GYGES, king of Lydia, founder of the third dynasty (Mermnadce), reigned about 687 to 657 s.c. According to Herodotus, Kng UCandauless (q.v.) (the Lydian king, Sadyattes), boasted of his queen's beauty to Gyges and surreptitiously introduced him into her cham ber to convince himself. Indignant at the im propriety, the queen sent for Gyges on the following day and gave him the cho'ce of murdering her husband the king and marrying her or of being himself murdered. Not un naturally Gyges chose the former alternative, and with the aid of his magic ring, which ren dered its wearer invisible, he was enabled to enter the king's chamber unseen and to slay him. Plato says that Gyges was originally a shepherd and that he found the enchanted ring on the body of a man discovered inside a brazen horse. Another version of the story runs that Gyges, a court favorite of Candaules, was the son of Dascylus, an exiled noble, and that the king had sent him to escort his royal fiancee from her home in Mysia. Gyges fell
in love with the lady on the way to Lydia; she complained to Candaules, who decided to punish Gyges with death. The latter, however, murdered the king the night before his own execution was to take place; he seized the throne and married the queen. He built up a powerful kingdom and engaged in wars of conquest, being finally killed in battle.
In classic myth Gyges was a son of Ccelus and Terra (Heaven and Earth), a hundred handed giant who made war on the gods, was slain by Hercules and eternally punished in Tartarus. With reference to Gyges, the king of Lydia, consult Geltzer, H., Was Zeitalter des Gyges' (1875) ; Herodotus; Radet, M. A., Lydie et le monde grec au temps de Merm nades' (Paris 1893) ; Schubert, R., der Konige von Lydien) (Leipzig 1884).