her husband. When Cyrus left the room, she stabbed herself in the heart and succumbed on Abradate's body<hr>
Cyrus was deeply saddened by this. To immortalize the memory of this exceptional couple and express his gratitude, he erected a magnificent monument where, several centuries after his own death, marble and bronze still testified to Panthée's ethics and Abradate's valor. The Pactolus River, located near this tomb, seemed to say that it preserved their relics more preciously than all the gold that flowed among its grains of sand.<hr>
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                                                  Notes<hr>
          Panthée is the wife of Abradate, king of Susiana. She becomes a prisoner of Cyrus during a battle of the Assyrian war. Cyrus treats her so well during her captivity that she convinces her husband Abradate to join his ranks.<hr>
          Abradate is a king of Susiana, and an ally of the Assyrians against Cyrus the Great, according to this text, because of a debt of his father. He then joins the camp of Cyrus and dies on the battlefield.<hr>
          Susiana is the Greek name for the ancient Persian administrative division which had Susa for its capital, an ancient city in Iran. It is an empire that extends from modern Greece to Afghanistan, passing through Egypt.<hr>
          Assyrians is a denomination for all the Eastern Christians of Mesopotamia.<hr>
          Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great, is the founder of the Persian Empire, of the Achaemenid dynasty. His reign, around 559 to 530 BC, is marked by conquests of unprecedented scale: after subduing the Medes, an ancient people from Iran, he places under his domination the kingdom of Lydia and the Greek cities of Ionia, then the Neo-Babylonian Empire including Mesopotamia, Syria, the Phoenician cities, corresponding to today's Lebanon and Judea.<hr>
          Lydia is an ancient country in Asia Minor, near the Aegean Sea, whose capital was Sardis on the Pactolus River.<hr>
          Croesus, born around 596 BC, is a king of Lydia and the last sovereign of the Mermnades dynasty. He is an opponent of Cyrus, he is imprisoned by this one at the end of the war.<hr>
          Araspe is an officer of Cyrus in charge of protecting Panthée during her captivity. Following his attempted abuse on this queen, he is executed by Cyrus.<hr>
          The Pactolus, today's Sart Çayı, is a river in Turkey, a left tributary of Gediz, which, in antiquity, carried gold flakes, if we believe the sources of the time.<hr>
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