Sardis (Hastings' Dictionary)

The capital of Lydia, when a Tv.Uan kingdom existed before B.C. 549, was one o? r^reates and most ancient and famous cities o Asia Minor. It was situated on the northern skirts of Mount Tmolos, at the point where he small river Pactolos issues from a glen in the Tofntrinrto join the Hermns wh.

eh llows we t wards about two or three mi es north of barais The acropolis of Sardis was situated on a spur oi Tmolos eparated by a depression from the moun^ tn ns on the south, and rising sharply from the eief Plain on the north, with the Pactolos washing U western base, and formed an -^^■"o^';;-^^; Lto which the province of Asia was divided Politi<ll circumstances had been as favourtbl. SAEDIS SAKDIUS 405 to it as fjeojjrapliical.

It waa the residence of a Batrap, after the Persians conquered Asia Minor, and the burning of the lower town in 501 b}' the revolted lunians excited veheiiiont anger in Darius, OS an insult to his goveriiiinMt and himself.

It surrendered willingly to Alexander the Great in 334, and was made by him an autonomous, self- governing city of the (ireek type, electing its own mat'lstrates and striking, presumably, its own coins : tlie Sardian coins of earlier date were not municipal, but regal, and perhaps satrapal coins,* struck by despotic governors resident at Sardis.

After the death of Alexander, in 322, it fell under the authority of Antigonus till 301, when after the battle of Ipsus it passed under the domination of Seleucus, and became the residence of the governor of the western part of the Seleucid empire (called, doubtless, satrap). In 190 the battle of Magnesia set Sardis free ; and the Romans incorporated it in the Pergamenian realm (in wliich there was much greater municiiial freedom than under Seleucid rule).

The known coinage of the city begins under the Pergamenian kings, and continues under Koman rule in increasing quantities. Tlie special religion of Sardis was the worship of Cybcle, the ruins of whose temple with two colunms standing, partly are seen, partly lie buried in the glen of tlie Pactolos near the river-bank. Her nature and the character of her worship were very similar to those of DiANA at Ephesus.

Ihe necropolis of Sardis, where its chiefs and kings in early times were buried, was a great group of tumuli, some small, some of very Targe size, about three miles north of the Hermus, on the south side of the Gyga>an Lake (Mermere Giol). There, near tlie shrine of Gyg.-ean Artemis, beside the Lake, the people of the goddess re- turned at death to their divine mother. In A.D.

17 Sardis was destroyed by a great earthquake, and Tiberius remitted all its taxes for live years, and contributed ten million .ses- terces towards rebuilding the city. Eleven other cities, which had been its partners in ruin, and had shared in tlie emperor's benefaction, and also two later sullerers, joined with it in erecting at Rome a monument in his honour ; and a miniature copy of that monument, constructed in A.D.

30 at Putcoli (the harbour for the Eastern and Asian trade at that time), is still preserved.t While the three cities, Pergaraus, Smyrna, and Epliesus, vied for the title of First City of Asia, Sardis, though still a place of importance, was, beyond any other of the prominent cities of Asia, a town of the past, retaining the name of great- ness, but decayed from its former estate.

The words addressed to it in Rev 3' are singularly appropriate to its history : ' I know thy works, tnat tuou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.' The words are, of course, aildressed to the Church of Sardis, and must be understood as describing its condition about A.D. 90-100, alreadj decaying from its original high promise ; but it seems clear that the writer must have been con- scious of the historical parallel, and chose his words so as to express it.

When he goes on to say, 'Bo thou watchful . . for I have found no works of thine fullillcd ; ...

if therefore thou slialt not watch I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee,' one's thoughts are carried back to the two occa- sions when, through careless watching, the im- pregnable citadel failed to keep up its reputation knd name and to fnllil its works, when the Median • No colm, however, are known itruck »t Sardii either by the ■atraps under Terelftn rule or by the city as Ret free by Alexander.

Probably AntlKoiius deprived It of treolom and the riitbt of colna|{e, and under Beleucid rule It continued iu that oppreeaed eon.lition. t See CIL z. 1624 : Roibforth, Latin Uittorieal Inter., Mo. 9S. soldier in 549 and the Cretan Lagoras in 218 * climbed the steep hill and stole unobserved into the acropolis. The very hill itself is in ceaseless decay, washed away to an extraordinary extent by the rains and frosts disintegrating the soil ana rock.

These historical parallels were not drawn by the writer of the Apocalypse from literature : the story of the Median and the Cretan was doubtless a household word in Sardis, and the character of the city as faUing to keep up its ancient greatness and promise would assuredly bo very plain. W^e may fairly infer that the writer was personally familiar with the place ; and speaks from what he had learned by eye and ear in Sardis. When about A.D. 295 the great province Asi.

a was broken up into several smaller provinces, Sardis once more became the capital of Lydia ; and in all the Byzantine lists the bishop of Sardis is mentioned as metropolitan and archbishop of Lydia, and as sixth in order of dignity of all the bishops, European and Asiatic, subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. The acropolis on its lofty hill was of a type suited for the frontier war- fare of Arab and Turkish raids, and the fortilica- tions remaining on it are all of a late period.

It is uncertain when it passed into the hands of the Turks. Lydia was exposed to frequent raids at the end of the 11 th cent., and again after the defeat of Manuel Comnenus In 1170. In 1257 the Emperor Theodore II. encamped at Sardis, but after 1267 the raids of the Turks became bolder and more continuous in the Hermus valley (Pach. ii. p. 313 f.), and they swept the country down to jlenemen near the sea.

Alagnesiaand Puiladeljihia were then the two chief cities of the valley (as they still are), and Sardis was quite a secondary town. In 1306 the Turks were admitted to the Sardian acropolis, but shortly after were expelled (Pach. ii. 403 f.) ; but this success was only tem- porary, and there can hardly be anj' doubt that Sardis had fallen into their hands before 1316, when they took Nymphaion.

In 1402 Sardis was captured and destroyed by Tamerlane, and it has never recovered from that crushing blow. It is now only a ruin, with a tiny village called Sart, while the town is Salikli, about live miles east. Sart is a station on the railway from Smyrna to Philadelphia and Kara Hissar. Three miles south are great hot springs. The bishopric of Sardis is mentioned in even the latest Notiti(B, but probably it ceased to have any real existence soon after 1300.

The fourth Notitia Episcopatuum in Partliey's collection, p. 132, puts the situation plainly. It mentions Sardis in its ancient place as sixth in dignity, but adds that the bishop of Philadelphia has now been sub- stituted in the place of the Sardian exarchos.t The substitution was later than 1284, when Andro- nicus Chalaza, bishop of Sardis, evidently an influential dignitary, was expelled from the Council of Adramyttium (Pach. ii. p. 65 f.), and may be dated about 1316.

With that changeSardis ceased. History had decided against it, and it was dead. W. M. Ramsay. 8ARDITES.— See Sered.