(M206) Phraortes greatly extended the empire of the Medes, and conquered the Persians, but was defeated and slain by the Assyrians of Nineveh. His son, Cyaxares (636-595 B.C.) continued the Median conquests to the river Halys, which was the boundary between the Lydian and Median kingdoms. A war between these two powers was terminated by the marriage of the daughter of the Lydian king with the son of the Median monarch, Cyaxares, who shortly after laid siege to Nineveh, but was obliged to desist by a sudden inroad of Scythians. (M207) This inroad of the Scythians in Media took place about the same time that the Cimmerians invaded Lydia, a nomad race which probably inhabited the Tauric Chersonessus (Crimea), and had once before desolated Asia Minor before the time of Homer. The Cimmerians may have been urged forward into Asia Minor by an invasion of the Scythians themselves, a nomadic people who neither planted nor reaped, but lived on food derived from animals—prototypes of the Huns, and also progenitors—a formidable race of barbarians, in the northern section of Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea. The Cimmerians fled before this more warlike race, abandoned their country on the northern coast of the Euxine, and invaded Asia Minor. They occupied Sardis, and threatened Ephesus, and finally were overwhelmed in the mountainous regions of Cilicia. Some, however, effected a settlement in the territory where the Greek city of Sinope was afterward built. (M208) Ardys was succeeded by his son Tadyattes, who reigned twelve years; and his son and successor, Alyattes, expelled the Cimmerians from Asia Minor. But the Scythians, who invaded Media, defeated the king, Cyaxares, and became masters of the country, and spread as far as Palestine, and enjoyed their dominion twenty-eight years, until they were finally driven away by Cyaxares. These nomadic tribes from Tartary were the precursors of Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Turks, Mongols, and Tartars, who, at different periods, invaded the civilized portions of Asia and Europe, and established a dominion more or less durable. (M209) Cyaxares, after the expulsion of the Scythians, took Nineveh, and reduced the Assyrian empire, while Alyattes, the king of Lydia, after the Cimmerians were subdued, made war on the Greet city of Miletus, and reduced the Milesians to great distress, and also took Smyrna. He reigned fifty-seven years with great prosperity, and transmitted his kingdom to Crœsus, his son by an Ionian wife. His tomb was one of the architectural wonders of that day, and only surpassed by the edifices of Egypt and Babylon.