Sardis
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prince of joy
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
SARDIS was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia on the western coast of Asia Minor, and in the 6th cent. b.c. one of the most powerful cities of the world. It stood on one of the alluvial hills between Mount Tmolus and the sea, about 1500 feet above and south of the great plain of the river Hermus, and was inaccessible except by a neck of land on the south. The date of its foundation must be about b.c. 1200, and the situation was ideal for an early fortified capital of a kingdom. As time advanced, extension was necessary, and a lower city was built on the west and north sides of the original city, near the little river Pactolus, and probably also on the east side. The older city now acted as acropolis, or citadel, for the later. This rich Oriental city, whose wealth depended on well-cultivated land and incessant commerce, was for centuries to the Greek the type of an Oriental despotism, under which all must sooner or later bend. Its absorption was not without its effects on the conquerors, and Sardis became the home of a newer Hellenism, different from the old.
Crsus was king of Lydia in the second half of the 6th cent. b.c., and planned a campaign against Cyrus, the Persian king. He proceeded with the greatest caution, and crossed the river Halys. There he was completely defeated. He returned to prepare a second army, but Cyrus pursued him in haste, and besieged him in Sardis before he could get it ready. The citadel was captured by means of a climber who worked his way up by an oblique crevice in the perpendicular rock. The city was similarly captured by Antiochus the Great from Achæus late in the third century b.c. The patron deity of the city was Cybele, but she is conceived as possessing different attributes from those usually associated with the name. A special characteristic was the power of restoring life to the dead. The city suffered greatly from an earthquake in a.d. 17, and received a large donation as well as a remission of five years taxation from the Emperor Tiberius. The greatness of the city under the Roman empire was due entirely to its past reputation. The acropolis ceased to be inhabited, being no longer necessary for purposes of defence. Its use was revived in the earlier Turkish days, but for long there has been no settlement at Sardis. Its place is taken by Salikli, above 5 miles to the east.
According to the view of Sir W. M. Ramsay, Sardis is alluded to in the Apocalypse, as are all the other six churches, as a centre of influence in its district. One of the cities within its sphere was Magnesia. The letter addressed by the writer of the Apocalypse to Sardis, with which, as with the other six cities named there, he was obviously well acquainted, shows that the church at Sardis was practically dead. It had degenerated and decayed from its early promise to an extent equalled by no other city. There were in it only a few faithful souls. That there is a remarkable analogy between the history of the city and the history of the church may be seen even from the bald account of the former just given. The instability of the city in history finds its parallel in the immorality of the church members. Most of the Christians had fallen back to the pagan level of life. The few noble ones shall have their names enrolled in the list of the citizens of heaven. The letter doubtless had a good effect. Christianity survived at Sardis. It was the capital of the province Lydia, instituted about a.d. 295. The bishop of Sardis was metropolitan of Lydia, and sixth in order of precedence of all the bishops subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Not far from Sardis there dwells in the present day a people whose customs differ so much from those of Mohammedanism that it is probable they would become Christian if they dared.
A. Souter.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
Capital of Lydia, in Asia Minor; on the Pactolus, at the root of Mount Tmolus. Northward is a view up the Hermus valley. Southward stand two beautiful Ionic columns of the temple of Cybele, six feet and one third in diameter, 35 ft. below the capital; the soil is 25 ft. above the pavement. The citadel is on a steep, high hill. So steep was its S. wall that Croesus the last king omitted to guard it; and one of Cyrus' Persian soldiers, seeing a Lydian descend by cut steps to regain his helmet, thereby led a body of Persians into the acropolis. Now an unhealthy desert; not a human being dwelt in the once populous Sardis in 1850. The senate house (gerusia), called Croesus' house, lies W. of the acropolis. One hall is 156 ft. long by 43 broad, with walls 10 ft. thick. There are remains of a theater, 400 ft. in diameter, and a stadium, 1,000; and of two churches, the latter constructed of fragments of Cybele's temple. Now Sart.
Famed for the golden sands of Pactolus, and as a commercial entrepot. In Sardis and Laodicea alone of the seven addressed in Revelation 2; 3; there was no conflict with foes within or without. Not that either had renounced apparent opposition to the world, but neither so faithfully witnessed by word and example as to "torment them that dwell on the earth" (Rev_11:10). Smyrna and Philadelphia, the most afflicted, alone receive unmixed praise. Sardis and Laodicea, the most wealthy, receive little besides censure. Sardis "had a name that she lived and was dead" (Rev_3:1; 1Ti_5:6; 2Ti_3:5; Tit_1:16; Eph_2:1; Eph_2:5; Eph_5:14). "Become (Greek) watchful" or "waking" (Greek), what thou art not now. "Strengthen the things which remain," i.e. the few graces which in thy spiritual slumber are not yet extinct, but "ready to die"; so that Sardis was not altogether "dead." Her works were not "filled up in full complement (pepleromena) in the sight of My God" (so the Siniaticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus manuscripts).
Christ's God is therefore our God; His judgment is the Father's judgment (Joh_20:17; Joh_5:22). He threatens Sardis if she will not watch or wake up, "He will come on her as a thief"; as the Greek proverb, "the feet of the avenging deities are shod with wool," expressing the noiseless nearness of God's judgments when supposed far off. Sardis had nevertheless "a few names" in the book of life, known by the Lord as His (Joh_10:3). The gracious Lord does not overlook exceptional saints among masses of professors. Their reward and their character accord. "They have not defiled their garments," so "they shall walk (the best attitude for showing grace to advantage) with Me in white, for they are worthy," namely, with Christ's worthiness "put on them" (Rev_7:14; Eze_16:14). The state of grace now, and that of glory hereafter, harmonize. Christ's rebuke was not in vain. Melito, bishop of Sardis in the second century, was eminent for piety; he visited Palestine to investigate concerning the Old Testament canon, and wrote an epistle on it (Eusebius 4:26; Jerome Catal. Script. Ecclesiastes 24). In A.D. 17, under the emperor Tiberius, an earthquake desolated Sardis and 11 other cities of Asia; Rome remitted its taxes for five years, and the emperor gave a benefaction from the privy purse.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.
Sar'dis. A city of Asia Minor , and capital of Lydia, situated about two miles to the south of the river Hermus, just below the range of Tmolus, on a spur of which its Acropolis was built. It was 60 miles northeast of Smyrna. It was the ancient residence of the kings of Lydia, among them Croesus, proverbial for his immense wealth. Cyrus is said to have taken $600,000,000 worth of treasure form the city when he captured it, B.C. 548.
Sardis was, in very early times, both from the extremely fertile character of the neighboring region, and from its convenient position, a commercial mart of importance. The art of dyeing wool is said to have been invented there. In the year 214 B.C., it was taken and sacked by the army of Antiochus, the Great. Afterward, it passed under the dominion of the kings of Pergamos. Its productive soil must always have continued a source of wealth; but its importance as a central mart appears to have diminished, from the time of the invasion of Asia by Alexander.
The massive temple of Cybele still bears witness, in its fragmentary remains, to the wealth and architectural skill of the people that raised it. On the north side of the Acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Hermus, is a theatre nearly 400 feet in diameter, attached to a stadium of about 1000 feet. There are still considerable remains of the ancient city at Sert-Kalessi. Travellers describe the appearance of the locality as that of complete solitude. The only passage in which it is mentioned in the Bible is Rev_3:1-6.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863
a city of Asia Minor, and formerly the capital of Croesus, king of the Lydians. The church of Sardis was one of the seven churches of Asia, to which the writer of the Apocalypse was directed to send an epistle, Rev_3:1-3.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.
The only biblical mention of the church in the town of Sardis is as the recipient of one of the letters that John sent to seven churches in the province of Asia (for map see ASIA). Nothing is known of the church apart from what is found in this letter.
So much had the church in Sardis followed the ways of the society around it, that it was Christian in name only. Spiritually it was dead. Unless the Christians woke up and changed their ways, God would act against them in swift judgment. There were some, however, who proved the genuineness of their faith by refusing to alter their behaviour to suit the majority. Such people were assured of Gods reward (Rev_3:1-6).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.
sar?dis (Σάρδεις, Sárdeis): Sardis is of special interest to the student of Herodotus and Xenophon, for there Artaphernes, the brother of Darius, lived, and from there Xerxes invaded Greece and Cyrus marched against his brother Artaxerxes; it is also of interest to the student of early Christian history as the home of one of the Seven Churches of Rev (Jam_1:11; Jam_3:1 ff). It was moreover one of the oldest and most important cities of Asia Minor, and until 549 BC, the capital of the kingdom of Lydia. It stood on the northern slope of Mt. Tmolus; its acropolis occupied one of the spurs of the mountain. At the base flowed the river Pactolus which served as a moat, rendering the city practically impregnable. Through the failure to watch, however, the acropolis had been successfully scaled in 549 BC by a Median soldier, and in 218 by a Cretan (compare Rev_3:2, Rev_3:3). Because of its strength during the Persian period, the satraps here made their homes. However, the city was burned by the Ionians in 501 BC, but it was quickly rebuilt and regained its importance. In 334 BC it surrendered to Alexander the Great who gave it independence, but its period of independence was brief, for 12 years later in 322 BC it was taken by Antigonus. In 301 BC, it fell into the possession of the Seleucidan kings who made it the residence of their governor. It became free again in 190 BC, when it formed a part of the empire of Pergamos, and later of the Roman province of Asia. In 17 AD, when it was destroyed by an earthquake, the Roman emperor Tiberius remitted the taxes of the people and rebuilt the city, and in his honor the citizens of that and of neighboring towns erected a large monument, but Sardis never recovered its former importance (compare Rev_3:12). Again in 295 AD, after the Roman province of Asia was broken up, Sardis became the capital of Lydia, and during the early Christian age it was the home of a bishop. The city continued to flourish until 1402, when it was so completely destroyed by Tamerlane that it was never rebuilt. Among the ruins there now stands a small village called Sert, a corruption of its ancient name. The ruins may be reached by rail from Smyrna, on the way to Philadelphia.
The ancient city was noted for its fruits and wool, and for its temple of the goddess Cybele, whose worship resembled that of Diana of Ephesus. Its wealth was also partly due to the gold which was found in the sand of the river Pactolus, and it was here that gold and silver coins were first struck. During the Roman period its coins formed a beautiful series, and are found in abundance by the peasants who till the surrounding fields. The ruins of the buildings which stood at the base of the hill have now been nearly buried by the dirt washed down from above. The hill upon which the acropolis stood measures 950 ft. high: the triple walls still surround it. The more imposing of the ruins are on the lower slope of the hill, and among them the temple of Cybele is the most interesting, yet only two of its many stone columns are still standing. Equally imposing is the necropolis of the city, which is at a distance of two hours' ride from Sert, South of the Gygaean lake. The modern name of the necropolis is Bin Tepe or Thousand Mounds, because of the large group of great mounds in which the kings and nobles were buried. Many of the mounds were long ago excavated and plundered.
We quote the following from the Missionary Herald (Boston, Massachusetts, August, 1911, pp. 361-62):
Dr. C. C. Tracy, of Marsovan, has made a visit to ancient Sardis and observed the work of his countryman, Professor Butler, of Princeton University, who is uncovering the ruins of that famous city of the past. Already rich ?finds? have been made; among them portions of a temple of Artemis, indicating a building of the same stupendous character as those at Ephesus and Baalbec, and a necropolis from whose tombs were unearthed three thousand relics, including utensils, ornaments of gold and precious stones, mirrors, etc. What chiefly impressed Dr. Tracy was the significance of those ?Seven Churches of Asia,? of which Sardis held one. ?When I think of the myriads of various nationality and advanced civilization for whose evangelization these churches were responsible, the messages to the Christian communities occupying the splendid strategic centers fill me with awe. While established amid the splendors of civilization, they were set as candlesticks in the midst of gross spiritual darkness. Did they fulfill their mission??
One of Dr. Butler's recoveries is the marble throne of the Bishop of Sardis; looking upon it the message to Sardis recurs to mind. A fact of current history quickened the visitor's appreciation of the word to ?the angel? of that church. ?Yonder among the mountains overhanging Sardis there is a robber gang led by the notorious Chakirjali. He rules in the mountains; no government force can take him. Again and again he swoops down like an eagle out of the sky, in one quarter of the region or another. From time immemorial these mountains have been the haunts of robbers; very likely it was so when Rev was written, 'I will come upon thee as a thief.' In each case the message was addressed to 'the angel of the church.' Over every church in the world there is a spirit hovering, as it were - a spirit representing that church and by whose name it can be addressed. The messages are as vital as they were at the first. 'He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.'?
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
Sar?dis, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fine plain watered by the river Pactolus, is in N. lat. 38? 30′; E. long. 27? 57′. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and from its wealth and importance was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges. When taken by Cyrus, under Croesus, its last king, who has become proverbial for his riches, Sardis was one of the most splendid and opulent cities of the East. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it rapidly declined in rank and importance. In the time of Tiberius it was destroyed by an earthquake, but was rebuilt by order of the emperor. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. The place that Sardis holds in the Apocalypse, as one of the 'Seven Churches of Asia,' is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian church, 'having a name to live, while it was dead' (Rev_3:1).
Successive earthquakes, and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks, have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, forming a village called Sart.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.
Sardis
(Σάρδεις, of uncertain etymology), a city of Asia Minor, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. It was situated about two miles to the south of the river Hermus, just below the range of Tmolus (Bos Dagh), on a spur of which its acropolis was built, in a fine plain watered by the river Pactolus (Herod. 7, 31; Xenophon, Cyrop. 7, 2-11: Pliny, Hist. Nat.; Strabo, 13, 625). It is in lat. 38° 30' N., long. 27° 57' E. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and, from its wealth and importance, was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges.
1. Ancient History. The Lydians, or Ludim, whose metropolis Sardis was, were the descendants of Lud the son of Shem, and must not be confounded with the Ludim, the children of Lud the son of Misraim the son of Ham, who dwelt and settled in Egypt. These latter were the nation alluded to by Jeremiah (Jer_46:9) when he speaks of the Lydians that handle the bow: the distinction will appear the more clearly from the fact that the Lydians and the Libyans are mentioned together as embracing the same cause. The Shemitic Ludim were a warlike, active, and energetic people, and established an empire extending as far east as the river Halys. The city of Sardis, although of more recent origin than the Trojan war (Strabo, 13, 625), was very ancient, being mentioned by Aeschylus (Pers. 45); and Herodotus relates (1, 84) that it was fortified by a king Meles, who (according to the Chronicles of Eusebius) preceded Candaules. The city itself was, at least at first, built in a rude manner, and the houses were covered with dry reeds, in consequence of which it was repeatedly destroyed by fire; but the acropolis, which some of the ancient geographers identified with the Homeric Hyde (Strabo, 13, 626; comp. Pliny, 5, 30; Eustath. ad Dion. Per. 830), was built upon an almost inaccessible rock. In the reign of Ardys, Sardis was taken by the Cimmerians, but they were unable to gain possession of the citadel. Over this realm a series of able princes ruled, the last of whom, Croesus, obtained a world wide fame for his wealth, his misfortunes, and his philosophy. The earlier part of his reign was one of unusual glory; he extended his dominion over the whole of Asia Minor with the exception of Lycia and Cilicia, and displayed as much ability as an administrator as he had done as a conqueror. But the rising power of Cyrus soon came into collision with his own, and, by the capture of Sardis, the Persian prince brought the Lydian rule to a close. Croesus is said to have advised the victor to discourage the martial spirit of the Lydians by restraining them from all warlike occupations, and employing them in those arts only which minister to luxury and sensuality. Cyrus is reported to have taken the disgraceful advice, and the result was that, from ranking among the bravest and hardiest nations of antiquity, the Lydians became the most helpless and effeminate.
After its conquest, the Persians always kept a garrison in the citadel, on account of its natural strength, which induced Alexander the Great, when it was surrendered to him in the sequel of the battle of the Granicus, similarly to occupy it. Sardis recovered the privilege of municipal government (and, as was alleged several centuries afterwards, the right of a sanctuary) upon its surrender to Alexander the Great, but its fortunes for the next three hundred years are very obscure. It changed hands more than once in the contests between the dynasties which arose after the death of Alexander. In the year B.C. 214 it was taken and sacked by the army of Antiochus the Great, who besieged his cousin Achaeus in it for two years before succeeding, as he at last did through treachery, in obtaining possession of the person of the latter. After the ruin of Antiochus's fortunes, it passed, with the rest of Asia on that side of Taurus, under the dominion of the kings of Pergamus, whose interests led them to divert the course of traffic between Asia and Europe away from Sardis. Its productive soil must always have continued a source of wealth; but its importance as a central mart appears to have diminished from the time of the invasion of Asia by Alexander. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it still more rapidly declined in rank and prosperity.
In the time of the emperor Tiberius, Sardis was desolated by an earthquake (Strabo, 12, p. 579), together with eleven, or, as Eusebius says, twelve other important cities of Asia. The whole face of the country is said to have been changed by this convulsion. In the case of Sardis the calamity was increased by a pestilential fever which followed; and so much compassion was in consequence excited for the city at Rome that its tribute was remitted for five years, and it received a benefaction from the privy purse of the emperor (Tacitus, Ann 2, 47). This was in the year A.D. 17. Nine years afterwards the Sardians are found among the competitors for the honor of erecting, as representatives of the Asiatic cities, a temple to their benefactor. SEE SMYRNA. On this occasion they plead, not only their ancient services to Rome in the time of the Macedonian war, but their well- watered country, their climate, and the richness of the neighboring soil; there is no allusion, however, to the important manufactures and the commerce of the early times. In the time of Pliny it was included in the same conventus jursidicus with Philadelphia, with the Cadueni, a Macedonian colony in the neighborhood, with some settlements of the old Maeonian population, and a few other towns of less note. These Maeonians still continued to call Sardis by its ancient name, Hyde, which it bore in the time of Omphale.
2. Biblical Notice. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. Hence, perhaps, the point of the phrase in the Apocalyptic message to the city, Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments (Rev_3:4). The place that Sardis holds in this message, as one of the Seven Churches of Asia, is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said, it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian Church, having a name to live, while it was dead (Rev_3:1).
3. Description and Modern Remains. Sardis was in very early times, both from the extremely fertile character of the neighboring region and from its convenient position, a commercial mart of importance. Chestnuts were first produced in the neighborhood, which procured them the name of βάλανοι Σαρδιανοί. The art of dyeing wool is said by Pliny to have been invented there; and, at any rate, Sardis was the entrepot of the dyed woolen manufactures, of which Phrygia, with its vast flocks (πολυπροβατωτάη, Herod. 5, 49), furnished the raw material. Hence we hear of the φοινικίδες Σαρδιαναί; and Sappho speaks of the ποικίλος μάσθλης Λύδιον καλὸν ἔργον, which was perhaps something like the modern Turkish carpets. Some of the woolen manufactures, of a peculiarly fine texture, were called ψιλοτάπιδες. The hall through which the king of Persia passed from his state apartments to the gate where he mounted on his horse was laid with these, and no foot but that of the monarch was allowed to tread on them. In the description given of the habits of a young Cyprian exquisite of great wealth, he is represented as reposing upon a bed of which the feet were silver, and upon which these ψιλοτάπιδες Σαρδιαναί were laid as a mattress. Sardis, too, was the place where the metal electrum was procured (Sophocles, Antig. 1037); and it was thither that the Spartans sent in the 6th century B.C. to purchase gold for the purpose of gilding the face of the Apollo at Amyclae. This was probably furnished by the auriferous sand of the Pactolus, a brook which came from Tmolus and ran through the agora of Sardis by the side of the great temple of Cybele. But, though its gold washings may have been celebrated in early times, the greatness of Sardis in its best days was much more due to its general commercial importance and its convenience as an entrepot. This seems to follow from the statement that not only silver and gold coins were there first minted, but there also the class of κάπηλοι (stationary traders, as contradistinguished from the ἔμποροι, or traveling merchants) first arose. It was also, at any rate between the fall of the Lydian and that of the Persian dynasty, a slave mart.
Successive earthquakes and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, still found on the true site of Sardis, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, or Buz-dag, as the Turks call it. Two or three shepherds inhabited a hut, and a Turk with two servants a mill, at the time of Arundel's visit in 1826. In 1850 no human being found a dwelling in the once mighty and populous Sardis. The modern name of the ruins at Sardis is Sert-Kalessi. Travelers describe the appearance of the locality on approaching it from the northwest as that of complete solitude. The Pactolus is a mere thread of water, all but evanescent in summer time. The Wadis-tchai (Hermus), in the neighborhood of the town, is between fifty and sixty yards wide and nearly three feet deep; but its waters are turbid and disagreeable, and are not only avoided as unfit for drinking, but have the local reputation of generating the fever which is the scourge of the neighboring plains. A countless number of sepulchral hillocks, beyond the Hermus, heighten the desolateness of a spot which the multitudes lying there once made busy by their living presence and pursuits. The acropolis seems well to define the site of the city. It is a marked object, being a tall distorted rock of soft sandstone, rent as if by an earthquake. The acropolis is very difficult of ascent; it has a few fragments of ruinous walls on the summit, but no remains are visible of the temple which Alexander built there in honor of the Olympian Jove. The almost perpendicular wall towards the south was considered impregnable, and Croesus therefore, in defending his capital against Cyrus, omitted to guard it; but a Persian soldier, seeing a Lydian descend by a path of steps cut in the rock in order to regain his helmet, which had fallen down, watched his proceedings, and led a body of Persian troops into the acropolis itself.
The remains of the ancient city are few and inconsiderable. The gerusia called also the house of Croesus lies westward of the acropolis. Arundel measured one of its halls, and found it one hundred and fifty-six feet in length by forty-three in breadth, and having walls ten feet in thickness. There are some portions of a theater and of two churches, one of which, said to be dedicated to the Virgin, was carefully examined by Col. Leake, and found to consist almost wholly of fragments of earlier edifices; and from more recent investigations it appears that these were chiefly taken from the Temple of Cybele, and if so they are among the oldest monuments now existing in the world, the temple having been built only three hundred years after that of Solomon. Of the few inscriptions which have been discovered, all, or nearly all, belong to the time of the Roman empire. Yet there still exist considerable remains of the earlier days. The massive Temple of Cybele still bears witness in its fragmentary remains to the wealth and architectural skill of the people that raised it. Mr. Cockerell, who visited it in 1812, found two columns standing with their architrave, the stone of which stretched in a single block from the center of one to that of the other. This stone, although it was not the largest of the architrave, he calculates must have weighed twenty-five tons. The diameters of the columns supporting it are six feet four and a half inches at about thirty-five feet below the capital. The present soil (apparently formed by the crumbling away of the hill which backs the temple on its eastern side) is more than twenty-five feet above the pavement. Such proportions are not inferior to those of the columns in the Heraeum at Samos, which divides, in the estimation of Herodotus, with the Artemisium at Ephesus the palm of preeminence among all the works of Greek art. And as regards the details, the capitals appeared, to Cockerell, to surpass any specimen of the Ionic he had seen in perfection of design and execution. On the north side of the acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Hermus, is a theater near four hundred feet in diameter, attached to a stadium of about one thousand. This probably was erected after the restoration of Sardis by Alexander. In the attack of Sardis by Antiochus, described by Polybius (7, 15-18), it constituted one of the chief points on which, after entering the city, the assaulting force was directed. The temple belongs to the era of the Lydian dynasty, and is nearly contemporaneous with the Temple of Zeus Panhellenius in Egina, and that of here in Samos. To the same date may be assigned the Valley of Sweets (γλυκὺς ἀγκών), a pleasure ground, the fame of which Polycrates endeavored to rival by the so-called Laura at Samos.
4. Authorities. Ancient: Athenseus, 2, 48; 6, 231; 12, 514, 540; Arrian, 1, 17; Pliny, H.N. 5, 29; 15, 23; Stephanus Byz. s.v. Υδη; Pausanias, 3, 9, 5; Diodorus Sic. 20, 107; Scholiast, Aristoph. Pac. 1174; Herodotus, 1, 69, 94; 3, 48; 8, 105; Strabo, 13, § 5; Tacitus, Annal. 2, 47; 3, 63; 4, 55. Modern: Böckh, Inscriptiones Groecoe, Nos. 3451-3472; Cockerell, in Leake's Asia Minor, p. 343; Arundel, Discoveries in Asia Minor. 1, 26-28; Tchibatcheff, Asie Mineure, p. 232-242; Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor, p. 316 sq. See also Smith, Hartley, Macfarlane, Arundel, and Svoboda, severally, On the Seven Churches of Asia; Storch, Dissert. de Sept. Urb. Asioe in Apocal.; Richter, Wallfahrten, p. 511 sq.; Prokesch, Denkwürdigk. 2, 31 sq.
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
SARDIS was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia on the western coast of Asia Minor, and in the 6th cent. b.c. one of the most powerful cities of the world. It stood on one of the alluvial hills between Mount Tmolus and the sea, about 1500 feet above and south of the great plain of the river Hermus, and was inaccessible except by a neck of land on the south. The date of its foundation must be about b.c. 1200, and the situation was ideal for an early fortified capital of a kingdom. As time advanced, extension was necessary, and a lower city was built on the west and north sides of the original city, near the little river Pactolus, and probably also on the east side. The older city now acted as acropolis, or citadel, for the later. This rich Oriental city, whose wealth depended on well-cultivated land and incessant commerce, was for centuries to the Greek the type of an Oriental despotism, under which all must sooner or later bend. Its absorption was not without its effects on the conquerors, and Sardis became the home of a newer Hellenism, different from the old.
Crsus was king of Lydia in the second half of the 6th cent. b.c., and planned a campaign against Cyrus, the Persian king. He proceeded with the greatest caution, and crossed the river Halys. There he was completely defeated. He returned to prepare a second army, but Cyrus pursued him in haste, and besieged him in Sardis before he could get it ready. The citadel was captured by means of a climber who worked his way up by an oblique crevice in the perpendicular rock. The city was similarly captured by Antiochus the Great from Achæus late in the third century b.c. The patron deity of the city was Cybele, but she is conceived as possessing different attributes from those usually associated with the name. A special characteristic was the power of restoring life to the dead. The city suffered greatly from an earthquake in a.d. 17, and received a large donation as well as a remission of five years taxation from the Emperor Tiberius. The greatness of the city under the Roman empire was due entirely to its past reputation. The acropolis ceased to be inhabited, being no longer necessary for purposes of defence. Its use was revived in the earlier Turkish days, but for long there has been no settlement at Sardis. Its place is taken by Salikli, above 5 miles to the east.
According to the view of Sir W. M. Ramsay, Sardis is alluded to in the Apocalypse, as are all the other six churches, as a centre of influence in its district. One of the cities within its sphere was Magnesia. The letter addressed by the writer of the Apocalypse to Sardis, with which, as with the other six cities named there, he was obviously well acquainted, shows that the church at Sardis was practically dead. It had degenerated and decayed from its early promise to an extent equalled by no other city. There were in it only a few faithful souls. That there is a remarkable analogy between the history of the city and the history of the church may be seen even from the bald account of the former just given. The instability of the city in history finds its parallel in the immorality of the church members. Most of the Christians had fallen back to the pagan level of life. The few noble ones shall have their names enrolled in the list of the citizens of heaven. The letter doubtless had a good effect. Christianity survived at Sardis. It was the capital of the province Lydia, instituted about a.d. 295. The bishop of Sardis was metropolitan of Lydia, and sixth in order of precedence of all the bishops subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Not far from Sardis there dwells in the present day a people whose customs differ so much from those of Mohammedanism that it is probable they would become Christian if they dared.
A. Souter.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
Capital of Lydia, in Asia Minor; on the Pactolus, at the root of Mount Tmolus. Northward is a view up the Hermus valley. Southward stand two beautiful Ionic columns of the temple of Cybele, six feet and one third in diameter, 35 ft. below the capital; the soil is 25 ft. above the pavement. The citadel is on a steep, high hill. So steep was its S. wall that Croesus the last king omitted to guard it; and one of Cyrus' Persian soldiers, seeing a Lydian descend by cut steps to regain his helmet, thereby led a body of Persians into the acropolis. Now an unhealthy desert; not a human being dwelt in the once populous Sardis in 1850. The senate house (gerusia), called Croesus' house, lies W. of the acropolis. One hall is 156 ft. long by 43 broad, with walls 10 ft. thick. There are remains of a theater, 400 ft. in diameter, and a stadium, 1,000; and of two churches, the latter constructed of fragments of Cybele's temple. Now Sart.
Famed for the golden sands of Pactolus, and as a commercial entrepot. In Sardis and Laodicea alone of the seven addressed in Revelation 2; 3; there was no conflict with foes within or without. Not that either had renounced apparent opposition to the world, but neither so faithfully witnessed by word and example as to "torment them that dwell on the earth" (Rev_11:10). Smyrna and Philadelphia, the most afflicted, alone receive unmixed praise. Sardis and Laodicea, the most wealthy, receive little besides censure. Sardis "had a name that she lived and was dead" (Rev_3:1; 1Ti_5:6; 2Ti_3:5; Tit_1:16; Eph_2:1; Eph_2:5; Eph_5:14). "Become (Greek) watchful" or "waking" (Greek), what thou art not now. "Strengthen the things which remain," i.e. the few graces which in thy spiritual slumber are not yet extinct, but "ready to die"; so that Sardis was not altogether "dead." Her works were not "filled up in full complement (pepleromena) in the sight of My God" (so the Siniaticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus manuscripts).
Christ's God is therefore our God; His judgment is the Father's judgment (Joh_20:17; Joh_5:22). He threatens Sardis if she will not watch or wake up, "He will come on her as a thief"; as the Greek proverb, "the feet of the avenging deities are shod with wool," expressing the noiseless nearness of God's judgments when supposed far off. Sardis had nevertheless "a few names" in the book of life, known by the Lord as His (Joh_10:3). The gracious Lord does not overlook exceptional saints among masses of professors. Their reward and their character accord. "They have not defiled their garments," so "they shall walk (the best attitude for showing grace to advantage) with Me in white, for they are worthy," namely, with Christ's worthiness "put on them" (Rev_7:14; Eze_16:14). The state of grace now, and that of glory hereafter, harmonize. Christ's rebuke was not in vain. Melito, bishop of Sardis in the second century, was eminent for piety; he visited Palestine to investigate concerning the Old Testament canon, and wrote an epistle on it (Eusebius 4:26; Jerome Catal. Script. Ecclesiastes 24). In A.D. 17, under the emperor Tiberius, an earthquake desolated Sardis and 11 other cities of Asia; Rome remitted its taxes for five years, and the emperor gave a benefaction from the privy purse.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.
Sar'dis. A city of Asia Minor , and capital of Lydia, situated about two miles to the south of the river Hermus, just below the range of Tmolus, on a spur of which its Acropolis was built. It was 60 miles northeast of Smyrna. It was the ancient residence of the kings of Lydia, among them Croesus, proverbial for his immense wealth. Cyrus is said to have taken $600,000,000 worth of treasure form the city when he captured it, B.C. 548.
Sardis was, in very early times, both from the extremely fertile character of the neighboring region, and from its convenient position, a commercial mart of importance. The art of dyeing wool is said to have been invented there. In the year 214 B.C., it was taken and sacked by the army of Antiochus, the Great. Afterward, it passed under the dominion of the kings of Pergamos. Its productive soil must always have continued a source of wealth; but its importance as a central mart appears to have diminished, from the time of the invasion of Asia by Alexander.
The massive temple of Cybele still bears witness, in its fragmentary remains, to the wealth and architectural skill of the people that raised it. On the north side of the Acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Hermus, is a theatre nearly 400 feet in diameter, attached to a stadium of about 1000 feet. There are still considerable remains of the ancient city at Sert-Kalessi. Travellers describe the appearance of the locality as that of complete solitude. The only passage in which it is mentioned in the Bible is Rev_3:1-6.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863
a city of Asia Minor, and formerly the capital of Croesus, king of the Lydians. The church of Sardis was one of the seven churches of Asia, to which the writer of the Apocalypse was directed to send an epistle, Rev_3:1-3.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.
The only biblical mention of the church in the town of Sardis is as the recipient of one of the letters that John sent to seven churches in the province of Asia (for map see ASIA). Nothing is known of the church apart from what is found in this letter.
So much had the church in Sardis followed the ways of the society around it, that it was Christian in name only. Spiritually it was dead. Unless the Christians woke up and changed their ways, God would act against them in swift judgment. There were some, however, who proved the genuineness of their faith by refusing to alter their behaviour to suit the majority. Such people were assured of Gods reward (Rev_3:1-6).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.
sar?dis (Σάρδεις, Sárdeis): Sardis is of special interest to the student of Herodotus and Xenophon, for there Artaphernes, the brother of Darius, lived, and from there Xerxes invaded Greece and Cyrus marched against his brother Artaxerxes; it is also of interest to the student of early Christian history as the home of one of the Seven Churches of Rev (Jam_1:11; Jam_3:1 ff). It was moreover one of the oldest and most important cities of Asia Minor, and until 549 BC, the capital of the kingdom of Lydia. It stood on the northern slope of Mt. Tmolus; its acropolis occupied one of the spurs of the mountain. At the base flowed the river Pactolus which served as a moat, rendering the city practically impregnable. Through the failure to watch, however, the acropolis had been successfully scaled in 549 BC by a Median soldier, and in 218 by a Cretan (compare Rev_3:2, Rev_3:3). Because of its strength during the Persian period, the satraps here made their homes. However, the city was burned by the Ionians in 501 BC, but it was quickly rebuilt and regained its importance. In 334 BC it surrendered to Alexander the Great who gave it independence, but its period of independence was brief, for 12 years later in 322 BC it was taken by Antigonus. In 301 BC, it fell into the possession of the Seleucidan kings who made it the residence of their governor. It became free again in 190 BC, when it formed a part of the empire of Pergamos, and later of the Roman province of Asia. In 17 AD, when it was destroyed by an earthquake, the Roman emperor Tiberius remitted the taxes of the people and rebuilt the city, and in his honor the citizens of that and of neighboring towns erected a large monument, but Sardis never recovered its former importance (compare Rev_3:12). Again in 295 AD, after the Roman province of Asia was broken up, Sardis became the capital of Lydia, and during the early Christian age it was the home of a bishop. The city continued to flourish until 1402, when it was so completely destroyed by Tamerlane that it was never rebuilt. Among the ruins there now stands a small village called Sert, a corruption of its ancient name. The ruins may be reached by rail from Smyrna, on the way to Philadelphia.
The ancient city was noted for its fruits and wool, and for its temple of the goddess Cybele, whose worship resembled that of Diana of Ephesus. Its wealth was also partly due to the gold which was found in the sand of the river Pactolus, and it was here that gold and silver coins were first struck. During the Roman period its coins formed a beautiful series, and are found in abundance by the peasants who till the surrounding fields. The ruins of the buildings which stood at the base of the hill have now been nearly buried by the dirt washed down from above. The hill upon which the acropolis stood measures 950 ft. high: the triple walls still surround it. The more imposing of the ruins are on the lower slope of the hill, and among them the temple of Cybele is the most interesting, yet only two of its many stone columns are still standing. Equally imposing is the necropolis of the city, which is at a distance of two hours' ride from Sert, South of the Gygaean lake. The modern name of the necropolis is Bin Tepe or Thousand Mounds, because of the large group of great mounds in which the kings and nobles were buried. Many of the mounds were long ago excavated and plundered.
We quote the following from the Missionary Herald (Boston, Massachusetts, August, 1911, pp. 361-62):
Dr. C. C. Tracy, of Marsovan, has made a visit to ancient Sardis and observed the work of his countryman, Professor Butler, of Princeton University, who is uncovering the ruins of that famous city of the past. Already rich ?finds? have been made; among them portions of a temple of Artemis, indicating a building of the same stupendous character as those at Ephesus and Baalbec, and a necropolis from whose tombs were unearthed three thousand relics, including utensils, ornaments of gold and precious stones, mirrors, etc. What chiefly impressed Dr. Tracy was the significance of those ?Seven Churches of Asia,? of which Sardis held one. ?When I think of the myriads of various nationality and advanced civilization for whose evangelization these churches were responsible, the messages to the Christian communities occupying the splendid strategic centers fill me with awe. While established amid the splendors of civilization, they were set as candlesticks in the midst of gross spiritual darkness. Did they fulfill their mission??
One of Dr. Butler's recoveries is the marble throne of the Bishop of Sardis; looking upon it the message to Sardis recurs to mind. A fact of current history quickened the visitor's appreciation of the word to ?the angel? of that church. ?Yonder among the mountains overhanging Sardis there is a robber gang led by the notorious Chakirjali. He rules in the mountains; no government force can take him. Again and again he swoops down like an eagle out of the sky, in one quarter of the region or another. From time immemorial these mountains have been the haunts of robbers; very likely it was so when Rev was written, 'I will come upon thee as a thief.' In each case the message was addressed to 'the angel of the church.' Over every church in the world there is a spirit hovering, as it were - a spirit representing that church and by whose name it can be addressed. The messages are as vital as they were at the first. 'He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.'?
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
Sar?dis, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fine plain watered by the river Pactolus, is in N. lat. 38? 30′; E. long. 27? 57′. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and from its wealth and importance was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges. When taken by Cyrus, under Croesus, its last king, who has become proverbial for his riches, Sardis was one of the most splendid and opulent cities of the East. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it rapidly declined in rank and importance. In the time of Tiberius it was destroyed by an earthquake, but was rebuilt by order of the emperor. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. The place that Sardis holds in the Apocalypse, as one of the 'Seven Churches of Asia,' is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian church, 'having a name to live, while it was dead' (Rev_3:1).
Successive earthquakes, and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks, have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, forming a village called Sart.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.
Sardis
(Σάρδεις, of uncertain etymology), a city of Asia Minor, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. It was situated about two miles to the south of the river Hermus, just below the range of Tmolus (Bos Dagh), on a spur of which its acropolis was built, in a fine plain watered by the river Pactolus (Herod. 7, 31; Xenophon, Cyrop. 7, 2-11: Pliny, Hist. Nat.; Strabo, 13, 625). It is in lat. 38° 30' N., long. 27° 57' E. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and, from its wealth and importance, was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges.
1. Ancient History. The Lydians, or Ludim, whose metropolis Sardis was, were the descendants of Lud the son of Shem, and must not be confounded with the Ludim, the children of Lud the son of Misraim the son of Ham, who dwelt and settled in Egypt. These latter were the nation alluded to by Jeremiah (Jer_46:9) when he speaks of the Lydians that handle the bow: the distinction will appear the more clearly from the fact that the Lydians and the Libyans are mentioned together as embracing the same cause. The Shemitic Ludim were a warlike, active, and energetic people, and established an empire extending as far east as the river Halys. The city of Sardis, although of more recent origin than the Trojan war (Strabo, 13, 625), was very ancient, being mentioned by Aeschylus (Pers. 45); and Herodotus relates (1, 84) that it was fortified by a king Meles, who (according to the Chronicles of Eusebius) preceded Candaules. The city itself was, at least at first, built in a rude manner, and the houses were covered with dry reeds, in consequence of which it was repeatedly destroyed by fire; but the acropolis, which some of the ancient geographers identified with the Homeric Hyde (Strabo, 13, 626; comp. Pliny, 5, 30; Eustath. ad Dion. Per. 830), was built upon an almost inaccessible rock. In the reign of Ardys, Sardis was taken by the Cimmerians, but they were unable to gain possession of the citadel. Over this realm a series of able princes ruled, the last of whom, Croesus, obtained a world wide fame for his wealth, his misfortunes, and his philosophy. The earlier part of his reign was one of unusual glory; he extended his dominion over the whole of Asia Minor with the exception of Lycia and Cilicia, and displayed as much ability as an administrator as he had done as a conqueror. But the rising power of Cyrus soon came into collision with his own, and, by the capture of Sardis, the Persian prince brought the Lydian rule to a close. Croesus is said to have advised the victor to discourage the martial spirit of the Lydians by restraining them from all warlike occupations, and employing them in those arts only which minister to luxury and sensuality. Cyrus is reported to have taken the disgraceful advice, and the result was that, from ranking among the bravest and hardiest nations of antiquity, the Lydians became the most helpless and effeminate.
After its conquest, the Persians always kept a garrison in the citadel, on account of its natural strength, which induced Alexander the Great, when it was surrendered to him in the sequel of the battle of the Granicus, similarly to occupy it. Sardis recovered the privilege of municipal government (and, as was alleged several centuries afterwards, the right of a sanctuary) upon its surrender to Alexander the Great, but its fortunes for the next three hundred years are very obscure. It changed hands more than once in the contests between the dynasties which arose after the death of Alexander. In the year B.C. 214 it was taken and sacked by the army of Antiochus the Great, who besieged his cousin Achaeus in it for two years before succeeding, as he at last did through treachery, in obtaining possession of the person of the latter. After the ruin of Antiochus's fortunes, it passed, with the rest of Asia on that side of Taurus, under the dominion of the kings of Pergamus, whose interests led them to divert the course of traffic between Asia and Europe away from Sardis. Its productive soil must always have continued a source of wealth; but its importance as a central mart appears to have diminished from the time of the invasion of Asia by Alexander. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it still more rapidly declined in rank and prosperity.
In the time of the emperor Tiberius, Sardis was desolated by an earthquake (Strabo, 12, p. 579), together with eleven, or, as Eusebius says, twelve other important cities of Asia. The whole face of the country is said to have been changed by this convulsion. In the case of Sardis the calamity was increased by a pestilential fever which followed; and so much compassion was in consequence excited for the city at Rome that its tribute was remitted for five years, and it received a benefaction from the privy purse of the emperor (Tacitus, Ann 2, 47). This was in the year A.D. 17. Nine years afterwards the Sardians are found among the competitors for the honor of erecting, as representatives of the Asiatic cities, a temple to their benefactor. SEE SMYRNA. On this occasion they plead, not only their ancient services to Rome in the time of the Macedonian war, but their well- watered country, their climate, and the richness of the neighboring soil; there is no allusion, however, to the important manufactures and the commerce of the early times. In the time of Pliny it was included in the same conventus jursidicus with Philadelphia, with the Cadueni, a Macedonian colony in the neighborhood, with some settlements of the old Maeonian population, and a few other towns of less note. These Maeonians still continued to call Sardis by its ancient name, Hyde, which it bore in the time of Omphale.
2. Biblical Notice. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. Hence, perhaps, the point of the phrase in the Apocalyptic message to the city, Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments (Rev_3:4). The place that Sardis holds in this message, as one of the Seven Churches of Asia, is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said, it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian Church, having a name to live, while it was dead (Rev_3:1).
3. Description and Modern Remains. Sardis was in very early times, both from the extremely fertile character of the neighboring region and from its convenient position, a commercial mart of importance. Chestnuts were first produced in the neighborhood, which procured them the name of βάλανοι Σαρδιανοί. The art of dyeing wool is said by Pliny to have been invented there; and, at any rate, Sardis was the entrepot of the dyed woolen manufactures, of which Phrygia, with its vast flocks (πολυπροβατωτάη, Herod. 5, 49), furnished the raw material. Hence we hear of the φοινικίδες Σαρδιαναί; and Sappho speaks of the ποικίλος μάσθλης Λύδιον καλὸν ἔργον, which was perhaps something like the modern Turkish carpets. Some of the woolen manufactures, of a peculiarly fine texture, were called ψιλοτάπιδες. The hall through which the king of Persia passed from his state apartments to the gate where he mounted on his horse was laid with these, and no foot but that of the monarch was allowed to tread on them. In the description given of the habits of a young Cyprian exquisite of great wealth, he is represented as reposing upon a bed of which the feet were silver, and upon which these ψιλοτάπιδες Σαρδιαναί were laid as a mattress. Sardis, too, was the place where the metal electrum was procured (Sophocles, Antig. 1037); and it was thither that the Spartans sent in the 6th century B.C. to purchase gold for the purpose of gilding the face of the Apollo at Amyclae. This was probably furnished by the auriferous sand of the Pactolus, a brook which came from Tmolus and ran through the agora of Sardis by the side of the great temple of Cybele. But, though its gold washings may have been celebrated in early times, the greatness of Sardis in its best days was much more due to its general commercial importance and its convenience as an entrepot. This seems to follow from the statement that not only silver and gold coins were there first minted, but there also the class of κάπηλοι (stationary traders, as contradistinguished from the ἔμποροι, or traveling merchants) first arose. It was also, at any rate between the fall of the Lydian and that of the Persian dynasty, a slave mart.
Successive earthquakes and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, still found on the true site of Sardis, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, or Buz-dag, as the Turks call it. Two or three shepherds inhabited a hut, and a Turk with two servants a mill, at the time of Arundel's visit in 1826. In 1850 no human being found a dwelling in the once mighty and populous Sardis. The modern name of the ruins at Sardis is Sert-Kalessi. Travelers describe the appearance of the locality on approaching it from the northwest as that of complete solitude. The Pactolus is a mere thread of water, all but evanescent in summer time. The Wadis-tchai (Hermus), in the neighborhood of the town, is between fifty and sixty yards wide and nearly three feet deep; but its waters are turbid and disagreeable, and are not only avoided as unfit for drinking, but have the local reputation of generating the fever which is the scourge of the neighboring plains. A countless number of sepulchral hillocks, beyond the Hermus, heighten the desolateness of a spot which the multitudes lying there once made busy by their living presence and pursuits. The acropolis seems well to define the site of the city. It is a marked object, being a tall distorted rock of soft sandstone, rent as if by an earthquake. The acropolis is very difficult of ascent; it has a few fragments of ruinous walls on the summit, but no remains are visible of the temple which Alexander built there in honor of the Olympian Jove. The almost perpendicular wall towards the south was considered impregnable, and Croesus therefore, in defending his capital against Cyrus, omitted to guard it; but a Persian soldier, seeing a Lydian descend by a path of steps cut in the rock in order to regain his helmet, which had fallen down, watched his proceedings, and led a body of Persian troops into the acropolis itself.
The remains of the ancient city are few and inconsiderable. The gerusia called also the house of Croesus lies westward of the acropolis. Arundel measured one of its halls, and found it one hundred and fifty-six feet in length by forty-three in breadth, and having walls ten feet in thickness. There are some portions of a theater and of two churches, one of which, said to be dedicated to the Virgin, was carefully examined by Col. Leake, and found to consist almost wholly of fragments of earlier edifices; and from more recent investigations it appears that these were chiefly taken from the Temple of Cybele, and if so they are among the oldest monuments now existing in the world, the temple having been built only three hundred years after that of Solomon. Of the few inscriptions which have been discovered, all, or nearly all, belong to the time of the Roman empire. Yet there still exist considerable remains of the earlier days. The massive Temple of Cybele still bears witness in its fragmentary remains to the wealth and architectural skill of the people that raised it. Mr. Cockerell, who visited it in 1812, found two columns standing with their architrave, the stone of which stretched in a single block from the center of one to that of the other. This stone, although it was not the largest of the architrave, he calculates must have weighed twenty-five tons. The diameters of the columns supporting it are six feet four and a half inches at about thirty-five feet below the capital. The present soil (apparently formed by the crumbling away of the hill which backs the temple on its eastern side) is more than twenty-five feet above the pavement. Such proportions are not inferior to those of the columns in the Heraeum at Samos, which divides, in the estimation of Herodotus, with the Artemisium at Ephesus the palm of preeminence among all the works of Greek art. And as regards the details, the capitals appeared, to Cockerell, to surpass any specimen of the Ionic he had seen in perfection of design and execution. On the north side of the acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Hermus, is a theater near four hundred feet in diameter, attached to a stadium of about one thousand. This probably was erected after the restoration of Sardis by Alexander. In the attack of Sardis by Antiochus, described by Polybius (7, 15-18), it constituted one of the chief points on which, after entering the city, the assaulting force was directed. The temple belongs to the era of the Lydian dynasty, and is nearly contemporaneous with the Temple of Zeus Panhellenius in Egina, and that of here in Samos. To the same date may be assigned the Valley of Sweets (γλυκὺς ἀγκών), a pleasure ground, the fame of which Polycrates endeavored to rival by the so-called Laura at Samos.
4. Authorities. Ancient: Athenseus, 2, 48; 6, 231; 12, 514, 540; Arrian, 1, 17; Pliny, H.N. 5, 29; 15, 23; Stephanus Byz. s.v. Υδη; Pausanias, 3, 9, 5; Diodorus Sic. 20, 107; Scholiast, Aristoph. Pac. 1174; Herodotus, 1, 69, 94; 3, 48; 8, 105; Strabo, 13, § 5; Tacitus, Annal. 2, 47; 3, 63; 4, 55. Modern: Böckh, Inscriptiones Groecoe, Nos. 3451-3472; Cockerell, in Leake's Asia Minor, p. 343; Arundel, Discoveries in Asia Minor. 1, 26-28; Tchibatcheff, Asie Mineure, p. 232-242; Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor, p. 316 sq. See also Smith, Hartley, Macfarlane, Arundel, and Svoboda, severally, On the Seven Churches of Asia; Storch, Dissert. de Sept. Urb. Asioe in Apocal.; Richter, Wallfahrten, p. 511 sq.; Prokesch, Denkwürdigk. 2, 31 sq.
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.
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