from this time forward, the Greek nation considered them to be their
enemy. For the Persians claim Asia and the barbarian nations dwelling there
as their own, but consider Europe and the Greek nation to be separate.
5
So the Persians say it happened, and through the
fall of Ilium Troy they find the beginning of the enmity
toward the Greeks. But the Phoenicians do not agree with the Persians
concerning Io; for they say they did not use abduction
to bring her to Egypt, but that in Argos
10
she had intercourse with the ship's captain; and when she realized she was pregnant,
fearing her parents, she voluntarily sailed away
with the Phoenicians so as not to be discovered.
These things, then, the Persians and Phoenicians say; I,
however, am not going to say whether these things happened this way or in
15
some other manner, but I will point out the one who I myself know
first began unjust acts against the Greeks, and then I will proceed
further with the narrative, visiting both small and great
cities of men alike. For those that were great in the past,
most of them have become small; and those that in my time were
20
great, were formerly small. Knowing that human
prosperity never stays in the same place, I will mention
both alike.
6
Croesus was a Lydian by birth, son of Alyattes,
and tyrant over the nations residing within the Halys river, which flows
25
from the south between the Syrians and Paphlagonians and empties
toward the north wind into the sea called the Euxine Black Sea.
This Croesus was the first of the barbarians we know to have
subjugated some of the Greeks, demanding tribute, and to have made others
his friends. He subjugated the Ionians, the
30
Aeolians, and the Dorians who were in Asia, but he made friends
of the Lacedaemonians. Before the rule of Croesus,
all Greeks were free; for the army of the Cimmerians,
which arrived in Ionia before the time of Croesus, was—
2. "barbarian" was excised by St. || 11. "fearing" P^m. Herold || 25. "Syrians" Bredow: "Syrian" || "and" Dionysius Hal. de comp. 4: "and"