enemy was at the frontier that the king must have realized his own fatuity. Thus with the accession of Nabonidus the close of Babylon's last period of greatness is in sight. But the empire did not crumble of its own accord, for in one of his foundation-records the king boasts that the whole of Mesopotamia and the West, as far as Gaza on the Egyptian border, continued to acknowledge his authority.[26] It required pressure from without to shatter the decaying empire, which from the first must have owed its success in no small measure to the friendly and protective attitude of Media. When that essential support was no longer forthcoming, it lay at the mercy of the new power before which Media herself had already gone down. The Persian kingdom of Cyrus, rising on a new wave of the Indo-European migration, had had little difficulty in absorbing that of the Medes.[27] Five years after the accession of Nabonidus, Cyrus had deposed Astyages, and, uniting his own followers from the south of Iran with their Median kinsfolk, he proceeded to deal with Croesus of Lydia. Under her last king, the successor of Alyattes, the power of Lydia had risen to its greatest height, and the fame of Croesus' wealth had attracted many of the more cultured Greeks to his court at Sardis. But when Cyrus made himself master of the Median empire, Croesus began to fear his growing power. In 547 B.C. he fought an indecisive battle with the Persians at Pteria in Cappadocia, near the site of the old Hittite capital, and he then retreated on Sardis. Here he sent for assistance to Sparta, Egypt and Babylon. But Cyrus did not delay before renewing his attack, and he appeared unexpectedly before the capital. The Lydian army was now signally defeated; Sardis, in which Croesus had taken refuge, was captured after a siege, and the Lydian empire brought to an end. Cyrus was then free to turn his attention to Babylon. [Illustration: I. BAKED CLAY FOUNDATION CYLINDER OF NABONIDUS, REFERRING TO THE DEFEAT OF ASTYAGES BY CYRUS (Brit. Mus., No. 91109.) II. BAKED CLAY FOUNDATION CYLINDER OF CYRUS RECORDING HIS ENTRY INTO BABYLON WITHOUT BATTLE AND WITHOUT FIGHTING. (Brit. Mus., No 90920.)]