Chapter 24 | Table of
Contents | Chapter 26
The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia
W. M. Ramsay
1904
Chapter 25: Sardis: The City of Death
Sardis was one of the great cities of primitive history: in the Greek view it was long
the greatest of all cities. At the beginning of record it stands forth prominently as the
capital of a powerful empire. Its situation marks it out as a ruling city, according to
the methods of early warfare and early kings; it was however more like a robber's
stronghold than an abode of civilised men; and in a peaceful and civilised age its
position was found inconvenient. In the Roman period it was almost like a city of the
past, a relic of the period of barbaric warfare, which lived rather on its ancient
prestige than on its suitability to present conditions.
The great plain of the Hermus is bounded on the south by the broad ridge of Mount
Tmolus, which reaches from the main mass of the Central Anatolian plateau like an arm
extended westwards towards the sea. In front of the mountains stretch a series of alluvial
hills, making the transition from the level plain to the loftier ridge behind. On one of
those hills stood Sardis. The hills in this neighbourhood are of such a character that
under the influences of the atmosphere each assumes the form of a small elongated plateau
having very steep sides, terminating towards the north in a sharp point, and on the south
joined by a neck to the main mass of Tmolus. One of those small elevated plateaux formed
the site of the original Sardis, an almost impregnable fortress already as it came from
the hand of nature without any artificial fortification. Only a small city could be
perched on the little plateau; but in the primitive time, when Sardis came into existence,
cities were small.
It was actually inaccessible except at one point, viz., the neck of land on the south,
which still offers the only approach. On all other sides the rock walls were smooth,
nearly perpendicular, and absolutely unscalable even without a defender (except in rare
conditions described in the sequel). The local myth expressed the facts in a religious
form by saying that the ancient Lydian King, Meles, carried a lion, the symbol of Sardis
and type of the oldest Lydian coins, round the whole city except at one point. The story
is told by Herodotus, i., 84; but he (or a glossator) has given an incorrect explanation,
to the effect that Meles thought it unnecessary to carry the lion round the southern side
of the city, because there it was precipitous. The exact opposite was the case: the only
approach to the old city must have been from the beginning and must always be on the
south. The story is a popular explanation of the fact that the south alone was accessible
and not precipitous.
This southern approach is far from being easy. It is a tedious and difficult climb at
the present day, when the hill-sides are overgrown with thorns, and only a sheep-track
exists in place of a path. Even when the summit was inhabited and a carefully made road
led up to the southern gates, the approach must have been long and steep by a winding
road, which could be defended with perfect ease. The plateau is fully 1,500 feet above the
plain, from which its sides rise perpendicularly.
This small city on its lofty plateau was an ideal stronghold for a prince of primitive
times. It was large enough for his needs; it could be easily fortified and defended at the
only point where fortification or defence was needed. It was like a watch-tower
overlooking the whole of the great plain. That primitive capital of the Hermus Valley
seems to have been called, not Sardis (which was a plural noun), but Hyde; and it is
mentioned by Homer under that name.
In this we part company from the guide whom usually we follow with such implicit
confidence, Strabo. He considers that Sardis was founded later than the time of Homer,
because it is not named by him. We must, however, consider Sardis as coeval with the
beginnings of the Lydian kingdom, about 1,200 BC. It was the princely capital from the
time that there began to be princes in Lydia. nature has made it the overseer of the
Hermus Valley; and its foundation marked out its master for the headship first of that
valley, and thereafter of the rest of Lydia, whose fate was dependent on the Hermus
Valley.
As civilisation and government grew more complex, and commerce and society were
organised on a greater scale, the lofty plateau proved too small for the capital of an
empire; and a lower city was built on the west and north sides of the original city, and
probably also on the east side. The old city was now used as an acropolis, and is so
called by Herodotus. The new city was very distinctly separated from the old by the great
difference of level and by the long, steep, and difficult approach at the southern end of
the old city. Hence the double city was called by the plural noun, Sardeis, like Athenai
and various others.
The lower city lay chiefly on the west side, in a glen between the acropolis-hill and
the little river Pactolus, which flows northwards out of Mount Tmolus to join the Hermus.
The wealth of the Lydian kings, ruling in Sardis, which arose from trade, a fertile
territory carefully cultivated, and the commerce of the East, was explained in popular
Greek legend as due to the golden sands of the Pactolus. Whether this was a pure fable, or
only an exaggeration, must be left uncertain. There was no gold in the Pactolus during the
Roman period, nor is there any now; but it is said to be possible that the river, having
in earlier time traversed an auriferous area, might have cut for itself a path below the
level of the gold-bearing rock, and thus ceased to bring down golden sand. No auriferous
rock, however, is now known to exist in the mountains of Tmolus; though, of course, no
proper search has been made in recent centuries.
As the capital of the great kingdom of Lydia, Sardis had a history marked by frequent
wars. In it the whole policy of a warlike kingdom was focused. To fight against Lydia was
to fight against Sardis. The master of Sardis was the master of Lydia. Thus in early
centuries Sardis stood forth pre-eminent in the view of the Greek cities as the Oriental
enemy on whose action their fate depended. They were most of them involved in war with
Sardis, and fell one by one beneath its power. It was the great, the wealthy, the
impregnable city, against which none could strive and prevail. In the immemorial contest
between Asia and Europe, it represented Asia, and the Greek colonies of the coastlands
stood for Europe. Sardis was the one great enemy of the Ionian cities: it learned from
them, taught them, and conquered them all in succession. Among an impressionable people
like the Greeks, such a reputation lived long; and Sardis was to their mind fully
justified in inscribing on its coins the proud title, "Sardis the First Metropolis of
Asia, and of Lydia, and of Hellenism," as in Figure 9,
chapter 11. The Hellenism which found its metropolis in Sardis
was not the ancient Greek spirit, but the new form which the Greek spirit had taken in its
attempt to conquer Asia, profoundly modifying Asia, and itself profoundly modified in the
process. Hellenism in this sense was not a racial fact, but a general type of aspiration
and aims, implying a certain freedom in development of the individual consciousness and in
social and political organisation. The term summed up the character of "the Hellenes
in Asia," i.e., the Hellenised population of Asia.
The destruction of the powerful kingdom, and the capture of the impregnable city, by a
hitherto hardly known and utterly despised enemy, was announced to the Greek cities soon
after the middle of the sixth century BC. The news came almost without preparation, and
was all the more impressive on that account. To the student of the past it seems still to
echo through history, as one of the most startling and astonishing reverses of all time.
To the Greeks it was unique in character and effect. It was known that the Lydian king had
consulted the Delphic Apollo before he entered on the war, and that he had begun
operations with full confidence of victory, relying on the promise of the god. The Greek
mind loved to dwell on this topic, and elaborated it with creative fancy, so that the
truth is almost hidden under the embellishing details in the pages of Herodotus. But all
the details have only the effect (as was their intention) of making more clear and
impressive the moral lesson. To avoid over-confidence in self, to guard against pride and
arrogance, not to despise one's enemy, to bear always in mind the slipperiness and
deceitfulness of fortune--such was the greatest part of true wisdom, as the Greeks
understood it; and nowhere could the lesson be found written in plainer and larger letters
than in the fall of Sardis.
According to the story as thus worked up by Greek imagination, Croesus the king had
been vainly warned by the wise Greek, Solon the law-giver, when he visited Sardis, to
beware of self-satisfaction and to regard no man as really happy, until the end of life
had set him free from the danger of a sudden reverse. In preparing for his last war,
Croesus employed all possible precaution; he was thoroughly on his guard against any
possible error; and he took the gods themselves as his counsellors and helpers. He had
tried and tested all the principal prophetic centres of the Greek world; and the Delphic
Oracle alone had passed the test, and won his confidence.
He then asked about the war against Cyrus, which he had in mind; and he heard with
delight that, if he crossed the Halys, he would destroy a mighty Empire. He crossed the
Halys, and received a crushing defeat. But it was only a first army that had met this
disaster. He returned to prepare a greater army for the ensuing year. Cyrus followed him
up with disconcerting rapidity; and besieged him in Sardis, before any new levies were
ready. The great king, safe in his impregnable fortress, regarded this as an incident
annoying in itself, but only the beginning of destruction for the rash enemy. The armies
of Lydia were being massed to crush the insolent invader, who should be ground between the
perpendicular rocks of the acropolis and the gathering Lydian hosts. Such was the
calculation of Croesus, when he retired one evening to rest: he was wakened to find that
the enemy was master of the acropolis and that all was lost.
The rock of the acropolis is a coarse and friable conglomerate, which melts away
gradually under the influences of the atmosphere. It always preserves an almost
perpendicular face, but at times an oblique crack develops in the rock-wall, and permits a
bold climber to work his way up. Such a weak point betrayed Sardis.
According to the popular tale this weak point existed from the beginning of history n
Sardis, because, when the divine consecration and encompassing of the new fortress had
been made at its foundation, this point had been omitted; thus the tale would imply that
the weak point was known to the defenders and through mere obstinate folly left unguarded
by them. But such a legend is usually a growth after the fact. The crumbling character of
the rock on which the upper city of Sardis stood shows what the real facts must have been.
In the course of time a weakness had developed at one point. Through want of proper care
in surveying and repairing the fortifications, this weakness had remained unobserved and
unknown to the defenders; but the assailants, scrutinising every inch of the walls of the
great fortress in search of an opportunity, noticed it and availed themselves of it to
climb up, one at a time. On such a lofty hill, rising fully 1,500 feet above the plain,
whose sides are, and must from their nature always have been, steep and straight and
practically perpendicular, a child could guard against an army; even a small stone dropped
on the head of the most skilful mountain-climber, would inevitably hurl him down. An
attack made by this path could succeed only if the assailants climbed up entirely
unobserved; and they could not escape observation unless they made the attempt by night.
Hence, even though this be unrecorded, a night attack must have been the way by which
Cyrus entered Sardis. He came upon the great city "like a thief in the night."
It is right, however, to add that the account that we have given of the way in which
Sardis was captured differs from the current opinion in one point. The usual view is that
Cyrus entered Sardis by the isthmus or neck on the south. That was the natural and
necessary path in ordinary use; the only road and gateway were there; and inevitably the
defence of the city was based on a careful guard and strong fortification at the solitary
approach. The enemy was expected to attack there; but the point of the tale is that the
ascent was made on a side where no guard was ever stationed, because that side was
believed to be inaccessible. The misapprehension is as old as the time of Herodotus (or
rather of some old Greek glossator, who has interposed a false explanation in the
otherwise clear narrative). The character of the rock shows that this opinion--current
already among the Greeks--is founded on a confusion between the one regular approach,
where alone attack was expected and guarded against, and the accidental, unobserved,
unguarded weak point, which had developed through the disintegration of the rock.
There can be no doubt that the isthmus, as being the solitary regular approach, must
always have been the most strongly fortified part. At present the plateau is said not to
be accessible at any other point except where the isthmus touches it; but there are
several chinks and clefts leading up the north and west faces, and it is probable that by
one of them a bold and practised climber could make his way up. These clefts vary in
character from century to century as the surface disintegrates; and all of them would
always be regarded by the ordinary peaceful and unathletic oriental citizen as
inaccessible. But from time to time sometimes one, sometimes another, would offer a chance
to a daring mountaineer. By such an approach it must have been that Cyrus captured the
city.
History repeated itself. The same thing happened about 320 years later, when Antiochus
the Great captured Sardis through the exploit of Lagoras (who had learned surefootedness
on the precipitous mountains of his native Crete). Once more the garrison in careless
confidence were content to guard the one known approach, and left the rest of the circuit
unguarded, under the belief that it could not be scaled.
The Sardian religion was the fullest expression of the character and spirit of the
city; but it has not yet been properly understood. The coins show several remarkable
scenes of a religious kind, evidently of purely local origin and different from any
subjects otherwise known in hieratic mythology; but they remain unexplained and
unintelligible. The explanation of them, if it could be discovered, would probably
illuminate the peculiar character of the local religion; but in the meantime, although
various other deities besides Cybele and Kora-Persephone appear on the coins, and although
abundant archaeological details might be described, no unifying idea can be detected,
which might show how the Sardians had modified, and put their own individual character
into, the general Anatolian religious forms.
The general Anatolian temper of religion is summarised in the following words (taken
from the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., p. 87): "Its essence lies in
the adoration of the life of Nature--that life subject apparently to death, yet never
dying but reproducing itself in new forms, different and yet the same. This perpetual
self-identity under varying forms, this annihilation of death through the power of
self-reproduction, was the object of an enthusiastic worship, characterised by remarkable
self-abandonment and immersion in the divine, by a mixture of obscene symbolism and
sublime truths, by negation of the moral distinctions and family ties that exist in a more
developed society, but do not exist in the free life of Nature. The mystery of
self-reproduction, of eternal unity amid temporary diversity, is the key to explain all
the repulsive legends and ceremonies that cluster round that worship, and all the manifold
manifestations or diverse embodiments of the ultimate single divine life that are carved
on the rocks of Asia Minor."
The patron deity of the city was Cybele, two columns of whose temple still protrude
from the ground near the banks of the Pactolus. She was a goddess of the regular Anatolian
type; and her general character is well known.
But the specialised character of the Sardian goddess Cybele, the qualities and
attributes which she gathered from the local conditions and from the ideas and manners of
the population, are unknown, and can hardly even be guessed at for lack of evidence. To
the Greek mind the Sardian Cybele seemed more like the Maiden Proserpine than the Mother
Demeter; and the coins of the city often show scenes from the myth of Proserpine. For
example, the reverse of the coin in Figure 9, chapter 11, shows the familiar scene of Pluto carrying off
Proserpine on his four-horse car.
The strange and uncouth idol, under whose form the goddess was worshipped, often
appears on coins; and in alliance-coins Sardis is often symbolised by this grotesque
figure, whose half-human appearance is quite of the Anatolian type. Thus Figure 30 shows
an "alliance" or religious agreement between Ephesus, represented by Artemis in
her usual idol with her stags at her side, and Sardis, symbolised by the curious veiled
image of her own goddess (whom numismatists usually call in Hellenising style Kora or
Persephone).
The Sardian goddess was the mother of her people. She dwelt with nature, in the
mountains of Tmolus and in the low ground by the sacred lake of Koloe, on the north side
of the Hermus. Here by the lake was the principal necropolis of Sardis, at a distance of
six or eight miles from the city, across a broad river--a remarkable fact, which points to
some ancient historical relation between Sardis and Koloe (implying perhaps that the
people of Koloe had been moved to found the original city of Sardis). Here the people of
the goddess returned at death to lie close to the wild sedge-encircled home of the mother
who bore them.
Figure 30: The alliance of Ephesus and Sardis
The lion, as type of the oldest, Lydian coins, was certainly adopted, because it was
the favourite animal and the symbol of the Sardian goddess. The Anatolian goddess, when
envisaged in the form of Cybele, was regularly associated with a pair of lions or a single
lion.
Healing power was everywhere attributed to the local embodiment of the divine idea, but
in Sardis it was with exceptional emphasis magnified into the power of restoring life to
the dead. It was, doubtless, associated specially with certain hot springs, situated about
two miles from Sardis in the front hills of Tmolus, which are still much used and famous
for their curative effect. As the hot springs are the plain manifestation of the divine
subterranean power, the god of the underworld plays a considerable part in the religious
legend of the district. He appeared to claim and carry off as his bride the patron-goddess
of the city, in the form of Kora-Persephone, as she was gathering the golden flower, the
flower of Zeus, in the meadows near the springs; the games celebrated in her honour were
called Chrysanthia; and it may be confidently inferred that crowns of the flower called by
that name were worn by her worshipers. The name of "Zeus's flower" also is
mentioned on the coins.
Zeus Lydios is often named on Sardian coins, embodying the claim of the city to stand
for the whole country of Lydia as its capital. He is represented exactly like the god of
Laodicea (Figure 35, chapter 29),
a standing figure, wearing a tunic and an over-garment, resting his left hand on the
sceptre, and holding forth the eagle on his right hand.
Sardis suffered greatly from an earthquake in AD 17, and was treated with special
liberality by the Emperor Tiberius: he remitted all its taxation for five years, and gave
it a donation of ten million sesterces (about 400,000 pounds). In Figure 31, taken from a
coin struck by the grateful city, the veiled genius of Sardis is shown kneeling on one
knee in supplication before the Emperor, who is dressed in the toga, the garb of peace,
and graciously stretches forth his hand towards her. The coin bears the name of Caesareian
Sardis: for the city took the epithet in honour of the Imperial benefactor and retained it
on coins for quite a year after his death, and in inscriptions for as long as ten or
fifteen years after his death.
Figure 31: Caesarean Sardis--suppliant to the Emperor
Tiberius
The reverse of the same coin shows the Imperial mother, the deified Empress Livia,
sitting like a goddess after the fashion of Demeter, holding in her left hand three
corn-ears, the gift of the goddess to mankind, and resting her right hand high on the
sceptre. This type is a good example of the tendency to fuse the Imperial religion with
the local worship, and to regard the Imperial gods as manifestations and incarnations on
earth of the divine figure worshipped in the district. Livia here appears in the character
of Demeter, a Hellenised form of the Anatolian goddess.
The assumption of the epitaph Caesareia was doubtless connected with the erection of a
temple in honour of Tiberius and Livia, as the divine pair in the common form of the
mother goddess and her god-son. But there is no reason to think that this was a Provincial
temple (which would carry with it for the city the title of Temple-Warden). It was only a
Sardian temple, and seems to have been suffered to fall into decay soon after the death of
the Imperial god.
Figure 32: The Empress Livia as the goddess who gives corn
and plenty to Sardis
It is plain that the greatness of Sardis under the Roman rule was rotted in past
history, not in present conditions. The acropolis ceased during that period to be the true
city; it was inconvenient and useless; and it was doubtless regarded as a historical and
archaeological monument, rather than a really important part of the living city. Apart
from the acropolis there is nothing in the situation of Sardis to make it a great centre
of society, and it has long ceased to be inhabited. The chief town of the district is now
Salikli, about five miles to the east, in a similar position at the foot of Tmolus, but
more conveniently situated for travellers and trade.
Thus, when the Seven Letters were written, Sardis was a city of the past, which had no
future before it. Its greatness was connected with a barbarous and half-organised state of
society, and could not survive permanently in a more civilised age. Sardis must inevitably
decay. Only when civilisation was swept out of the Hermus Valley in fire and bloodshed by
the destroying Turks, and the age of barbarism was reintroduced, did Sardis again become
an advantageous site. The acropolis was restored as a fortress of the kind suited for that
long period of uncertainty and war which ended in the complete triumph of Mohammedanism
and the practical extermination of the Christian population (save at Philadelphia and
Magnesia) throughout the Hermus Valley.
Sardis occupied a high position in the Byzantine hierarchy. It was the capital of the
Province Lydia, instituted about AD 295, and the Bishop of Sardis was Metropolitan and
Archbishop of Lydia, and sixth in order of dignity of all the bishops, whether Asiatic or
European, that were subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Chapter 24 | Table of
Contents | Chapter 26
research-bpr@philologos.org
