In the time of the emperor Tiberius, Sardis was deso- lated by an earthquake (Strabo, xii, p. 579), together with eleven, or, as Eusebius says, twelve other impor- tant cities of Asia. The whole face of the country is said to have been changed by this convulsion. In the case of Sardis the calamity was increased by a pesti- lential fever which followed ; and so much compassion was in consequence excited for the city at Rome that its tribute was remitted for five years, and it received a benefaction from the privy purse of the emperor (Tac- itus, Ann. ii, 47). This was in the year A.D. 17. Nine years afterwards the Sardians are found among the competitors for the honor of erecting, as representa- tives of the Asiatic cities, a temple to their benefactor. See Smyrna. On this occasion thej' plead, not only their ancient services to Rome in the time of the Mace- donian war, but their well-watered country, their cli- mate, and the richness of the neighboring soil; there is no allusion, however, to the important manufactures and the commerce of the early times. In the time of Pliny it was included in the same conrentus juridicus with Philadelphia, with the Cadueni, a Macedonian col- ony in the neighborhood, with some settlements of the old Mffionian popidation, and a few other towns of less note. These iMivonians still continued to call Sardis by
Coin of Sardis.
its ancient name, I/f/cli, which it bore in the time of Omphale.
2. Biblical Notice. — The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their volujituous habits of life. Hence, perhaps, the point of the phrase in the Apocalyptic message to the city, "Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments" (Rev. iii, 4). The place that Sardis holds in this message, as one of the " Seven Churches of Asia," is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said, it ap- pears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external as- pect of a Christian Church, " having a name to live, while it was dead" (Rev. iii, 1).
3. Description and Modern Remains. — Sardis was in very early times, both from the extremely fertile char- acter of the neighboring region and from its convenient position, a commercial mart of importance. Chestnuts were first produced in the neighborhood, which procured them the name of jSaXarwi ^apSiavoi. The art of dyeing wool is said by Pliny to have been invented there ; and, at any rate, Sardis was the entrepot of the dyed woollen manufactures, of which Phrygia, with its vast flocks (jvo\vTrpoliaTu)rart], Herod, v, 49), furnished the raw material. Hence we hear of the (poiviKiSEg "EapSuwai ; and Sappho speaks of the iroLKiXoQ ficia- 3rXr]Q Aiiciov KaXuv 'ipyov, which was perhaps some- thing like the modern Turkish carpets. Some of the woollen manufactures, of a peculiarh' fine texture, were called ^liiXoraTrilfQ. The hall through which the king of Persia passed from his state apartments to the gate where he mounted on his horse was laid with these, and no foot but that of the monarch was allowed to tread on them. In the description given of the habits of a j'oung Cyprian exquisite of great wealth, he is represented as reposing upon a bed of which the feet were silver, and upon which these i^jiXorcnriStQ HapSiavai were laid as a mattress. Sardis, too, was the place where the metal electi'um was procured (Sophocles, Antig. 1037); and it was thither that the Spartans sent in the Gth century B.C. to purchase gold for the purpose of gilding the face of the Apollo at Amyclje^ This was probably furnished by the auriferous sand of the Pactolus, a brook which came from Tmolus and ran through the agora of Sardis by the side of the great temple of Cybele. But, though its gold-washings may have been celebrated in early times, the greatness of Sardis in its best days was much more due to its general commercial importance and its convenience as an entrepot. This seems to follow from the statement that not only silver and gold coins were there first minted, but there also the class of Kcnn]Xoi (stationary traders, as contradistinguished from the tfi- TTopot, or travelling merchants) first arose. It was also, at any rate between the fall of the Lydian and that of the Persian dynast}-, a slave-mart.
Successive earthquakes and the ravages of the Sara- cens and Turks have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, still found on the true site of Sardis, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, or Buz-dag, as the Turks call it. Two or three shepherds inhabited a hut, and a Turk with two servants a mill, at the time of Arundel's visit in 182(5. In 1850 no liuman being found a dwelling in the once mighty and populous Sardis. The modern name of the ruins at Sardis is Se}i-Kale.<!si. Travellers describe the appearance of the locality on ap- proaching it from the north-west as that of complete solitude. The Pactolus is a mere thread of water, all but evanescent in summer-time. The Wadis-tchai (Hermus), in the neighluirhood of the town, is between fifty and sixty yards wide and nearly three feet deep; but its waters are turbid and (Hsagreeable, and are not only avoided as unfit for drinking, but have the local reputation of generating the fever which is the scourge of the neighboring plains. A countless number of se-