Herodotus.

** Another version, related by Nicolas of Damascus, refers
the story to the time of Lardanos, a contemporary of
Hercules; it shows that the Lydian chronographers considered
Kambles or Kamblitas as being one of the last of the Atyad
kings.

The concubine of Meles, again, is said to have brought forth a lion,
and the oracle of Telmessos predicted that the town of Sardes would be
rendered impregnable if the animal were led round the city walls; this
was done, except on the side of the citadel facing Mount Tmolus, which
was considered unapproachable, but it was by that very path that
the Persians subsequently entered the town. Alkimos, we are told,
accumulated immense treasures, and under his rule his subjects enjoyed
unequalled prosperity for fourteen years. It is possible that the story
of the expedition despatched into Palestine by a certain Akiamos, which
ended in the foundation of Ascalon, is merely a feeble echo of the raids
in Syrian and Egyptian waters made by the Tyrseni and Sardinians in the
thirteenth century B.C. The spread of the Phrygians, and the subsequent
progress of Greek colonisation, must have curtailed the possessions
of the Heraclidas from the eleventh to the ninth centuries, but the
material condition of the people does not appear to have suffered
by this diminution of territory. When they had once firmly planted
themselves in the ports along the Asianic littoral--at Kyme, at Phocae,
at Smyrna, at Clazomenae, at Colophon, at Ephesus, at Magnesia, at
Miletus--the AEolians and the Ionians lost no time in reaping the
advantages which this position, at the western extremities of the great
high-road through Asia Minor, secured to them. They overran all the
Lydian settlements in Phrygia--Sardes, Leontocephalos, Pessinus,
Gordioon, and Ancyra. The steep banks and the tortuous course of
the Halys failed to arrest them; and they pushed forward beyond the
mysterious regions peopled by the White Syrians, where the ancient
civilisation of Asia Minor still held its sway. The search for precious
metals mainly drew them on--the gold and silver, the copper, bronze, and
above all iron, which the Chalybae found in their mountains, and which
were conveyed by caravans from the regions of the Caucasus to the sacred
towns of Teiria and Pteria.*

* The site of Pteria has been fixed at Boghaz-keui by
Texier, an identification which has been generally adopted;
Euyuk