ravaging with his cavalry the old homeland of the Hatti. Thus he gave
Cyrus time to send envoys to the Ionian cities to beg them attack Lydia
in the rear, and time to come down himself in force to his far western
province. Croesus was brought to battle in the first days of the autumn.
The engagement was indecisive, but the Lydians, having no mind to stay
out the winter on the bleak Cappadocian highlands and little suspicion
that the enemy would think of further warfare before spring, went back
at their leisure to the Hermus valley, only to hear at Sardes itself
that the Persian was hot in pursuit. A final battle was fought under the
very walls of the Lydian capital and lost by Croesus; the lower town was
taken and sacked; and the king, who had shut himself with his guards
into the citadel and summoned his allies to his rescue come five months,
was a prisoner of Cyrus within two weeks. It was the end of Lydia and of
all buffers between the Orient and Greece. East and West were in direct
contact and the omens boded ill to the West. Cyrus refused terms to the
Greeks, except the powerful Milesians, and departing for the East again,
left Lydia to be pacified and all the cities of the western coasts,
Ionian, Carian, Lycian and what not, excepting only Miletus, to be
reduced by his viceroys.


SECTION 5. PERSIAN EMPIRE

Cyrus himself had still to deal with a part of the East which, not
having been occupied by the Medes, though in a measure allied and
subservient to them, saw no reason now to acknowledge the new dynasty.
This is the part which had been included in the New Babylonian Empire.
The Persian armies invaded Babylonia. Nabonidus was defeated finally at
Opis in June 538; Sippara fell, and Cyrus' general appearing before
Babylon itself received it without a struggle at the hands of the