The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad and serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Crœsus: “down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free.” Their conqueror Crœsus, who ascended the throne in 560 B. C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyagês, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising in a south-eastern direction Persis proper, or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line of Mount Zagros—the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey. Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians, or Chaldæans, under their king Labynêtus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline,—but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldæan dominion under Labynêtus reached to the borders of Egypt, including, as dependent territories, both Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries, and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynêtus and with Amasis, Crœsus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyagês was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years or a little more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name.