spreading terror and devastation as it passed. The Vannic power of Urartu in Southern Armenia about 720 B.C. received the first onslaught, and then the frontiers of Sargon, who had to call up all the resources of his armies to protect his kingdom. Recoiling, the tide set westward through Asia Minor, meeting about 710 another similar stream[103] that had crossed the Bosphorus; and the united barbarians for half a century established a reign of terror in the north of Asia Minor. The details of the story are wanting, so far as it directly affects the Phrygians during this fateful period. About 675 however, the royal Midas (presumably the grandson of _Mita_ who had begged Assyria through his ambassadors for help), defeated on every hand, in despair committed suicide. The Cimmerians overran his country, and the kingdom of Phrygia henceforth ceased to be. We do not follow the movements of these hordes further; for they have left no trace or handiwork upon the Hittite lands which they had overrun, although it was not until the close of the seventh century that they disappeared. Their inroads, however, and the violent deflections which they gave to the course of history, are probably responsible for the final disappearance of all trace and memory of the Hittite power in Greek history. The Lydian state in the west, that fought the final struggle for civilisation against these restless and untiring foes, next claims our notice from the way in which certain of its institutions and ancient customs reflect the influence of the Hittite civilisation, from which, indeed, they may have been inherited.[104] Unlike the rulers and customs of Phrygia, the leading elements of the Lydian society had been matured on the soil from dim antiquity. Tradition speaks of a dynasty of Heraclidae who ruled from the twelfth century for five hundred years,[105] and whose ancestor, Agron,[106] was descended from Hercules himself. Even before that date there is memory of a royal family of Atyadae, whose rule, if there be anything in this memory, must have passed back to the days of direct Hittite domination that saw the carving of the warrior-gods of Kara-Bel and maybe the Mother-goddess of Sipylus.