izmir - Sardis
Sardis, also Sardes, modern Sart in the Manisa province of Turkey, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times.
Sardis (Salihli/Sart) which was known as the capital of theLydia Kingdom was founded in the Vlllth century B.C. and was ruled by the kings: Gyges, Ardys, Sadyattes, Alyattes and Kroisos. The city was conquered by the Persian King Kyros in 546 B.C. and from then continued to function as a Persian garrison. Alexander the Great conquered the city in 334 B.C. and at that time the city becomes Hellenized. The city was then ruled by Syria, Pergamon and by the Romans in turn.
Sardis was known by its wealth and as a famous trade centre when it was the capital of Lydia Kingdom. Owing to the Paktolos who passed nearby the city and who had rich gold mines the wealth of the city became very famous. This city which minted the first coins in history in the Vllth century B.C., was the last stop on the famous King Road which started in Susa. Moreover, the city earned a considerable income from the famous Artemis temple which people from all over the ancient world visited.
Other History
The earliest reference to Sardis is in the The Persians of Aeschylus (472 BC); 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 the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century BC.
The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Persians and by the Athenians in the 6th, and by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century. In the Persian era Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and formed the end station for the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis, capital of Persia. During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C..
Once at least, under the emperor Tiberius, in 17 AD, it was destroyed by an earthquake; but it was always rebuilt. It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period.
The early Lydian kingdom was far advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets. The stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place “carried golden sands” in early antiquity, in reality gold dust out of Mt. Tmolus; later, trade and the organization of commerce continued to be sources of great 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 of Lydia, formed in 295 AD. It is enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesion thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century; but over the next four centuries it is in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia-upon-Sipylum and Philadelphia, which retained their importance in the region.