HERODOTUS A

Miletus in the following way: whenever the crops were full-grown and ripe, he would invade with his army. He campaigned to the sound of harps, lyres, and flutes, both feminine and masculine. When he arrived in the territory of Miletus, he would neither tear down the buildings in the fields, nor burn them, nor tear off their doors, but would leave them standing as they were. He would destroy the trees and the crops in the ground, and then depart. The Milesians held command of the sea, so that a siege was not a task for the army. The Lydian did not tear down the houses for this reason, 10 so that the Milesians might have a base from which to sow and cultivate the land, and so that he himself might have something to plunder by invading while they were working. By doing this, he waged war for 18 eleven years, during which two great disasters befell the Milesians, once when they fought in the region of Limeneion and once in the plain of the Maeander. Now, Sadyattes, son of Ardys, ruled the Lydians for six of these eleven years, and he was the one who invaded the Milesian territory at that time; for this Sadyattes was also the one who had joined the war. Alyattes, son of Sadyattes, waged war for the five years that followed the six, and he, having received the war from his father, as I have already shown, pursued it with intensity. No other Ionians helped the Milesians in this war, except for the Chians alone. They returned the favor and helped them, for indeed, the Milesians had previously assisted the Chians in their war against the Erythraeans. In the twelfth year, while the crops were being burned by the army, a certain event happened as follows: as soon as the crop was set ablaze, it was driven by the wind and caught the temple of Athena, called the temple of Assesia, and the temple was burned to the ground. For the moment, no account was made of it, but after the army arrived at Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. As his illness became more prolonged, he sent to Delphi to ask the god—