• 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.
SARDI08.— AV uses this word thrice in the OT (Ex 28" Sg'", Ezk 28") and once in the NT (Rev 21">). In the OT passages RVm has 'or ruby.' The Heb. in each case is oni< : see, therefore, Ruby, above.
At Rev 21*> the aipiioi of TR or aipSior of the
* In £18 Antiochofl the Great, after a year's deffe, oaptnred Bardis, where bis URur)>lni; rival Achoius maintained himself.
t This should have been <}uuted in vol. Hi. p. 831 to completa the account of the bishopric of Philadelphia; Uu relatloD of Notitia Ir. and xJ. is uncertain, but Iv. la iAt«r.
406
SARDOXYX
SAKGON
better MSS is the sixth foundation of the New Jerusalem. Epiphanius (quoted by Alford, Or. Test. iv. 505) derives its naiue from its resemblance in colour to a salted tish cjilled sardion. Theo- phrastus, with whom King {Antique Gems, p. 7) agrees, traces it to the fact that the gem was lirst imported into Greece from Sardis. Middleton (Engraved Gems, p. 143) thinks it comes from a Pers. word meaning 'yellow.' He does not give the word in question, but the Encyc. Brit.' (art. ' Sardonyx ') connects sard with the Pers. sered, ' yellowish-red.' There does not appear to be any
euch word : the nearest approach to it is j, : zerd= 'yellow.'
The sard is one of the crypto-crystalline gems of the silic()n family, identical in chemical coiiipo- sition with the carnelian, but more crystalline, more transparent, and less ruddy. Its colour varies from pale golden-yellow to reddish-orange Pliny (HN 37, 106) justly remarks: Nee fuit alia gemma apud antiquos usu frequentior. This was owing to the beauty of the stone, which in the best specimens is brilliantly transparent and very line in colour, to its toughness, its facility of working, and the higli polish of which it is susceptible. It also retains its polish longer than other gems. The finest engravings of ancient times were on sards. Pliny states that the best examples came from Babylon, but that source of supjily had failed in his day. Others were obtained from Paros, Assos, India, and Egypt. Theophrastus (Lap. 56) speaks of two principal kinds — the male, brownish in colour, and the female, transparent red : t6 iih SiocpaWs, ipvBpliTfpov Si, /caXeirai 6ij\v' ri di dia<pai/is niv, iieXavTfpov Si, KaXeirai d/xro). Considering how largely this gem was used, not only amongst Greeks and Romans but also for Assyrian cylinders and Phoen. scarabs, it is curious that there should be only one verse in the Bible where it is unques- tionably mentioned, and that not as an engraved stone. J. Taylor.