Summary: The text tells a story about Crœsus, who learns of his son’s death caused by a stranger he had previously helped. Crœsus is devastated, feeling betrayed by the very person he had trusted as a guardian for his son. The narrative also touches on themes of fate and the consequences of one’s actions.
There was a certain king of Sardis, Candaules by name, whom the Greeks called Myrsilus. He was a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Hercules. (View Highlight)
Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. Henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies. (View Highlight)
this Candaules was in love with his own wife; and not only so, but thought her the fairest woman in the whole world. This fancy had strange consequences. (View Highlight)
I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay. (View Highlight)
Our fathers, in time past, distinguished right and wrong plainly enough, and it is our wisdom to submit to be taught by them. (View Highlight)
For among the Lydians, and indeed among the barbarians generally, it is reckoned a deep disgrace, even to a man, to be seen naked. (View Highlight)
When Gyges was established on the throne, he sent no small presents to Delphi, as his many silver offerings at the Delphic shrine testify. Besides this silver he gave a vast number of vessels of gold, among which the most worthy of mention are the goblets, six in number, and weighing altogether thirty talents, (View Highlight)
there is to this day at Tarnarum, an offering of Arion’s at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin. (View Highlight)
Glaucus, the Chian, made it, the man who first invented the art of inlaying steel. (View Highlight)
I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy? (View Highlight)
For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life. (View Highlight)
God showed forth most evidently, how much better a thing for man death is than life. (View Highlight)
there is no country which contains within it all that it needs, but each, while it possesses some things, lacks others, and the best country is that which contains the most; (View Highlight)
no single human being is complete in every respect (View Highlight)
He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my judgment, entitled to bear the name of ‘happy.’ But in every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin. (View Highlight)
Wait till the time shall come when a mule is monarch of Media; Then, thou delicate Lydian, away to the pebbles of Hermus; (View Highlight)
Greeks have been from very ancient times distinguished from the barbarians by superior sagacity and freedom from foolish simpleness, and remembering that the persons on whom this trick was played were not only Greeks but Athenians, who have the credit of surpassing all other Greeks in cleverness. (View Highlight)
The answer of the Pythoness was that before they could prevail, they must remove to Sparta the bones of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon. (View Highlight)
who feed not on what they like, but on what they can get from a soil that is sterile and unkindly; who do not indulge in wine, but drink water; who possess no figs nor anything else that is good to eat. If, then, thou conquerest them, what canst thou get from them, seeing that they have nothing at all? But if they conquer thee, consider how much that is precious thou wilt lose: if they once get a taste of our pleasant things, they will keep such hold of them that we shall never be able to make them loose their grasp. (View Highlight)
Oaths are taken by these people in the same way as by the Greeks, except that they make a slight flesh wound in their arms, from which each sucks a portion of the other’s blood. (View Highlight)
The reason why Cyrus opposed his camels to the enemy’s horse was because the horse has a natural dread of the camel, and cannot abide either the sight or the smell of that animal. (View Highlight)
since the snake, said they, is a child of earth, and the horse a warrior and a foreigner. (View Highlight)
No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons. But the gods willed it so. (View Highlight)
but if he neither understood what was said, nor took the trouble to seek for enlightenment, he has only himself to blame for the result. (View Highlight)
Part 2
It appeared on measurement that the portion of the courtesans was the largest. The daughters of the common people in Lydia, one and all, pursue this traffic, wishing to collect money for their portions. They continue the practice till they marry; and are wont to contract themselves in marriage. (View Highlight)
So far as we have any knowledge, they were the first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first who sold goods by retail. They claim also the invention of all the games which are common to them with the Greeks. (View Highlight)
The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years. Still the affliction continued and even became more grievous. So the king determined to divide the nation in half, and to make the two portions draw lots, the one to stay, the other to leave the land. (View Highlight)
“We cannot possibly,” they said, “go on living in this country if things continue as they now are; let us therefore set a king over us, that so the land may be well governed, and we ourselves may be able to attend to our own affairs, and not be forced to quit our country on account of anarchy.” (View Highlight)
It was his conviction that justice and injustice are engaged in perpetual war with one another. (View Highlight)
He allowed no one to have direct access to the person of the king, but made all communication pass through the hands of messengers, and forbade the king to be seen by his subjects. (View Highlight)
he was the first who gave organisation to an Asiatic army, dividing the troops into companies, and forming distinct bodies of the spearmen, the archers, and the cavalry, who before his time had been mingled in one mass, and confused together. (View Highlight)
if they saw him frequently would be pained at the sight, and would therefore be likely to conspire against him; whereas if they did not see him, they would think him quite a different sort of being from themselves. (View Highlight)
The Scythians who plundered the temple were punished by the goddess with the female sickness, which still attaches to their posterity. (View Highlight)
Thus after a reign of thirty-five years, Astyages lost his crown, and the Medes, in consequence of his cruelty, were brought under the rule of the Persians. (View Highlight)
Of all the days in the year, the one which they celebrate most is their birthday. (View Highlight)
They eat little solid food but abundance of dessert, which is set on table a few dishes at a time (View Highlight)
they have no images of the gods, no temples nor altars, and consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I think, from their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine. (View Highlight)
They are very fond of wine, and drink it in large quantities (View Highlight)
To vomit or obey natural calls in the presence of another is forbidden among them. (View Highlight)
It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine. (View Highlight)
they look upon themselves as very greatly superior in all respects to the rest of mankind, regarding others as approaching to excellence in proportion as they dwell nearer to them; (View Highlight)
There is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs as the Persians. (View Highlight)
The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: (View Highlight)
As soon as they hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own: and hence, among other novelties, they have learnt unnatural lust from the Greeks. Each of them has several wives, and a still larger number of concubines. (View Highlight)
They never defile a river with the secretions of their bodies, nor even wash their hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers. (View Highlight)
Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone, — to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth. Until their fifth year they are not allowed to come into the sight of their father, but pass their lives with the women. (View Highlight)