SARDIS (οί Σάρςϵις), the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, the seat of a conventus under the Roman empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times, was situated in the middle Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, a steep and lofty spur of which formed the citadel. It was about 20 stadia (2½ miles) south of the Hermus. The earliest reference to Sardis is in the Persae of AEschylus (472 b.c. ); in the Iliad the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian (i.e ., Lydian) chiefs, and in later times Hyde was said to be the older name of Sardis, or the name of its citadel. It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it became so amid the changes which produced a powerful Lydian empire in the 8th century b.c. The city, but not the citadel, was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Athenians in the 6th, and by Antiochus the Great in the 3d century; once at least, under the emperor Tiberius, it was destroyed by an earthquake; but it was always rebuilt, and continued to be one of the great cities of western Asia Minor till the later Byzantine time. Its importance was due, first to its military strength, secondly to its situation on an important highway leading from the interior to the AEgean coast, and thirdly to its commanding the wide and fertile plain of the Hermus. The early Lydian kingdom was far advanced in the industrial arts (see Lydia), and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woollen stuffs and carpets. The statement that the little stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place rolled over golden sands is probably little more than a metaphor, ...due to the wealth of the city to which the Greeks of the 6th century b.c. resorted for supplies of gold; but trade and the practical organization of commerce were the real sources of this wealth. After Constantinople became the capital of the East a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis then lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance. It still, however, retained its titular supremacy, and continued to be the seat of the metropolitan bishop of the province. It is enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesian thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century; but in the actual history of the next four centuries it plays a part very inferior to Magnesia ad Sipylum and Philadelphia, which have to the present day retained their pre-eminence in the district. The Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the Seljuk Turks about the end of the 11th century; but the successes of the Greek general Philocales in 1118 relieved the district for the time, and the ability of the Comneni, together with the gradual decay of the Seljuk power, retained it in the Byzantine dominions. The country round Sardis was frequently ravaged both by Christians and by Greeks during the 13th century. Soon after 1301 the Seljuk emirs overran the whole of the Hermus and Cayster valleys, and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty. Finally in 1390 Philadelphia, which had for some time been an independent Christian city, surrendered to Sultan Bayazid’s mixed army of Ottoman Turks and Byzantine Christians, and the Seljuk power in the Hermus valley was merged in the Ottoman empire. The latest reference to the city of Sardis relates its capture (and probable destruction) by Timur in 1402. Its site is now absolutely deserted, except that a tiny village, Sart, merely a few huts inhabited by semi-nomadic Yuruks, exists beside the Pactolus, and that there is a station of the Smyrna and Cassaba Railway a mile north of the principal ruins.
The ruins of Sardis, so far as they are now visible, are chiefly of the Roman time; but probably few ancient sites would more richly reward the excavator with remains of all periods from the early pre-Hellenic time downwards. O11 the banks of the Pactolus two columns of a temple of the Greek period, probably the great temple of Cybele, are still standing. More than one attempt to excavate this temple, the last by Mr G. Dennis in 1882, have been made and prematurely brought to an end by lack of funds. The necropolis of the old Lydian city, a vast series of mounds, some of enormous size, lies on the north side of the Hermus, four or five miles from Sardis, a little south of the sacred lake Coloe; here the Maeonian chiefs, sons, according to Homer, of the lake, were brought to sleep beside their mother. The series of mounds is now called Bin Tepe (Thousand Mounds). Several of them have been opened by modern excavators, but in every case it was found that treasure-seekers of an earlier time had removed any articles of value that had been deposited in the sepulchral chambers.
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