degrees to exaggerate the total of the benefits showered upon them,
especially as time went on and their recollection of the king became
fainter; but even when we reduce the number of the many gifts which
they attributed to him, we are still obliged to acknowledge that they
surpassed anything hitherto recorded, and that they produced throughout
the whole of Greece the effect that Croesus had desired. The oracle
granted to him and to the Lydians the rights of citizenship in
perpetuity, the privilege of priority in consulting it before all
comers, precedence for his legates over other foreign embassies, and a
place of honour at the games and at all religious ceremonies. It was,
in fact, the admission of Lydia into the Hellenic concert, and the
offerings which Croesus showered upon the sanctuaries of lesser
fame--that of Zeus at Dodona, of Amphiaraos at Oropos, of Trophonios at
Lebadsea, on the oracle of Abee in Phocis, and on the Ismenian Apollo
at Thebes--secured a general approval of the act. Political alliances
contracted with the great families of Athens, the Alcmonidæ and
Eupatridæ,* with the Cypselidæ of, Corinth,** and with the Heraclidæ of
Sparta,*** completed the policy of bribery which Croesus had inaugurated
in the sacerdotal republics, with the result that, towards 548, being in
the position of uncontested patron of the Greeks of Asia, he could count
upon the sympathetic neutrality of the majority of their compatriots in
Europe, and on the effective support of a smaller number of them in
the event of his being forced into hostilities with one or other of his
Asiatic rivals.

* Traditions as to Crcesus' relations with Alcrnseon are
preserved by Herodotus. The king compelled the inhabitants of
Lampsacus, his vassals, to release the elder Miltiades, whom
they had taken prisoner, and thus earned the gratitude of
the Eupatridæ.