Editing Croesus (section)

===War against Persia and defeat===
[[File:Defeat of Croesus 546 BCE.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Defeat of Croesus at the [[Battle of Thymbra]], 546 BC.]]
In 550 BC, Croesus's brother-in-law, the Median king Astyages, was overthrown by his own grandson, the Persian king [[Cyrus the Great]].<ref name="Leloux-2"/> In a likely legendary event recounted by Herodotus, Croesus responded by consulting the oracle of Delphi, who told him that he would "destroy a great empire" should he attack Cyrus. This answer of the Delphian oracle remains one of the [[famous oracular statements from Delphi]].<ref name="Leloux-2"/> Likely legendary were also the responses of the oracles of Delphi and [[Amphiaraus]] telling Croesus to ally with the strongest of all Greeks, whom Croesus found out to be the state to which he had previously offered the gold which they had used for the gilding of a statue of the god Apollo, Sparta, shortly after its victory over its fellow Greek city-state of Argos in 547 BC. The claim of [[Herodotus]] that Croesus, Amasis, and Nabonidus formed a defensive alliance against Cyrus of Persia appears to have been a retroactive exaggeration of the existing diplomatic and trade relations between Lydia, Egypt, and Babylon.<ref name="Leloux-2"/>

Croesus first attacked [[Pteria (Cappadocia)|Pteria]], the capital of a Phrygian state vassal to the Lydians which might have attempted to rebel against Lydian suzerainty and instead declare its allegiance to the new Persian Empire of Cyrus. Cyrus retaliated by intervening in Cappadocia and attacking the Lydians at Pteria in a [[Battle of Pteria|battle]] in which Croesus was defeated. After this first battle, Croesus burnt down Pteria to prevent Cyrus from using its strategic location and returned to Sardis. However, Cyrus followed Croesus and defeated the Lydian army again [[Battle of Thymbra|at Thymbra]] before [[Siege of Sardis (547 BC)|besieging]] and capturing the Lydian capital of [[Sardis]], thus bringing an end to the rule of the Mermnad dynasty and to the Lydian Empire. Lydia would never regain its independence and would remain a part of various successive empires.<ref name="Leloux-2"/>

Although the dates for the battles of Pteria and Thymbra and of end of the Lydian empire have been traditionally fixed to 547 BC,<ref name="Evans"/> more recent estimates suggest that Herodotus's account being unreliable chronologically concerning the fall of Lydia means that there are currently no ways of dating the fall of [[Sardis]]; theoretically, it may even have taken place after the fall of [[Babylon]] in 539 BC.<ref name="Evans"/><ref name="Rollinger"/>

[[File:Croesus and Cyrus.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Croesus vanquished, standing in front of Cyrus]]