| Candaules
King of Lydia
(-c. 688 BC)
Other names: Myrsilos
Biographical
The last Heraclid king of Lydia. According to the account in Herodotus
and Justin, he was extremely proud of his wife's beauty, and insisted
on exhibiting her unveiled charms, but without her knowledge, to Gyges,
his favourite officer. Gyges was seen by the queen as he was stealing
from her chamber, and the next day she summoned him before her, intent
on vengeance, and bade him choose whether he would undergo the punishment
of death himself, or would consent to murder Candaules and receive the
kingdom together with her hand. He chose the latter alternative, and became
the founder of the Mermnadae dynasty. In Plato the story, in the form
of the well-known fable of the ring of Gyges, serves the purpose of moral
allegory. Plutarch, following in one place the story of Herodotus, speaks
in another of Gyges as making war against Candaules with the help of some
Carian auxiliaries. Candaules is mentioned by Pliny in two passages as
having given Bularchus, the painter, a large sum of money for a picture
representing a battle of the Magnetes. |
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Sources
1. L.
Alexander.
The Kings of Lydia and a Rearrangement of Some Fragments from Nicolaus of
Damascus.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1913.
2. Sir
W. Smith, ed. Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology,
vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1870. |
