience in ground battle warfare. In response to this, the emissary from Middelein pointed out that in starting a navy from scratch, Cresus would be similarly disadvantaged if he tried to take on the islander forces. So this put an end to Crisus's navy project, and he opted instead to form an alliance with the Ionian Islanders. This story cracks me up back. Oh yeah, come at me on land, and they're like, that's what we say about you coming at us on sea. Dude, Yeah, you are not going to manage this. During his time as king of Lydia, Creesus eventually became the ruler of most of the nations and peoples on the peninsula west of the Hallis River that was the name of what is now known as the Kaziller Mock River. Persians conquered the Median Empire in five point fifty BCE, and this was a sobering event for Creesus. It became immediately apparent that his own power could also be challenged by the Persian forces. This led him to try to fortify his own strength through an alliance, and this goes back to that advice that he got from the Oracle of Delphi, the most powerful Greek state. So Crisus had already made an alliance with Amasus, the king of Egypt, and he also got the Lacedaemonians and then the Spartans, which he believed to be the most powerful Greek state, to agree to stand with him. But Crisus was not really content with waiting to see what would happen with the Persians and getting all of these alliances arranged, and he was very impatient, so he just decided that he would go right on ahead and invade Anatolia. He decided to invade Anatolia, specifically Cappadocia in the eastern part of the territory, and that meant he had to cross the Hallas River. And the battle that ensued at Teria was not what anybody had hoped. It sort of ended in a draw. After Teria, Criesus wanted to regroup, so he had summoned all of those groups that he had allied with to join him in the springtime, five months after he sent these messages out to them, so that they would have time to assemble their armies and travel after the winter, and so then he took his own troops and headed back to Sardis. But apparently he didn't realize that Cyrus the second and his Persian troops had followed him home. When Sartis was attacked by Persia, it came just as a complete surprise to Creesus. The Lydians scrambled to meet the Persians in battle, and according to Herodotus, Cyrus was afraid of the Lydians, but on the advice of a Median who was with him, Cyrus put his cavalry on the pack camels. The camels drove back the Lydian horses because apparently the horses were afraid of the camels and their smell, and they retreated even as their riders tried to move them forward into battle. The Lydian army was forced to fight on foot, and ultimately they were defeated by the Persians. Cresus sent word to his allies to come and help, but efforts at assistants were not enough or came too late. Criesus was taken captive, and Sardis was taken by the Persians after two weeks of this conflict. So when the Oracle of Delphi had told Cries about crossing a river and destroying a kingdom, oops, that was his own kingdom that would be destroyed. And that story of the mule leading the may DAEs empire. Cyrus the Second was half may Days and half Persian, the child of two different groups of people, So the mule reference was kind of a casual like slurry representation. Cresus had in his literalism in interpreting all of these words of the oracle, failed to catch any of the actual meaning in the oracle's words. We will talk about the varied accounts of the end of Creesus's life after we pause and have a quick sponsor break. In five point forty six BCE, with his defeat by Cyrus the Second and the Persian army, the reign of Cresus ended. But what happened after this invasion is something that again is a little unclear, and that's because there are a number of different versions of the story. The Chylides, a poet from Greece, tells the story and the odes of the Epenetians that Crisus built his own funeral pyre and then tried to burn himself to death on it. And this was, according to his writing, unsuccessful, because the gods intervened before Criesus actually met his final end. Yes in that history, it's written quote when he had come to that unexpected day, Crisus had no intention of waiting any longer for the tears of slavery. He had a pyre built before his bronze walled courtyard, and he mounted the pyre with his dear wife and his daughters with beautiful hair. They were weeping inconsolably. He raised his arms to the steep sky and shouted, overweening deity, where is the gratitude of the gods? Where is Lord Apollo. So just as Criesus had gotten a trusted servant to really get the flames going, and as his wife and daughters were looking on in tears, the Dao six machina arrives quote. But when the flashing force of terrible fire began to shoot through the wood, Zeus set a dark rain cloud over it and began to quench the golden flame. Nothing is unbelievable, which is brought about by the god's ambition. Then Apollo shows up, scoops up Creasus and his family, and carries them north to Hyperborea, the land of the Giants, where they could live safely. So we know that this particular version of the story became an important part of Greek lore. This moment is represented on a piece of art in the louver decorated by Mason, a painter who decorated vases in Athens using what is known as red figure technique, and Maison's work on the vase that depicts this particular subject is dated in the five hundred to four ninety BCE range, so we're talking fifty to sixty years after Criesus's defeat would have happened. This vase shows Crisus sitting on a throne, pouring out a libation onto the servant Utamos, while Eutamos is lighting the pyre that the throne has been placed upon. There's an inscription on the vase that specifically names the king in the image as Creesus, so it's not a case of like, well, this could be Cresus. The opposite side of the vase has a totally different and unrelated scene showing theseus abducting the Amazon and Tiape. If you're ever in Paris and you want to see it, it is part of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities collection and is on the first floor in the celly wing room six fifty two. So after this happened and Creesus was saved by the gods, the story goes that Criesus became an ally of the leader who followed Cyrus that was Kimbici's the second, and along with Cambises, the second, Creesus in this version, then traveled to Egypt. That is not the only version of this story where Creesus ends up friends with his former enemy state. The Persian doctor Cetisius, who was born in Greece, wrote an account that suggests that Creesus actually became part of Cyrus's court and eventually rose to a point of good enough standing that he was appointed governor of Burini. Part of what makes the Creasus story so tricky to unravel is the fact that he was such a big figure culturally that people essentially started writing fan fiction about him, and now when we reference it hundreds of years later, it's a little hard to know which is fan fiction versus, which is actual historical record. And we mentioned one version of his faith that was written by Herodotus just a moment ago, but that was not the only writing that Herodotus did featuring Creases as a protagonist. And another story by Herodotus Crisus met with Solon, the lawmaker of Athens, whose life ended just as Crisus's reign was starting. And this is really a parable about values and happiness. There's really no evidence that any of it actually took place in the story. Solon, like a lot of important men of the day, decided to visit Cresus when the Lydian king was at the height of his power. So there's actually sort of a fun side story here about why Solon the lawmaker would have been out and about traveling. This kind of, you know, justifies how this may have worked in the writing of Herodotus. So this travel was part of a ten year trip. The idea was that once Solon had made all of the laws that he believed Athens needed to be a fair and just society, he promised to stay away from Athens for ten years so that he would not be tempted to change or repeal any of those laws. Athens wanted to live by this set of laws that Solin had carefully penned, and so they promised to do so, and they were not themselves allowed to make any changes. An interesting governmental experiment, to be sure, And yes, Solin is certainly on my list for his own episode one day. No telling when that might happen in any case. After receiving sullen, Cresus basically spent the whole visit entertaining his visitor and then making the household staff point out all the expensive things that Cresus had just lying around the palace so that Solan would understand just how rich and successful the king was. And after this little exercise in wealth, show and tell creases at soulan quote, my Athenian guest, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings. How As one who loves learning, you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it. So now I desire to ask you who is the most fortunate man you have seen? And of course the king expected that the lawmaker was going to say, Oh, it's you, for sure, dude. You have everything like there's no reason anybody could ever be any happier than you, but he did not say that. Solan instead named an Athenian called Tellus as the most fortunate man he knew. King Criesus asked for an explanation of Solan's answer, and the lawmaker told him that Tellus had been part of a prosperous city, a good community, and that he had children who grew up to be good people and all gave him grandchildren, and that all of his progeny survived, and then once Tellas died in battle against the people of Eleusis, it was a good and honorable death, and that he was honored in his burial. So, after hearing this, apparently hoping that he would get a second place spot, then asked Solan who he thought was the next most fortunate man, and Solan gave two men's names in answer, Klebus and Biton of Argive. These two brothers had a stable home life, they were physically very strong, and they both died after pulling their mother in a wagon five miles to the festival of Hara in Argos, as the oxen that were intended to convey her were not back from the fields in time to do so. Before Klebus and Biton died. Everyone present commented that their mother had raised great children, and then she prayed to Hara to grant her sons the best thing for a man, and they both died in their sleep that night after the evening's feast. Here's how Herodotus renders the speech about this quote. Crisus, you ask me about human affairs, and I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome to us. Crisus, man is entirely chance to me, you seem to be very rich and be king of many people. But I cannot answer your question before I learn that you ended your life well. He explains in the story that wealth is not what leads to happiness, and that one should focus instead on good fortune in a more expansive sense. So the advice that Solan allegedly gave to Creesus was quote, count no man happy until his death. That story actually feeds into a version of the tale of Cyrus having creases burned alive, in which Cresus has a moment of revelation related to Solan's teaching as he is being executed. In this version, as Crisus begins to call out Solan's name. While on the pyre, Cyrus asks why that was the name he invoked, and he was moved by Criesus's realization that wealth was meaningless in that moment. Cresus, then released from his execution by Cyrus, then asks Cyrus what is soldiers are doing. When Cyrus responds that they are sacking the city, Creasus tells him, well, it's your city now, they're destroying your kingdom, not mine, And then this leads to the whole Now where best friends come hang out in my court business. In this version, Cyrus the second also says he will grant Crisus a request, any request, and that the former king asked that his chains be taken to Delphi, and that the Pithia be asked why Apollo should have him sent to attack Persia since it doomed him, and the oracle replied that quote, no one may escape his lot, not even a god. Crisus has paid for the sin of his ancestor of the fifth generation before, who was led by the guile of a woman to kill his master. Yeah, things he had no part in. He was still paying for for the family dues, and that was the whole thing. Ultimately in that story, I should point out Crisus does kind of take personal responsibility and recognize like, oh, I was the one that got the information and acted on it. But here's the thing. All of these stories of creases being saved at the last minute are considered these days to be simply useful didactic tale, and some versions of the story actually just say that Criesus was killed when Lydia was defeated. Those are like translations that have been done by other cultures, not not the ones that would be descendants of the Lydians. For example. The boring reality is that Crisus kind of vanishes from the historical record after the fall of Lydia, although his grandson Pytheas does show up later in the work of Herodotus. He is also very wealthy, although he gets in some very serious and ugly trouble with Xerxes, but that is a whole other thing. As for Lydia, it became a satrope under a Tabolus, but its treasury money kept being managed by a Lydian, which was Pactius. And if you play Assassin's Creed, that name may be familiar to you as a newcomer to assassin's creed. It's not in fact familiar to me. Yet with the leverage of that Satrapi's wealth, Pactius was able to hire Greek mercenaries in a move to revolt against Persian rule, and that ultimately led up to the Persian Wars Oh crisis. Fascinating, but I always got to remember, even in the stories, you know, where it's like, and then he realized that living in life is better, and I'm like, hey, we got to address this slavery problem. Well never, it never gets addressed. Also, there's a lot of stuff and a lot of historical accounts from this time period that really seemed to follow literary convention to a point that you're like, you know, that's probably a little embellished. I think this made a good yarn, but probably not. I mean, I don't want to, you know, invalidate anybody's belief system, but I do not believe that Zeus made a rain cloud go just over creases as hire. Yeah. Maybe I know, only that I know nothing. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. 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Happy Saturday. Crisus came up a couple of times in our episode on the Battle of the Eclipse not too long ago, so our episode on him is Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out September seventh, twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Crisus is a name that is now most commonly referenced when someone wants to shorthand that a person is ridiculously wealthy. That is a thing that it happens sometimes in English language, but other languages use it all the time, and I think possibly a little bit more than English speakers. And he is one of those historical figures who was both real and has taken on a mythical status, also mythical. Aesop was a member of his court, and there's all kinds of mythical swirlings around him. But the story of the ridiculously wealthy Cresus, which was likely fictionalized in a number of ways, and we'll talk about that, also becomes this sort of cautionary tale about pride and hubris and what really has value in life. So Crisus was born into the royal family of Lydia. Lydia was a kingdom that occupied the western section of Anatolia. Roughly speaking in modern shorthand, we're talking about the left half of the Asia Minor peninsula, so it's part of modern day Turkey. To the west sat the Greeks, and to the east or the lands of Persia. The Lydia that Crisus was born into was very prosperous. When Phrygia, which had been the dominant power on the peninsula since around twelve hundred BCE, was attacked by Samerians and fell from power circus seven hundred BCE, Lydia became the most powerful kingdom in the region. It's kind of filled that power vacuum at that point. It was ruled by King Jaijis from the newly established Lydian capital of Sardis. This also established the Merbnad dynasty after Jaiji's came Artists in the mid seventh century BCE, followed by Sidides and then Alioities. Aliities was Criesus's father, and it's under Aliites that Lydia is said to have really hit its apex in terms of power and prosperity. The exact dates for the reigns of those kings are pretty fuzzy. The main source that's used for them is from Herodotus, but if you do the math based on the counts of the years that he uses, that math is not quite add up. Also, just in general, Herodotus sometimes would like to say this is how I heard it, Yes, one hundred percent. It's one of those things where he is listed as a great historian. But as we'll discuss later, there's definitely some flexibility with the record, like what serves his purpose. But what is less fuzzy is the fact that during the years from seven hundred BCE to Creases becoming king circa five sixty BCE, Lydia had established itself as a very prosperous commercial culture. It is one of the earliest cultures known to have instituted the concept of retail shops like permanent stores, and the Lydians were minting coinage way ahead of the rest of the Western world. There is evidence of Chinese coinage that predates the Lydians, although the coins that were minted specifically under Creasus more closely resemble what we would think of today as coinage. When Aliantes died in five sixty BCE, Cresus became king and he was thirty five at the time. And Cresus was, like a lot of people in his day, very into using things like dreams and oracles to predict the future. He had two sons, one of them is described again by Herodotus as having a very minor disability, and this is treated just horribly within the text, says quote. Since he is ruined, he doesn't exist for me. Yeah, there's a whole side story about his son that I'm maybe gonna save for our casual Friday chat. It's a weird thing. But the other son that he had, Adis, was much beloved and was the king's pride. And when Cresus had a dream that showed Adis being killed by an iron spear, Crisus then did everything in his power to shelter his son. He arranged for a speedy marriage to give him a home life, and he stopped tasking him with going out into battle, and he basically tried to keep him safe and at home all the time. But ultimately Crisus did allow Addis to go on a hunt, and this was at his son's request and after much debate, because Adis was sort of feeling like, hey, I don't have anything to be proud of in our culture at this point because you won't let me go to war and I can't even go outside the stinks. So he allowed him to go on this hunt, and of course, an hunter's spear missed the wild board that they were hunting and killed Attis, and Creasus reportedly mourned this sun for two full years. Lydia is usually cited as the first kingdom to mint metal coinage. Under Creasus, the first silver and gold coins for Lydia were made, And this is kind of reminding us a little bit of the many episodes where we have talked about the gold standard being challenged by the silver standard in the United States and how much strife came out of all that those precious metals were part of tender going all the way back to the sixth century BCE. Yeah, and the coin type known as a cresad, featuring a face off between a lion and a bowl was developed during this time, and the representation of the lion actually served as a means to indicate the purity and the value of the coin. So a smaller piece of the lion's body would be stamped on a coin to indicate that that coin was a smaller denomination than one with a larger, more complete image of a lion. And the Lydians really made great strides under creases in the purification of gold, enabling them to ensure accuracy in these different coins. This is basically the beginning of the gold standard, and the wealth was incredible. Another name that you've almost certainly heard in connection with ridiculous levels of riches as King Midas, and Crisus's very great wealth is said to have come from Midas. In a way, the Mermnad dynasty allegedly got its extraordinary riches in part by collecting it from the river Pactulus, where Midas is said to have washed his hands. There were also some taxes plundering other kingdoms, including enslaving people from those kingdoms. Yeah, they actually gained their riches in a number of ways, but that Midas story is one that persists, and what defines much of what we know of the rule of Cresus is war. And it's said that conflict was ultimately what brought Cresus out of his mourning state over his son. Once he was refocused on military leadership, Creesus was eager to expand his power, and he could be ruthless in this quest. Herodotus wrote this of him, quote this, Crisus was the first foreigner whom we know who subjugated some Greeks and took tribute from them and won the friendship of others, the former being the Ionians, the Aeolians and the Dorians of Asia, and the latter the Lacedaemonians. Before the reign of Cresus, all Greeks were free for the Samerian host which invaded Ionia before his time did not subjugate the cities that raided and robbed them. Yeah, so keep in mind as we talk about Cresus, and he's an interesting figure, but he was very big on enslavement as something new that was not a tradition, that was something he instituted in his war making. So we mentioned a moment ago that Cresus believed in oracles, but he really wanted to run a test to ensure that the oracle that he would patronize was going to be the best one. So Herodotus wrote that Crisus sent men out to various shrines, but after they left the palace at Sartis, they had to bide their time for one hundred days, so they didn't know what Crisus was doing before going to these shrines. And then on the one hundredth day, each oracle was supposed to be asked to divine what Crisus was doing at that very moment, and then all of these messengers would bring back the divinations and it would be obvious which oracle or oracles were the real deal. The men who had visited the Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo came back with the following verse quote, I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea, and understand the mute and hear the voiceless. The smell has come to my senses of a strong shelled tortoise boiling in a cauldron, together with a lamb's flesh under witch's bronze and overwitch's bronze. We don't know what any of the others divined, because this one was apparently spot on. Crisus said that the oracle of Amphiarus had also given a quote true answer, but we don't know the wording of what that answer specifically was. But in an effort to concoct a strange enough event that it would be impossible to guess what he had been doing, Crisus had cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together in a covered bronze cauldron. So let's move along from that less than pleasant image and take a quick break and have a word from some of the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed in history class going. So, Crisus was devoted to the Oracle of Delphi after it had successfully uh passed this test. He sacrificed literally thousands of animals and burned almost every valuable thing he could lay hands on. He also commanded the citizens of Lyddy to do the same, and he sent so much gold to the temple. There is a line in the translation that I read that stated quote. Moreover, he dedicated his own wife's necklaces and girdles, which I just found funny as things to sacrifice to Apollo. So the goal of all of these offerings was to ensure that Crisus got good advice from the oracle regarding his military plans, and the people he tasked with bringing his many gifts to the temple were instructed to get this advice. Two points came back. One was that if Criesus were to attack the Persians, crossing a river to do so, he would destroy a great empire, and two that he should make friends with the most powerful Greeks. So, at this point in time, the power of the Persians, led by Cyrus the Second also known as Cyrus the Great, was expanding. We actually talked at some length about Cyrus the Second in our episode on the Achemenid Empire in twenty sixteen. Crisus, of course wanted to curtail the expansion of the Persian Empire, and he started a campaign of his own to make sure that Cyrus the Second's forces did not get close to Lydia. So Crisus asked the oracle to once again tell him the future. They sent messengers to Delphi to ask if his reign would be a long one, and the reply was quote, when the medics have a mule as king, just then, tenderfooted Lydian by the stone, shrewn hermus flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward. Crisus took this pretty literally, and he thought, well, a mule is never going to be a king, so this must be telling me that my rule is going to be very, very long, and I have a lot of power ahead of me. So, bolstered and confident, he continued his military campaigning. Over the course of his rule, Crisus had attacked Ephesus, than Ionian cities, than the cities of Aeolia. According to Herodotus, all all of these attacks were based on some sort of reason, and in his words quote, he found graver charges where he could, but sometimes alleged very pettygrounds of offence. Yeah, the justified invasions were pretty lightly justified in some cases. So next, Crisus set his sights on the islands of Greece as a target, and he knew that he was going to need to assemble a navy fleet to conquer them, so he started up a shipbuilding project. But while this was all under way, he was approached by a man from the Lesbos capital of Middelein, whose name was either Prianna or Pitcus, depending on the source that you read, and this man told Crisus that the islanders were actually amassing their own ground forces to attack Criesus at Sartis. Crisus replied, essentially that he wished they would do that because his troops would destroy the Islanders, who had no experience in ground battle warfare. In response to this, the emissary from Middelein pointed out that in starting a navy from scratch, Cresus would be similarly disadvantaged if he tried to take on the islander forces. So this put an end to Crisus's navy project, and he opted instead to form an alliance with the Ionian Islanders. This story cracks me up back. Oh yeah, come at me on land, and they're like, that's what we say about you coming at us on sea. Dude, Yeah, you are not going to manage this. During his time as king of Lydia, Creesus eventually became the ruler of most of the nations and peoples on the peninsula west of the Hallis River that was the name of what is now known as the Kaziller Mock River. Persians conquered the Median Empire in five point fifty BCE, and this was a sobering event for Creesus. It became immediately apparent that his own power could also be challenged by the Persian forces. This led him to try to fortify his own strength through an alliance, and this goes back to that advice that he got from the Oracle of Delphi, the most powerful Greek state. So Crisus had already made an alliance with Amasus, the king of Egypt, and he also got the Lacedaemonians and then the Spartans, which he believed to be the most powerful Greek state, to agree to stand with him. But Crisus was not really content with waiting to see what would happen with the Persians and getting all of these alliances arranged, and he was very impatient, so he just decided that he would go right on ahead and invade Anatolia. He decided to invade Anatolia, specifically Cappadocia in the eastern part of the territory, and that meant he had to cross the Hallas River. And the battle that ensued at Teria was not what anybody had hoped. It sort of ended in a draw. After Teria, Criesus wanted to regroup, so he had summoned all of those groups that he had allied with to join him in the springtime, five months after he sent these messages out to them, so that they would have time to assemble their armies and travel after the winter, and so then he took his own troops and headed back to Sardis. But apparently he didn't realize that Cyrus the second and his Persian troops had followed him home. When Sartis was attacked by Persia, it came just as a complete surprise to Creesus. The Lydians scrambled to meet the Persians in battle, and according to Herodotus, Cyrus was afraid of the Lydians, but on the advice of a Median who was with him, Cyrus put his cavalry on the pack camels. The camels drove back the Lydian horses because apparently the horses were afraid of the camels and their smell, and they retreated even as their riders tried to move them forward into battle. The Lydian army was forced to fight on foot, and ultimately they were defeated by the Persians. Cresus sent word to his allies to come and help, but efforts at assistants were not enough or came too late. Criesus was taken captive, and Sardis was taken by the Persians after two weeks of this conflict. So when the Oracle of Delphi had told Cries about crossing a river and destroying a kingdom, oops, that was his own kingdom that would be destroyed. And that story of the mule leading the may DAEs empire. Cyrus the Second was half may Days and half Persian, the child of two different groups of people, So the mule reference was kind of a casual like slurry representation. Cresus had in his literalism in interpreting all of these words of the oracle, failed to catch any of the actual meaning in the oracle's words. We will talk about the varied accounts of the end of Creesus's life after we pause and have a quick sponsor break. In five point forty six BCE, with his defeat by Cyrus the Second and the Persian army, the reign of Cresus ended. But what happened after this invasion is something that again is a little unclear, and that's because there are a number of different versions of the story. The Chylides, a poet from Greece, tells the story and the odes of the Epenetians that Crisus built his own funeral pyre and then tried to burn himself to death on it. And this was, according to his writing, unsuccessful, because the gods intervened before Criesus actually met his final end. Yes in that history, it's written quote when he had come to that unexpected day, Crisus had no intention of waiting any longer for the tears of slavery. He had a pyre built before his bronze walled courtyard, and he mounted the pyre with his dear wife and his daughters with beautiful hair. They were weeping inconsolably. He raised his arms to the steep sky and shouted, overweening deity, where is the gratitude of the gods? Where is Lord Apollo. So just as Criesus had gotten a trusted servant to really get the flames going, and as his wife and daughters were looking on in tears, the Dao six machina arrives quote. But when the flashing force of terrible fire began to shoot through the wood, Zeus set a dark rain cloud over it and began to quench the golden flame. Nothing is unbelievable, which is brought about by the god's ambition. Then Apollo shows up, scoops up Creasus and his family, and carries them north to Hyperborea, the land of the Giants, where they could live safely. So we know that this particular version of the story became an important part of Greek lore. This moment is represented on a piece of art in the louver decorated by Mason, a painter who decorated vases in Athens using what is known as red figure technique, and Maison's work on the vase that depicts this particular subject is dated in the five hundred to four ninety BCE range, so we're talking fifty to sixty years after Criesus's defeat would have happened. This vase shows Crisus sitting on a throne, pouring out a libation onto the servant Utamos, while Eutamos is lighting the pyre that the throne has been placed upon. There's an inscription on the vase that specifically names the king in the image as Creesus, so it's not a case of like, well, this could be Cresus. The opposite side of the vase has a totally different and unrelated scene showing theseus abducting the Amazon and Tiape. If you're ever in Paris and you want to see it, it is part of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities collection and is on the first floor in the celly wing room six fifty two. So after this happened and Creesus was saved by the gods, the story goes that Criesus became an ally of the leader who followed Cyrus that was Kimbici's the second, and along with Cambises, the second, Creesus in this version, then traveled to Egypt. That is not the only version of this story where Creesus ends up friends with his former enemy state. The Persian doctor Cetisius, who was born in Greece, wrote an account that suggests that Creesus actually became part of Cyrus's court and eventually rose to a point of good enough standing that he was appointed governor of Burini. Part of what makes the Creasus story so tricky to unravel is the fact that he was such a big figure culturally that people essentially started writing fan fiction about him, and now when we reference it hundreds of years later, it's a little hard to know which is fan fiction versus, which is actual historical record. And we mentioned one version of his faith that was written by Herodotus just a moment ago, but that was not the only writing that Herodotus did featuring Creases as a protagonist. And another story by Herodotus Crisus met with Solon, the lawmaker of Athens, whose life ended just as Crisus's reign was starting. And this is really a parable about values and happiness. There's really no evidence that any of it actually took place in the story. Solon, like a lot of important men of the day, decided to visit Cresus when the Lydian king was at the height of his power. So there's actually sort of a fun side story here about why Solon the lawmaker would have been out and about traveling. This kind of, you know, justifies how this may have worked in the writing of Herodotus. So this travel was part of a ten year trip. The idea was that once Solon had made all of the laws that he believed Athens needed to be a fair and just society, he promised to stay away from Athens for ten years so that he would not be tempted to change or repeal any of those laws. Athens wanted to live by this set of laws that Solin had carefully penned, and so they promised to do so, and they were not themselves allowed to make any changes. An interesting governmental experiment, to be sure, And yes, Solin is certainly on my list for his own episode one day. No telling when that might happen in any case. After receiving sullen, Cresus basically spent the whole visit entertaining his visitor and then making the household staff point out all the expensive things that Cresus had just lying around the palace so that Solan would understand just how rich and successful the king was. And after this little exercise in wealth, show and tell creases at soulan quote, my Athenian guest, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings. How As one who loves learning, you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it. So now I desire to ask you who is the most fortunate man you have seen? And of course the king expected that the lawmaker was going to say, Oh, it's you, for sure, dude. You have everything like there's no reason anybody could ever be any happier than you, but he did not say that. Solan instead named an Athenian called Tellus as the most fortunate man he knew. King Criesus asked for an explanation of Solan's answer, and the lawmaker told him that Tellus had been part of a prosperous city, a good community, and that he had children who grew up to be good people and all gave him grandchildren, and that all of his progeny survived, and then once Tellas died in battle against the people of Eleusis, it was a good and honorable death, and that he was honored in his burial. So, after hearing this, apparently hoping that he would get a second place spot, then asked Solan who he thought was the next most fortunate man, and Solan gave two men's names in answer, Klebus and Biton of Argive. These two brothers had a stable home life, they were physically very strong, and they both died after pulling their mother in a wagon five miles to the festival of Hara in Argos, as the oxen that were intended to convey her were not back from the fields in time to do so. Before Klebus and Biton died. Everyone present commented that their mother had raised great children, and then she prayed to Hara to grant her sons the best thing for a man, and they both died in their sleep that night after the evening's feast. Here's how Herodotus renders the speech about this quote. Crisus, you ask me about human affairs, and I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome to us. Crisus, man is entirely chance to me, you seem to be very rich and be king of many people. But I cannot answer your question before I learn that you ended your life well. He explains in the story that wealth is not what leads to happiness, and that one should focus instead on good fortune in a more expansive sense. So the advice that Solan allegedly gave to Creesus was quote, count no man happy until his death. That story actually feeds into a version of the tale of Cyrus having creases burned alive, in which Cresus has a moment of revelation related to Solan's teaching as he is being executed. In this version, as Crisus begins to call out Solan's name. While on the pyre, Cyrus asks why that was the name he invoked, and he was moved by Criesus's realization that wealth was meaningless in that moment. Cresus, then released from his execution by Cyrus, then asks Cyrus what is soldiers are doing. When Cyrus responds that they are sacking the city, Creasus tells him, well, it's your city now, they're destroying your kingdom, not mine, And then this leads to the whole Now where best friends come hang out in my court business. In this version, Cyrus the second also says he will grant Crisus a request, any request, and that the former king asked that his chains be taken to Delphi, and that the Pithia be asked why Apollo should have him sent to attack Persia since it doomed him, and the oracle replied that quote, no one may escape his lot, not even a god. Crisus has paid for the sin of his ancestor of the fifth generation before, who was led by the guile of a woman to kill his master. Yeah, things he had no part in. He was still paying for for the family dues, and that was the whole thing. Ultimately in that story, I should point out Crisus does kind of take personal responsibility and recognize like, oh, I was the one that got the information and acted on it. But here's the thing. All of these stories of creases being saved at the last minute are considered these days to be simply useful didactic tale, and some versions of the story actually just say that Criesus was killed when Lydia was defeated. Those are like translations that have been done by other cultures, not not the ones that would be descendants of the Lydians. For example. The boring reality is that Crisus kind of vanishes from the historical record after the fall of Lydia, although his grandson Pytheas does show up later in the work of Herodotus. He is also very wealthy, although he gets in some very serious and ugly trouble with Xerxes, but that is a whole other thing. As for Lydia, it became a satrope under a Tabolus, but its treasury money kept being managed by a Lydian, which was Pactius. And if you play Assassin's Creed, that name may be familiar to you as a newcomer to assassin's creed. It's not in fact familiar to me. Yet with the leverage of that Satrapi's wealth, Pactius was able to hire Greek mercenaries in a move to revolt against Persian rule, and that ultimately led up to the Persian Wars Oh crisis. Fascinating, but I always got to remember, even in the stories, you know, where it's like, and then he realized that living in life is better, and I'm like, hey, we got to address this slavery problem. Well never, it never gets addressed. Also, there's a lot of stuff and a lot of historical accounts from this time period that really seemed to follow literary convention to a point that you're like, you know, that's probably a little embellished. I think this made a good yarn, but probably not. I mean, I don't want to, you know, invalidate anybody's belief system, but I do not believe that Zeus made a rain cloud go just over creases as hire. Yeah. Maybe I know, only that I know nothing. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. 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