Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/237

 GYGES 221 die." Gyges in vain entreated to be spared so terrible an alterna- tive : he was driven to'the option, and he chose that which prom- ised safety to himself. 1 The queen planted him in ambush behind the bed-chamber door, in the very spot where Kandaules had placed him as a spectator, and armed him with a dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the sleeping king. Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids : but there was a large party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kan- daules, and took arms against Gyges. A civil war ensued, which both parties at length consented to terminate by reference to the Delphian oracle. The decision of that holy referee was given in favor of Gyges, and the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his dynasty, called the Mermnadrc. But the oracle accompanied its verdict with an intimation, that in the person of the fifth descend- ant of Gyges, the murder of Kandaules would be avenged, a warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks, no one took any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person of Croesus. 9 In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the dynasty called Mermnadic, the historical kings of Lydia, we cannot determine how much, or whether any part, is historical. Gyges was probably a real man, contemporary with the youth of the poet Archilochus ; but the name Gyges is also an heroic name in Lydian archeology. He is the eponymus of the Gygaaan lake near Sardis ; and of the many legends told respecting him, Plato has preserved one, according to which Gyges is a mere herdsman of the king of Lydia : after a terrible storm and earth- quake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open, wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This ring he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses the miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. Being sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring available to his ambition : he first possesses himself of the person 1 Ilerodot. i, 11. alpeeTai atrdc Kepielvai, a phrase to which Gibbon hag ascribed an intended irony, which it is difficult to discover in Herodotus.
 * Herodot. i, 13. TOVTOV rov eircof "hoyov oiidlva fjroifi'vro, i7oiv <Ji