SARDIS
356
SARDIUS
piilchral hillocks, beyond the Hermus, heighten the des- olateiiess of a s|)ut which the multitudes lying there once made busy by their living presence and pursuits. The acropolis seems well to detine the site of the city. It is a marked object, being a tall distorted rock of soft sandstone, rent as if by an earthquake. The acropolis is very difficult of ascent; it has a few fragments of ruinous walls on the summit, but no remains are visible of the temple which Alexander built there in honor of the Olympian Jove. The almost perpendicular wall towards the south was considered impregnable, and Croesus therefore, in defending his capital against Cyrus, omitted to guard it; but a Persian soldier, seeing a Lyd- ian descend by a path of steps cut in the rock in order to regain ids helmet, which had fallen down, watched his ))roceediugs, and led a body of Persian troops into the acropolis itself.
Knms of ^irdi''
The remains of the ancient city are few and incon- siderable. The gerusia — called also the house of Croesus —lies westward of the acropolis. Arundel measured one of its halls, and found it one hundred and fifty-six feet in length by forty-three in breadth, and having walls ten feet in thickness. There are some portions of a theatre and of two churches, one of which, said to be dedicated to the Virgin, was carefully examined by Col. Leake, and found to consist almost wholly of fragments of earlier edifices; and from more recent investigations it appears that these were chiefly taken from the Tem- ple of Cybele, and if so they are among the oldest mon- uments now existing in the world, the temple having been built only three hundred years after that of Solo- mon. Of the few inscriptions which have been discov- ered, all, or nearly all, belong to the time of the Roman empire. Y'et there still exist considerable remains of the earlier days. The massive Temple of Cybele still bears witness in its fragmentary remains to the wealth and architectural skill of the people that raised it. Mr. Cockerell, who visited it in 1812, found two columns standing witli their architrave, the stone of which stretched in a single block from the centre of one to that of the otlier. 'J'his stone, altliough it was not the largest of the architrave, he calculates must have weighed twenty-live tons. The diameters of the col- umns supporting it are six feet four and a half inches at about thirty-five feet Ijelow the capital. The present soil (apparently formed by the crumbling-away of the hill which backs the temple on its eastern side) is more than twenty-live feet above the pavement. Such pro- portions are not inferior to those of the columns in the Heneum at Samos, which divides, in the estimation of Herodotus, with the Artemisium at Ephesus the palm of pre-eminence among all the works of Greek art. And as regards the details, " the capitals appeared," to
Cockerell, " to surpass any specimen of the Ionic he had seen in perfection of design and execution." On the north side of the acropolis, overlooking the valley of the Hermus, is a theatre near four huncked feet in diameter, attached to a stadium of about one thousand. This probably was erected after the restoration ofSardis by Alexander. In the attack of Sardis by Antiochus, described by Polybius (vii, 15-18), it constituted one of the chief points on which, after entering the city, the assaulting force was directed. The temple belongs to the ajra of the Lydian dynast}-, and is nearly contempo- raneous with the Temple of Zeus Panhellenius in /Egi- na, and that of Here in Samos. To the same date may be assigned the " Valley of Sweets" {yXijKvg uyKMv), a pleasure-ground, the fame of which Polycrates endeav- ored to rival by the so-called Laura at Samos.
4. Authorilits. — Ancient: Athenanis, ii, 48; vi, 231; ^. xii, 514, 540; Arrian, i, 17;
"^ Pliny, //. N. v, 29; xv, 23;
Stephanus Byz. s. v.'V^r/ ; Pau- — ^p^ sanias, iii, 9, 5; Diodorus Sic.
i^^^ ^^-^i__^ XX, 107 ; Scholiast, Aristoph.
^^^_- 7'ae.ll74; Herodotus, i, 69, 94 ; ni, 48 ; viii, 105 ; Strabo, xiii, i^ 5 ; Tacitus, A nnal. ii, 47 ; iii, 63; iv, 55. Modern: Bockh,/>i- scriptiones Griecce, Nos. 3451- o472 ; Cockerell, in Leake's \sia Minor, p. 343; Arundel, Discoveries in Asia Minor, i, 26-28; Tcliihatcheft; .4sie Mi- iieure, p. 232-242; Chandler, Trcii'els in A siu Minor, p. 316 sq. See also Smith, Hartley, Mac- f irlane, Arundel, and Svoboda, severally. On the Seven Church- es of Asia; Storch, Dissert, de Sept. Urh. Asice in Ajwcal. ; *■' Kichter, Wallfahrten, p. 511
sq. ; Prokesch, Denkwurdicjlc. ii, 31 sq.
Sard'ite (Heb. Snrdi', '^'n"iD, used as a plur. with the art. prefixed; Sept. Haptvi), the patronymic title (Numb, xxvi, 26) of the descendants of Sered (q. v.), the son of Zebulon.
Sardius (Heb. D'lN, o'dem; Sept. and New Test., (Tapcior), one of the jirecious stones ui the breastplate of the liigh-priest (Exod. xxviii, 17; xxxix, 10). So also Josephus (War, v, 5, 7), who, however, in Ant. iii, 7, 6, makes it the sardonyx {aapoovv^). Still, as this latter-named mineral is merely another variety of agate, to which also the sard or sardius belongs, there is no very great discrepancy in the statements of the Jewish historian. See Sardonyx. The oc/ew is mentioned by Ezek. (xxviii, 13) as one of the ornaments of the king of Tyre. In IJev. iv, 3, John declares that he whom lie saw sitting on the heavenh' throne "was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone." The sixth foundation of the wall of the heavenly Jerusalem was a sardius (Rev. xxi, 20). There can scarcely be a doubt that either the sard or the sardonyx is the stone de- noted by odem. The authority of .losejihus in all that relates to the liigh-priest's breastplate is of the greatest value; for, as Braun {De Vest. Sac. 1 1 eh. p. 635) has re- marked, Josephus was not only a Jew, but a i)riest, who miglit have seen the breastplate with the wliole sacer- dotal vestments a hundred times, since in his time the Temple was standing. The Vulgate agrees with his nomenclature. In Jerome's time the breastplate was still to be inspected in the Temple of Concord; hence it will readily be acknowledged that this agreement of the two is of great weight. The sard, which is a superior variety of agate, has long been a favorite stone for the engraver's art. " On this stone," says King {A nt. Gems, p. 5 ), " all the finest works of the most cele- brated artists are to be found; and this not without