The Last King of Lydia

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Gilda Bartoloni (2000). "Le origini e la diffusione della cultura villanoviana". In Mario Torelli (ed.). Gi Etruschi (in Italian). Milan: Bompiani. pp.53–71. a b Silvia Ghirotto; Francesca Tassi; Erica Fumagalli; Vincenza Colonna; Anna Sandionigi; Martina Lari; Stefania Vai; Emmanuele Petiti; Giorgio Corti; Ermanno Rizzi; Gianluca De Bellis; David Caramelli; Guido Barbujani (6 February 2013). "Origins and Evolution of the Etruscans' mtDNA". PLOS ONE. 8 (2): e55519. Bibcode: 2013PLoSO...855519G. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055519. PMC 3566088. PMID 23405165. A passage from the Nabonidus Chronicle was long held to have referred to a military campaign of Cyrus against a country whose name has been largely erased except for the first cuneiform character which had been interpreted as Lu, extrapolated to be the first syllable of an Akkadian name for Lydia. This passage in the Nabonidus Chronicle would thus have referred to a campaign by Cyrus against Lydia around 547 BC during which "marched against the country, killed its king, took his possessions, and put there a garrison of his own". However, the verb used in the Nabonidus Chronicle could be used both in the sense "to kill" and "to destroy as a military power", making any precise deduction of the fate of Croesus from it impossible. [6] [31] More recent studies have moreover concluded that the non-erased character was Ú/U₂, making untenable the interpretation of the text as talking of a campaign against Lydia, and instead suggesting that the campaign was against Urartu. [30] [32] [33] Croesus on the pyre, Attic red-figure amphora, Louvre (G 197) He remembers the life of Croesus, the first king of Asia Minor, who strove to dominate the Greek people by using the tales and testimony he acquired throughout his journeys. He gathered these tales and testimonies. In truth, I count no man happy until his death, for no man can know what the gods may have in store for him. 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 behooves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes the gods give men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin. (Herodotus, I.32)

Croesus was born in 620 BC to the king Alyattes of Lydia and one of his queens, a Carian noblewoman whose name is still unknown. Croesus had at least one full sister, Aryenis, as well as a step-brother named Pantaleon, born from a Ionian Greek wife of Alyattes. [8] [9] a b c Spalinger, Anthony (1976). "Psammetichus, King of Egypt: I". Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. 13: 133–147. doi: 10.2307/40001126. JSTOR 40001126 . Retrieved 2 November 2021. Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296 AD, Lydia was revived as the name of a separate Roman province, much smaller than the former satrapy, with its capital at Sardis. Grousset, René (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 9. ISBN 0-8135-1304-9.Moser, Mary E. (1996). "The origins of the Etruscans: new evidence for an old question". In Hall, John Franklin (ed.). Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era. Provo, Utah: Museum of Art, Brigham Young University. pp. 29- 43. ISBN 0842523340.

The scholar Max Mallowan argued that there is no evidence that Cyrus the Great killed Croesus, in particular rejected the account of burning on a pyre, and interpreted Bacchylides' narration as Croesus attempting suicide and then being saved by Cyrus. [34]Lydia had numerous Christian communities and, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, Lydia became one of the provinces of the diocese of Asia in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Grimal, Pierre (1991). The Penguin dictionary of classical mythology. Kershaw, Stephen. (Abridged) ed. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0140512357. OCLC 25246340. a b Yakubovich, Ilya (2017). "An Agreement between the Sardians and the Mermnads in the Lydian Language?". Indogermanische Forschungen. 122 (1): 265–294. doi: 10.1515/if-2017-0014. S2CID 171633908 . Retrieved 13 November 2021.