Alyattes would not give up the Scythians when Kyaxares demanded them,
there had arisen war between the Lydians and the Medes lasting five
years; in which years the Medes often discomfited the Lydians and the
Lydians often discomfited the Medes (and among others they fought also
a battle by night):[88] and as they still carried on the war with
equally balanced fortune, in the sixth year a battle took place in
which it happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day
became night. And this change of the day Thales the Milesian had
foretold to the Ionians laying down as a limit this very year in which
the change took place. The Lydians however and the Medes, when they
saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased from their
fighting and were much more eager both of them that peace should be
made between them. And they who brought about the peace between them
were Syennesis the Kilikian and Labynetos the Babylonian:[89] these
were they who urged also the taking of the oath by them, and they
brought about an interchange of marriages; for they decided that
Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages the son of
Kyaxares, seeing that without the compulsion of a strong tie
agreements are apt not to hold strongly together. Now these nations
observe the same ceremonies in taking oaths as the Hellenes, and in
addition to them they make incision into the skin of their arms, and
then lick up the blood each of the other.

75. This Astyages then, being his mother's father, Cyrus had conquered
and made prisoner for a reason which I shall declare in the history
which comes after.[90] This then was the complaint which Crœsus had
against Cyrus when he sent to the Oracles to ask if he should march
against the Persians; and when a deceitful answer had come back to
him, he marched into the dominion of the Persians, supposing that the
answer was favourable to himself. And when Crœsus came to the river