Their purple garments.-their skill in the workmanship of metals--their marts for slaves and eunuchs--their export trade of unwrought gold--are sufficient evidence both of the extent and the character of their civilization.

Yet the nature of the oriental government did not fail to operate injuriously on the more homely and useful directions of their energy.

They appear never to have worked the gold-mines, whose particles were borne to them by the careless bounty of the Pactolus.
Their early traditional colonies were wafted on Grecian vessels.

The gorgeous presents with which they enriched the Hellenic temples seem to have been fabricated by Grecian art, and even the advantages of commerce they seem rather to have suffered than to have sought.

But what a people so suddenly risen into splendour, governed by a wise prince, and stimulated perhaps to eventual liberty by the example of the European Greeks, ought to have become, it is impossible to conjecture; perhaps the Hellenes of the East.
At this period, however, of such power--and such promise, the fall of the Lydian empire was decreed.