Lydia

 

ancient country, W Asia Minor, N of Caria and S of Mysia (now NW Turkey). The tyrant Gyges was the founder of the Mermnadae dynasty, which lasted from c.700 B.C. to 550 B.C. The little kingdom grew to an empire in the chaos that had been left after the fall of the Neo-Hittite kingdom. Lydia was proverbially golden with wealth, and the capital, Sardis, was magnificent. To Lydian rulers is ascribed the first use of coined money in the 7th cent. B.C. Lydia had close ties with the Greek cities of Asia, which were for a time within the Lydian empire. Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated (c.546 B.C.) Croesus, Lydia's last ruler, and Lydia was absorbed into the Persian Empire.

Lydia (in Greek Λυδία) is a historic region of western Asia Minor, congruent with Turkey's modern provinces of İzmir and Manisa. Its traditional capital was the city of Sardis (Turkish: Sard). However, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.

Early history: Maeonia and Lydia

Lydia arose as a Neo-Hittite kingdom following the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the twelfth century BC. Its early name was Maionia (Maeonia): Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, xi. 431) refers to the inhabitants of Lydia as Maiones (Μαίονες). Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde (Iliad xx. 385); Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis stood.^[1] Later, Herodotus (Histories i. 7) adds that they were named after their first king, Lydos (Λυδός), who was believed to be descended from the divine couple Attis and Cybele. This etiological myth served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (Λυδοί). The Hebrew Lûḏîm (לודים) of Jeremiah 46.9 is considered to apply to the Lydians; in Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were also famous archers. Their language, Lydian, was an Indo-European language related to Hittite and a member of the Anatolian language family. Lydian became extinct during the first century BC.

Some Maeones still existed in historical times inhabiting the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town called Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder (Natural History book v:30) and Hierocles.

Lydia in Greek myths

Lydian mythology is silent, as the literature and ritual are lost, and the monuments and archaeological finds are mute, without extensive inscriptions.; therefore myth laid in Lydia is entirely Greek mythology.

For the Greeks, Tantalus was a primordial ruler of mythic Lydia, and Niobe his proud daughter; her husband Zethos linked the affairs of Lydia with Thebes, and through Pelops the line of Tantalus was part of the founding myths of Mycenae's second dynasty.^[2]

In Greek myth, Lydia was the first home of the double-axe,^[3] the labrys that archaeology places in Minoan Crete.

Main article: Omphale

Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, whom Heracles was required to serve for a period of time; his adventures in Lydia are the adventures of a Greek hero in a peripheral and foreign land: during his stay, Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard; slew the serpent of the river Sangarios; ^[4] and captured the simian tricksters, the Cercopes. Accounts speak of at least one son born to Omphale and Heracles: Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid (Heroides 9.54) mention a son Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus (Bibliotheke 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus, and Pausanias (2.21.3) gives Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman". All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming descent from Heracles: Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. Later chronographers who also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their list of kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) makes Atys, father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, to be one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale.^[5]

The gold deposits in the river Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of Croesus (Lydia's last historical king, see below) were said to have been left there when the legendary king Midas of Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in the waters of Pactolus.

Geography

The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later on, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia into an empire, with its capital at Sardis, which controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and under Rome, Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean on the other.

According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations.^[6]

The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth. Lydia was the first country to mint coins (circa 650 BC). Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC Croesus paid for the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was beaten by Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BC, and the kingdom became a satrapy.

When Herodotus (i. 7) tells that the "Meiones" (called Maeones by other writers) were named Lydians after Lydus, the son of Attis, in the mythical epoch which preceded the rise of the Heracleid dynasty, we may be able to identify a kernel of social history in the purely conventional guise of an eponym descended from a god. Straightforward deconstruction reveals a social upheaval, perhaps in the early first millennium BC (perhaps even after the age of Homer) in which the cult of Attis, the consort of Cybele, the Great Goddess of Anatolia, was introduced among the Maeones by a new dynasty.

Language

The Lydian language was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The language uses many prefixes and particles. [1]

Autochthonous Dynasties

Main article: List of Kings of Lydia

Lydia was ruled by three dynasties:

Atyads (1300BC or earlier) - Heraclids (Tylonids) (to 687 BC) According to Herodotus the Heraclids ruled for 22 generations during the period from 1185 BC lasting for 505 years). Alyattes was the king of Lydia in 776 BC^{[citation needed]}. The last king of this dynasty was Myrsilos or Candaules.

• Candaules - After ruling for seventeen years he was assassinated by his former friend Gyges, who succeeded him on the throne of Lydia.

Mermnads

• Gyges (687-652BC or (690-657BC) - Once established on the throne, Gyges devoted himself to consolidating his kingdom and making it a military power. The capital moved from Hyde to Sardis, and name for the area becomes Lydia (previously called Maionia), under the protection of the goddess Kybebe (Cybele), according to Herodotus. Barbarian Cimmerians sacked many Lydian cities during this time except for Sardis. Gyges was the son of Dascylus, who, when recalled from banishment in Cappadocia by the Lydian king Mursylos—called Candaules "the Dog-strangler" (a title of the Lydian Hermes) by the Greeks—sent his son back to Lydia instead of himself. Gyges turned to Egypt, sending his faithful Carian troops along with Ionian mercenaries to assist Psammetichus in shaking off the Assyrian yoke. Many Bible scholars believe that Gyges of Lydia was the Biblical figure of Gog, ruler of Magog, who is mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation.

• Ardys II (652-621BC)

• Sadyattes (621-609BC) or (624-610BC) - Herodotus wrote (in Inquiries) that he fought with Cyaxares, the descendant of Deioces, and with the Medes, drove out the Cimmerians from Asia, took Smyrna, which had been founded by colonists from Colophon, and invaded Clazomenae and Miletus.

• Alyattes II (609 or 619-560BC) - one of the greatest rulers of Lydia. When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia. Herodotus writes:

"On the refusal of Alyattes to give up his supplicants when Cyaxares sent to demand them of him, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes, and continued for five years, with various success. In the course of it the Medes gained many victories over the Lydians, and the Lydians also gained many victories over the Medes."

The Battle of the Eclipse was the final battle in a fifteen-year war between Alyattes II of Lydia and Cyaxares of the Medes. It took place on May 28, 585 BC, and ended abruptly due to a total solar eclipse.

• Croesus (560-546 BC) - the expression "rich as Croesus" came from this king. The Lydian Empire came to an end when Croesus attacked the Persian Empire of Cyrus II and was defeated in 546 BC.

First coinage

It is considered that the first stamped coins were made by a Lydian king around 600 BC. The first coin was made of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. It was made in the 1/3 stater (trite) denomination, meaning that it weighed 4.76 grams. It was stamped with a lion's head, the king's symbol.

14.1 grams of electrum was one stater (meaning "standard"). A stater was about one month's pay for a soldier. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth, including 1/24 of a stater, and even down to 1/48th and 1/96th of a stater. The 1/96 stater was only about 0.14 to 0.15 grams.

Persian Empire

See main article: Lydia (satrapy)

• 546 BC the Achaemenid king Cyrus II captured Sardis and Lydia became his satrapy.

Hellenistic Empire

• It remained a satrapy after Persia's conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander III of Macedon. When Alexander's empire fell apart after his death, Lydia went to the major Asian diadoch dynasty, the Seleucids, and when it was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia fell to the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum. Its last king avoided the spoils and ravage of a Roman conquest war by leaving the realm by testament to the Roman Empire.

Roman province of Asia

When the Romans entered its capital Sardis in 133 BC, Lydia, as the other western parts of the Attalid legacy, became part of the province of Asia, a very rich Roman province, worthy of a governor of the high rank of proconsul.

As the whole west of Asia Minor had Jewish colonies very early, it is not surprising that Christianity was present soon there (Acts of the Apostles 16:14 mentions a business woman called Lydia who came from Thyatira from the province of Lydia) and spread generally in the 3rd century AD, centered on the nearby exarchate of Ephesus.

Roman province of Lydia

Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296 AD, Lydia was revived as the name of a separate Roman province, much smaller than the former satrapy, with its capital at Sardis. Together with the provinces of Caria, Hellespontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia prima and secunda, Pisidia and the Insulae (Ionian islands), it formed the diocese (under a vicarius) of Asiana, which was part of the praetorian prefecture of Oriens, together with the dioceses Pontiana (most of the rest of Asia Minor), Oriens proper (mainly Syria), Aegyptus and Thraciae (on the Balkans, roughly Bulgaria).

Under the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610-641), Lydia became part of Anatolikon, one of the original themata, and later of Thrakesion.

Although the Seljuk Turks conquered most of the rest of Anatolia for Islam, forming the Sultanate of Ikonion, Lydia remained part of the Byzantine Empire; and during the occupation of Constantinople in the First Crusade it continued to be part of the Byzantine orthodox 'Greek Empire' based at Nicaea.

Under Islamic rule

Lydia finally fell to new Turkish beyliks, which were all absorbed by the Ottoman state in 1390. The area became part of the Ottoman vilayet (province) of Aydin, ending up as the westernmost part of the modern republic of Turkey.

Notes

References

• Goldsborough, Reid. "World's First Coin"
• http://www.knaw.nl/publicaties/pdf/20021051.pdf

See also

• List of Kings of Lydia
• List of satraps of Lydia
• Ludim
• Digda

History of Anatolia
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