Sardes

Sardeis (Sart)

The principal city of Lydia (western Asia Minor), forty-two miles inland at the foot of Mount Tmolus (Boz Daǧ), of which a spur constitutes its acropolis; this overlooks the plain of the river Hermus (Gediz) and its tributary the Pactolus (Sart Çayı), which flows down from the mountain.

Considerable finds of late Mycenaean, Sub-Mycenaean and early Greek pottery (c 1200–900 BC) do something to corroborate Herodotus' assertion that Greek immigrants (descendants of Heracles) established a dynasty at Sardes. Thereafter, according to Callisthenes, it was occupied by two successive waves of Cimmerian invaders and then by Lycians, and subsequently became the capital of the powerful Lydian Kingdom (c 680–547/4)—whose monarchs issued the world's earliest coinage there, made of pale gold (electrum) washed down by the Pactolus. After the downfall of Croesus, Sardes became the principal city of the territories of Asia Minor dominated by his conquerors the Persians, whom it served as the terminus of their Royal Road from Iran to the Aegean; a nearby `Pyramid Tomb’ is almost certainly the monument of a Persian. The town was captured and burned by the Ionian Greeks (with the help of Athenian and Eretrian troops) during their revolt (498), but after its recovery by the Persians, Xerxes I assembled his troops there before crossing into Europe (480). The Spartan Agesilaus defeated the Persian governor Tissaphernes outside Sardes (395), but it was there, too, that the Persian monarch Artaxerxes II Memnon dictated the King's Peace (Peace of Antalcidas) in 387. Both the Lydian and Persian periods of Sardes have yielded important and varied archaeological discoveries, especially on the acropolis and in residential quarters and cemeteries.

In 334 the city was occupied by Alexander the Great, who employed it as a mint; and in 282 it became part of the empire of Seleucus I Nicator. After the usurper Achaeus had proclaimed himself king at Sardes (214), Antiochus III the Great besieged and destroyed it in the following year, but reconstruction on Greek lines followed. The Sardians passed to the kingdom of Pergamum c 180, and then, in 133, to the Roman province of Asia. Despite a serious earthquake in AD 17—in which their city suffered worse than any other—it increased in size and prosperity, serving first as the capital of a district (conventus) and then, in the later empire, as capital of a new province of Asia. After possessing a Jewish community from at least the fifth century BC (which may have numbered between 5,000 and 10,000 in imperial times), it was listed in the Book of Revelation as an important Christian center and one of the Seven Churches of Asia. Its coins under the Principate celebrate the Asian Games and (under Septimius Severus and his sons, AD 193–217) other public Games described as the Philadelpheia, Chrysanthina and Koraia Aktia. Other pieces honor a number of heroes, and Queen Omphale of Lydia, in addition to Zeus Lydius (whose great altar is shown), Men Askenus, Apollo Lycius; while the temples of Aphrodite Paphia and Artemis-Persephone (Kore) appear not only on the city's coinage but on other issues bearing the name of the League of Ionian Cities.

It was in the third century BC that work had been begun on this lofty temple of Artemis in the Pactolus valley; it was converted to the Roman imperial cult when the twin shrines (cellae) into which it had become divided were dedicated to Antoninus Pius and Faustina the Elder (cAD 140). At the foot of the acropolis—of which a marble bastion dates from the time of Antiochus III the Great (223–187)—are remains of a theater and stadium dating back to early Hellenistic times. After the earthquake in AD 17 imperial funds were made available for a comprehensive replanning of the city, which took place over a period of many years. The central unit of an ambitious combined gymnasium, athletics school (palaestra) and bathing establishment was completed in 166 and dedicated to Lucius Verus. These baths included an elaborately decorated, two-storeyed marble court, dedicated in 211 (and now restored). A building that was originally a pagan basilica (of the first century AD) was later modified and employed as a synagogue from c 200 to 616.

A painted underground tomb contained the remains of Flavius Chrysanthius, described as a `painter from life’ and director of the local munitions factory under Diocletian (284–305) or Constantine I the Great (324–37). A replanning of the city in 400 involved the construction of new fortifications surrounding a more restricted perimeter; these walls, and a gate and towers, have now been studied, and so has a fortified bridge across the Pactolus. A Christian church of the same date, with two apses, has also been almost completely preserved, as well as a much larger church erected during the sixth century. A row of buildings beside the gymnasium included restaurants and paint-and hardware-shops, apparently owned, in some cases, by Jews and Christians. Recent excavations have uncovered two large residential complexes that testify to an upper-class community at the peak of its wealth in the years before 500.