Alyattês is said to have carried on other operations against some of the Ionic Greeks: he took Smyrna, but was defeated in an inroad on the territory of Klazomenæ.[490] But on the whole, his long reign of fifty-seven years was one of tranquillity to the Grecian cities on the coast, though we hear of an expedition which he undertook against Karia.[491] He is reported to have been during youth of overweening insolence, but to have acquired afterwards a just and improved character. By an Ionian wife he became father of Crœsus, whom, even during his lifetime, he appointed satrap of the town of Adramyttium, and the neighboring plain of Thêbê. But he had also other wives and other sons, and one of the latter, Adramytus, is reported as the founder of Adramyttium.[492] How far his dominion in the interior of Asia Minor extended, we do not know, but very probably his long and comparatively inactive reign may have favored the accumulation of those treasures which afterwards rendered the wealth of Crœsus so proverbial. His monument, an enormous pyramidal mound upon a stone base, erected near Sardis, by the joint efforts of the whole Sardian population, was the most memorable curiosity in Lydia during the time of Herodotus; it was inferior only to the gigantic edifices of Egypt and Babylon.[493] [490] Herodot. i, 18. Polyænus (vii, 2, 2) mentions a proceeding of Alyattês against the Kolophonians. [491] Nikolaus Damasken. p. 54, ed. Orelli; Xanthi Fragment. p. 243, Creuzer. Mr Clinton states Alyattês to have _conquered_ Karia, and also Æolis, for neither of which do I find sufficient authority (Fasti Hellen. ch. xvii, p. 298). [492] Aristoteles ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀδραμυττεῖον. [493] Herodot. i, 92-93. Crœsus obtained the throne, at the death of his father, by appointment from the latter. But there was a party among the Lydians who had favored the pretensions of his brother Pantaleon; one of the richest chiefs of which party was put to death afterwards by the new king, under the cruel torture of a spiked carding-machine,—his property confiscated.[494] The aggressive reign of Crœsus, lasting fourteen years (559-545 B. C.), formed a marked contrast to the long quiescence of his father during a reign of fifty-seven years. [494] Herodot. i, 92.