The History of Sardis, Explained

By All Over InformationUpdated August 10, 20267 min read

Sardis was one of the great cities of the ancient world, the capital of the Lydian kingdom, the seat of the legendary King Croesus, and the place where money itself was invented. For over a thousand years it stood at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in the valley of the Hermus river, controlling the routes that connected the Aegean coast with the interior of Anatolia. This is its complete history, told in the order it happened.

The Land of the Lydians

The region around Sardis was settled long before the city became famous. The valley of the Hermus river, sheltered by the mountains and watered by its streams, was rich farming land, and people lived there from the earliest times. The site of Sardis itself was occupied for thousands of years before its golden age.

The city’s position explains its destiny. It stood at the foot of Mount Tmolus, on the edge of the great valley, where the routes from the coast met the roads leading east into the interior. Whoever held Sardis controlled the trade between the Aegean and the empires of the east.

The setting also carried legend. The stream of the Pactolus, flowing from the mountains past the city, was said to carry gold, and the story of the river’s riches became one of the most famous tales of the ancient world. The land itself promised wealth.

The Rise of the Mermnad Kings

Sardis first enters recorded history as the capital of the Lydian kingdom, a state that grew from modest beginnings into the dominant power of western Anatolia. The kingdom’s rise came under the Mermnad dynasty, a royal house that took power in the early seventh century BC.

The Mermnads built Sardis into a city worthy of an empire. They fortified the acropolis on its steep rock, developed the lower city beside the river, and extended Lydian control over the neighboring lands, from the coast of the Aegean to the borders of the great eastern empires.

The dynasty’s first kings established the pattern that would make Lydia famous: military strength combined with enormous wealth. The gold of the region, and the trade it attracted, filled the treasury of Sardis and set the stage for the kingdom’s golden age.

Sardis, Turkey — Photo by mrjerryjm on Pixabay

Gyges and the Founding of a Dynasty

The first great Mermnad king was Gyges, who seized the throne of Lydia in a story that became one of antiquity’s most retold legends. According to the tale, Gyges rose from the ranks of the royal guard and took power with the help of a magical ring that made him invisible.

The historical Gyges was a formidable ruler. He extended Lydian power across western Anatolia, raided the cities of the coast, and established Sardis as the center of a rich and aggressive kingdom. His reign set the template for his successors.

Gyges also made Sardis famous. Greek writers told his story for centuries, and his name became a byword for ambition and luxury. The dynasty he founded would rule Lydia for generations, and it would end with the most famous king of all.

Croesus and the Golden Age

The most famous of the Lydian kings was Croesus, who ruled in the sixth century BC and became a legend of wealth that survives to this day. Under Croesus, the kingdom of Lydia reached its peak, controlling most of western Anatolia and drawing tribute from the cities of the coast.

Croesus’s wealth was proverbial in the ancient world. His treasury at Sardis was said to hold gold beyond counting, and his name became a synonym for riches. Kings and cities sent gifts to Sardis, and the city’s luxury was celebrated in Greek literature and art.

The legend of Croesus also carried a warning. When he consulted the oracle of Delphi about a coming war with Persia, the oracle told him that a great empire would fall. Croesus assumed it meant the enemy’s; the oracle, of course, meant his own. The story defined his fate.

The Birth of Coinage

Sardis’s most enduring gift to the world was the invention of coinage. In the seventh century BC, the Lydians began stamping lumps of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, with marks that guaranteed their weight and value. It was the world’s first true money.

The invention changed everything. Instead of weighing and testing metal at every transaction, traders could accept stamped coins at face value, and commerce accelerated across the Mediterranean and beyond. The idea spread from Lydia to Greece, Persia, and the entire known world.

Croesus is credited with a further refinement: the first coins of pure gold and pure silver, replacing the variable electrum alloy with metal of guaranteed quality. The royal mint at Sardis became the model for the mints of every later empire.

The Persian Conquest

The golden age of Lydia ended in the 540s BC, when the armies of the Persian king Cyrus the Great marched against Sardis. Croesus met the Persians in battle and was defeated, and the Persians besieged and captured the Lydian capital itself.

The fall of Sardis was one of the great turning points of ancient history. The Persian empire, already vast, absorbed Lydia and its wealth, and Sardis became the seat of a Persian governor, a satrap, ruling the conquered lands of western Anatolia.

The city itself remained great. The Persians made Sardis the western capital of their empire, the starting point of the Royal Road that ran all the way to the Persian capital at Susa. The gold of Lydia now flowed east, into the treasuries of Persia.

Greek visitors to the Persian city described its splendor, and Sardis remained in the imagination of the Greek world as a place of luxury and ancient power, the memory of Croesus lingering in every account of the city.

Sardis under Persia and the Ionian Revolt

Under Persian rule, Sardis was the center of imperial power in the west, but it was also a focus of resistance. In 499 BC, the Greek cities of the coast rose against Persia in the Ionian Revolt, and the rebels marched on Sardis, burning the city and its temples.

The burning of Sardis was a defining moment. The Persians were enraged by the destruction, and their retaliation was savage, but the revolt spread across the Greek world, leading eventually to the Persian invasions of Greece and the famous battles of Marathon and Salamis.

Sardis itself was rebuilt and remained the Persian headquarters in the west. Generations of satraps ruled from its palace, and the city kept its wealth and its strategic importance, even as the empire around it fought to hold Greece at bay.

Alexander and the Hellenistic City

In 334 BC, Alexander the Great crossed into Anatolia, and the Persian empire began to fall. Sardis surrendered to Alexander without a fight, and the city passed into the Greek world that Alexander created, its centuries under Persia ending almost without bloodshed.

Under Alexander and his successors, Sardis was rebuilt as a Greek city. Its citizens received the institutions of the Greek world, its temples and public buildings were renewed, and the city flourished within the Hellenistic kingdoms that divided Alexander’s empire.

The city’s religion reflected the new age. The great temple of Artemis, begun in this period, became one of the largest temples of the Greek world, and the old Lydian cults were transformed into Greek forms. Sardis was Greek again, but it was about to become Roman.

Roman Sardis and the Seven Churches

Sardis passed to Rome in the second century BC, when the last Hellenistic king bequeathed his kingdom to the republic, and it became one of the great cities of the Roman province of Asia. A severe earthquake in 17 AD brought imperial aid and a rebuilding that made the city grander than ever.

The city also became a center of the new religion of Christianity. Sardis was one of the Seven Churches of Asia addressed in the Book of Revelation, and its early Christian community was among the most important in the region.

The Roman city was rich and confident. Its great gymnasium and bath complex, its synagogue, and its colonnaded streets date from this period, and the ruins you see at Sardis today are largely the remains of this Roman and late antique city.

The Byzantine City, Decline, and Rediscovery

Sardis remained a significant city through the Byzantine centuries, its Jewish and Christian communities living side by side in the great buildings of the late Roman period. But the world was changing, and the city’s fortunes declined through the wars of the seventh century and beyond.

By the later Middle Ages, the ancient city was in ruins, and the region passed to Turkish rule. The marble of Sardis was carried away for reuse, and the site slept under the fields of the valley until travelers and scholars began to notice it in the nineteenth century.

Modern excavation began in the early twentieth century and has continued under American expeditions since 1958. The work has revealed the temple of Artemis, the great gymnasium and synagogue, and the wealth of Lydian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine history beneath the ground of the city of Croesus.

Frequently asked questions

When was Sardis founded?

The site was occupied from early times, but Sardis became a great city in the seventh century BC, when it was the capital of the Lydian kingdom. It reached its golden age under King Croesus in the sixth century BC and remained important for over a thousand years.

What happened to Croesus?

Croesus was defeated by the Persian king Cyrus in the 540s BC, and Sardis was captured. According to the most famous version of the story, Cyrus spared his life, and Croesus ended his days as an adviser at the Persian court, serving the man who had conquered him.

Who excavated Sardis?

Modern excavation of Sardis began in the early twentieth century, and a major American expedition has worked at the site continuously since 1958. Its teams have uncovered the temple of Artemis, the gymnasium and synagogue complex, and the Lydian remains beneath the later city.

All Over Information

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