Editing Croesus (section)

===Later life and death===
Croesus's fate after the Persian conquest of Lydia is uncertain: [[Herodotus]], the poet [[Bacchylides]] and [[Nicolaus of Damascus]] claimed that Croesus either tried to commit suicide on a pyre or was condemned by the Persians to be burnt at the stake until a thunderstorm's rain water extinguished the fire after either his or his son's prayers to the god Apollo (or after Cyrus heard Croesus calling the name of Solon). In most versions of the story, Cyrus kept Croesus as his advisor, although Bacchylides claimed that the god Zeus carried Croesus away to [[Hyperborea]]. [[Xenophon]] similarly claimed that Cyrus kept Croesus as his advisor, while [[Ctesias]] claimed that Cyrus appointed Croesus as the governor of the city of Barene in Media.<ref name="Leloux-2"/><ref name="Evans"/>

A passage from the [[Nabonidus Chronicle]] was long held to have referred to a military campaign of Cyrus against a country whose name has been largely erased except for the first [[cuneiform]] character which had been interpreted as [[Lu (cuneiform)|''Lu'']], extrapolated to be the first syllable of an Akkadian name for Lydia. This passage in the Nabonidus Chronicle would thus have referred to a campaign by Cyrus against Lydia around 547 BC during which he "marched against the country, killed its king, took his possessions, and put there a [[garrison]] of his own". However, the verb used in the [[Nabonidus Chronicle]] could be used both in the sense "to kill" and "to destroy as a military power", making any precise deduction of the fate of Croesus from it impossible.<ref name="Evans"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cornelius |first=F. |date=1957 |title=Kroisos |url= |journal=Gymnasium |volume=64 |issue= |pages=364–366 |doi= }}</ref> More recent studies have moreover concluded that the non-erased cuneiform sign was not ''Lu'', but rather [[Ú (cuneiform)|Ú]], making untenable the interpretation of the text as talking of a campaign against Lydia, and instead suggesting that the campaign was against [[Urartu]].<ref name="Rollinger">{{cite journal |last=Rollinger |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Rollinger |date=2008 |title=The Median 'Empire', the End of Urartu and Cyrus the Great's Campaign in 547 BC |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250139462 |journal=Ancient West & East |volume=7 |issue= |pages=51–66 |doi=10.2143/AWE.7.0.2033252 |access-date=12 May 2022 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cargill |first=J. |date=1977 |title=The Nabonidus Chronicle and the fall of Lydia. Consensus with feet of clay |url=https://zenon.dainst.org/Record/000484207/Details |journal=[[American Journal of Ancient History]] |volume=2 |issue= |pages=97–116 |doi= |access-date=}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Oelsner |first=Joachim |date=1999–2000 |title=Reviewed Work: ''Herodots babylonischer Logos. (= Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 84)'' by Robert Rollinger |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41668490 |journal=Archiv für Orientforschung/Institut für Orientalistik |volume=46/47 |issue= |pages=373–380 |doi= |jstor=41668490 |access-date=12 May 2022}}</ref>

[[File:Kroisos stake Louvre G197.jpg|thumb|right|Croesus on the pyre, [[Attica|Attic]] red-figure [[amphora]], [[Louvre]] (G 197)]]

The scholar [[Max Mallowan]] argued that there is no evidence that Cyrus the Great killed Croesus, in particular rejected the account of burning on a pyre, and interpreted Bacchylides' narration as Croesus attempting suicide and then being saved by Cyrus.<ref name="Mallowan">{{cite book |last=Mallowan |first=Max |author-link=Max Mallowan |editor-last=Gershevitch |editor-first=Ilya |editor-link=Ilya Gershevitch |title=The Cambridge History of Iran |date=1968 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-20091-2 |pages=392–419|url= |language=en}}</ref>

The historian Kevin Leloux instead maintained the reading of the Nabonidus Chronicle as referring to a campaign of Cyrus against Lydia to argue that Croesus was indeed executed by Cyrus. According to him, the story of Croesus and the pyre would have been imagined by the Greeks based on the fires started during the Persian capture of Sardis throughout the lower city, where the buildings were made largely of wood.<ref name="Leloux-2"/>

In 2003, Stephanie West argued that the historical Croesus did in fact die on the pyre, and that the stories of him as a wise advisor to the courts of Cyrus and Cambyses are purely legendary, showing similarities to the sayings of [[Ahiqar]].<ref>Stephanie West, "Croesus' Second Reprieve and Other Tales of the Persian Court", ''Classical Quarterly'' (n.s.) 53(2003): 416–437, esp. pp. 419–424.</ref> A similar conclusion is drawn in a recent article that makes a case for the proposal that the [[Lydian language|Lydian]] word Qλdãnś, both meaning 'king' and the name of a god, and pronounced /kʷɾʲ'ðãns/ with four consecutive Lydian sounds unfamiliar to ancient Greeks, could correspond to Greek {{lang|grc|Κροισος}}, or {{lang|la|Croesus}}. If the identification is correct it might have the interesting historical consequence that king Croesus chose suicide at the stake and was subsequently deified.<ref name="kadmos-2019-0007">{{cite journal |last1=Sasseville |first1=David |last2=Euler |first2=Katrin |title=Die Identität des lydischen Qλdãns und seine kulturgeschichtlichen Folgen |language=de |trans-title=The identity of the Lydian Qλdan and its cultural-historical consequences |journal=Kadmos |date=2019 |volume=58 |issue=1/2 |pages=125–156 |doi=10.1515/kadmos-2019-0007 |s2cid=220368367 |url=https://www.academia.edu/43513813 |access-date=2021-03-14}}</ref>