^f God,' understanding this as a tit e of Simon
The original we, 'and,' is supposed to have been
corrupte'd into be, ' i°\ This view first pro-
nosed by Wemsdorf (1747 , is adopted bj Scholz.
S^^mm%chiirer, Z6ckler,,Kautzsch, Kraetzschma^
and others. 2. {Bc)shdar-am-d, 'at the gate
of the people of God,' or-3. j^'f c^-"'""^- • ^°
the court of the people of Go<i (Ewald, e «i.). 4.
A R S. Kennedy (Expos. Times Aug. 1900,
p ■523ff.) proposes either (a) ba'azar [ath lisra] el.
Pin the cEurt of Israel,' wh ch was incorre.tly
decil>hered baYcmr-ham-'el, the letters n and •
and'o and c being very like each other m the olde^
Phcen. characters; °\(b) baa?art.am.a in ^
assembly of the people of God. He P^-fers^the
former.
SARAPH {1-17 ; B Soui, A T.ap6.<p).-A descendant of Shelah, 1 Ch 4=".
SARCHED0NO3.-The form in which the name Esae-haddon (Which Bee) appears in To l- ihe misspelling ' Sarchedonus ' ot the AV has been retailed, surely inadvertently by the RV. Ihe correct form is ' Sacherdonus ' (BS Zax^pSoy6s. A Zaxff-Sd", in v.'^ -Zax^pSopocis).
QxcniNV—At, Rev 4' AV renders tfuum \iOip .aSy MiTe a sardine stone.' The reading is Zt of the TR. It is rightly -l-'^^-f ^y -o^-n editors, on the overwhelmmg '-^"t 'ority of ^AQ. etc., which read oapSiv i K) has like a sardius . see, therefore, Sardius, below.
SARDIS (SdpSeis).— 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