aced one another, and the two
bands were riding together into the populous town, through the gardens
surrounding the lake Gygaeus, the Sardians' place of recreation. It was
now near sunset, a cooler breeze was beginning to blow, and the citizens
were pouring through the gates to enjoy themselves in the open air.
Lydian and Persian warriors, the former wearing richly-ornamented
helmets, the latter tiaras in the form of a cylinder, were following
girls who were painted and wreathed. Children were being led to the lake
by their nurses, to see the swans fed. An old blind man was seated under
a plane-tree, singing sad ditties to a listening crowd and accompanying
them on the Magadis, the twenty-stringed Lydian lute. Youths were
enjoying themselves at games of ball, ninepins, and dice, and half-grown
girls screaming with fright, when the ball hit one of their group or
nearly fell into the water.

The travellers scarcely noticed this gay scene, though at another time
it would have delighted them. They were too much interested in enquiring
particulars of Bartja's illness and recovery.

At the brazen gates of the palace which had formerly belonged
to Croesus, they were met by Oroetes, the satrap of Sardis, in a
magnificent court-dress overloaded with ornaments. He was a stately man,
whose small penetrating black eyes looked sharply out from beneath a
bushy mass of eyebrow. His satrapy was one of the most important
and profitable in the entire kingdom, and his household could bear a
comparison with that of Cambyses in richness and splendor. Though
he possessed fewer wives and attendants than the king, it was no
inconsiderable troop of guards, slaves, eunuchs and gorgeously-dressed
officials, which appeared at the palace-gates to receive the travellers.

The vice-regal palace, which was still kept up with great magnificence,
had been, in the days when Croesus occupied it, the most splendid of
royal residences; after the taking of Sardis, however, the greater part
of the dethroned king's treasures and works of art had been sent to
Cyrus's treasure-house in Pasargadae. When that time of terror had
passed, the Lydians brought many a hidden treasure into the light of day
once more, and, by their industry and skill in art during the peaceful
years which they enjoyed under Cyrus and Cambyses, recovered their
old position so far, that Sardis was again looked upon as one of the
wealthiest cities of Asia Minor, and therefore, of the worl