1.15.1
As soon as Gyges came to the throne, he too, like others, led an army into the lands of Miletus and Smyrna; and he took the city of Colophon. But as he did nothing else great in his reign of thirty-eight years, I shall say no more of him, and shall speak instead of Ardys son of Gyges, who succeeded him. He took Priene and invaded the country of Miletus; and it was while he was monarch of Sardis that the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomad Scythians, came into Asia, and took Sardis, all but the acropolis.
ch. 16
1.16.1
Ardys reigned for forty-nine years and was succeeded by his son Sadyattes, who reigned for twelve years; and after Sadyattes came Alyattes,
1.16.2
who waged war against Deioces' descendant Cyaxares and the Medes, drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, took Smyrna (which was a colony from Colophon), and invaded the lands of Clazomenae. But he did not return from these as he wished, but with great disaster. Of other deeds done by him in his reign, these were the most notable:
ch. 17
1.17.1
He continued the war against the Milesians which his father had begun. This was how he attacked and beseiged Miletus: he sent his army, marching to the sound of pipes and harps and bass and treble flutes, to invade when the crops in the land were ripe;
1.17.2
and whenever he came to the Milesian territory, he neither demolished nor burnt nor tore the doors off the country dwellings, but let them stand unharmed; but he destroyed the trees and the crops of the land, and so returned to where he came from;
1.17.3
for as the Milesians had command of the sea, it was of no use for his army to besiege their city. The reason that the Lydian did not destroy the houses was this: that the Milesians might have homes from which to plant and cultivate their land, and that there might be the fruit of their toil for his invading army to lay waste.
ch. 18
1.18.1
He waged war in this way for eleven years, and in these years two great disasters overtook the Milesians, one at the battle of Limeneion in their own territory, and the other in the valley of the Maeander.
1.18.2
For six of these eleven years Sadyattes son of Ardys was still ruler of Lydia, and it was he who invaded the lands of Miletus, for it was he who had begun the war; for the following five the war was waged by Sadyattes' son Alyattes, who, as I have indicated before, inherited the war from his father and carried it on vigorously.
1.18.3
None of the Ionians helped to lighten this war for the Milesians, except the Chians: these lent their aid in return for a similar service done for them; for the Milesians had previously helped the Chians in their war against the Erythraeans.
ch. 19
1.19.1
In the twelfth year, when the Lydian army was burning the crops, the fire set in the crops, blown by a strong wind, caught the temple of Athena called Athena of Assesos, note and the temple burned to the ground.
1.19.2
For the present no notice was taken of this. But after the army had returned to Sardis, Alyattes fell ill; and, as his sickness lasted longer than it should, he sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle, either at someone's urging or by his own wish to question the god about his sickness.
