Lydia and Croesus
The richest king in the Greek imagination, undone by an ambiguous oracle.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 14 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Lydia under Croesus from around 560 BCE controls western Anatolia, mints the first bimetallic coinage in pure gold and silver, and grows proverbially rich from the electrum of the river Pactolus. Herodotus has him consult Delphi about attacking Persia and receive the reply that he would destroy a great empire — which he did, his own. Lydia falls to Cyrus in 546 BCE.