The Histories · 5.101

From plundering this city after they had taken it they were prevented by this:--the houses in Sardis were mostly built of reeds, and even those of them which were of brick had their roofs thatched with reeds: of these houses one was set on fire by a soldier, and forthwith the fire going on from house to house began to spread over the whole town. So then as the town was on fire, the Lydians and all the Persians who were in the city being cut off from escape, since the fire was prevailing in the extremities round about them, and not having any way out of the town, flowed together to the market-place and to the river Pactolos, which brings down gold-dust for them from Tmolos, flowing through the middle of their market-place, and then runs out into the river Hermos, and this into the sea;--to this Pactolos, I say, and to the market-place the Lydians and Persians gathered themselves…

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890
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