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Croesus ( KREE-səs; Ancient Greek: Κροῖσος, romanized: Kroîsos) was the last king of Lydia from 585 or 561 BC to 547 BC. He was renowned for his great wealth, as well as his ultimate defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great following the siege of Sardis.
A son of the Lydian king Alyattes, Croesus ascended to the throne following a succession struggle with his step-brother. He continued his father's expansionist policies and launched a series of military campaigns that eventually brought much of western Asia Minor under Lydian control. Stopping short of attacking the city-states of the Aegean islands, he concluded treaties with them instead and benefited significantly from trade. In addition, he fostered friendly relations with Media, Egypt, Babylonia and Sparta. He became famous for his extravagant riches; Herodotus and Pausanias noted that his gifts were preserved at Delphi.
In 550 BC, the Median kingdom, led by Croesus' brother-in-law Astyages, was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Croesus responded by attacking Pteria, a Phrygian state and Persian vassal. Cyrus intervened and inflicted a series of defeats on Croesus before capturing the capital Sardis, bringing the Lydian kingdom to an end. Croesus' subsequent fate is unclear; ancient sources describe him variously as having been executed or coming into Cyrus' service.
The fall of Croesus had a profound effect on the Greeks, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least", J. A. S. Evans has remarked, "Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology."
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