Alyattes

Family: Lydian · Role: father of Croesus · First appears: Book 1 · §1–8

After succeeding Sadyattes, Alyattes continued the war against Miletos, which he had inherited from his father, and made war against Kyaxares and the Medes. He drove the Kimmerians out of Asia, took Smyrna, and invaded Clazomenai, suffering great loss there. During the war’s twelfth year, a fire burned the temple of Athene at Assessos to the ground. When Alyattes later fell sick, the Pythian prophetess refused to answer his messengers until the temple was rebuilt. Alyattes sent a herald to Thrasybulos and the Milesians to request a truce; they made peace as “guest-friends and allies to one another.” He built two temples at Assessos in place of the one that had burned, and recovered.

Alyattes died after reigning for fifty-seven years, and Croesus succeeded him. A later account says that when the Scythians sought Alyattes’s protection, he refused to surrender them to Kyaxares, and war broke out between Lydia and Media. Syennesis and Labynetos brokered peace, arranging the marriage of Alyattes’s daughter Aryenis to Astyages, son of Kyaxares. Alyattes also dedicated a silver mixing-bowl at Delphi, on an iron stand made by Glaucos.