How forgotten are the Lydians?
The label “forgotten” needs a caveat. The Lydians were never lost to history: Greek writers, above all Herodotus, told their story at length, and the capital Sardis has been excavated for more than a century. What is true is that Lydia is overshadowed in popular memory by its neighbours, and that most of what we read about its kings comes from Greek authors writing generations later, with only a few Lydian inscriptions and some Assyrian references to check them against. This article gives the outline of the kingdom, from the rise of the Mermnad dynasty in the seventh century BCE to the Persian conquest of Sardis around 546 BCE (some scholars prefer 547). Dates for the early kings are approximate and differ by a few years between modern reconstructions.
Land and people
Lydia lay in western Anatolia, in the river valleys of the Hermus and its tributaries, inland from the Aegean coast of modern Turkey. To the west were the Greek cities of Ionia, to the south the region of Caria, and to the east the old Phrygian lands. The Lydians spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of Indo-European, related to Hittite and Luwian, and wrote it in their own alphabet. Only a modest number of texts survive, so the language is understood in part.
Their culture was a blend. Lydian religion included the great Anatolian mother goddess and, at Sardis, a major cult of Artemis. Elite burials were made under large earth mounds, and the Greeks regarded Lydian luxury, music and perfumes with a mix of envy and disapproval. Lydia was not a Greek state, but it was deeply entangled with the Greek world from its beginning.
The Mermnad dynasty
Herodotus says an older ruling family, the Heraclids, held the throne until Gyges took it. In his famous account, Gyges was a bodyguard of King Candaules and seized the crown after a palace intrigue. Plato tells a different tale in which a magic ring plays a part. Both are literary stories and should be treated as such. What historians accept is that Gyges founded a new dynasty, the Mermnads, probably in the early or mid seventh century BCE.
The traditional line of kings, with approximate reigns, runs as follows.
| King | Approximate reign (BCE) |
|---|---|
| Gyges | c. 680 to 645 |
| Ardys | c. 645 to 625 |
| Sadyattes | c. 625 to 610 |
| Alyattes | c. 610 to 560 |
| Croesus | c. 560 to 546 |
Gyges is also mentioned in Assyrian records, where he is called Gugu of Luddi. That is one of the few places where an outside source confirms a Lydian king by name. According to Assyrian inscriptions he sought contact with the Assyrian Empire when the kingdom was under pressure from northern raiders.
Raiders and rivals
The seventh century was dangerous. Nomadic horsemen known as Cimmerians moved into Anatolia and struck at several kingdoms. Greek tradition says Gyges died in the fighting, and that Sardis was attacked, although the citadel apparently held. The Cimmerians are discussed in more detail in their own article, because the evidence for them is thin and often contradictory. Later Lydian kings, Alyattes in particular, are credited with driving such raiders out.
Alyattes also pushed against the Greek cities of the coast, taking some and failing at others, and he fought a long war with the Medes, the rising power to the east. Herodotus says a battle was halted by a solar eclipse and that the two sides then made peace, with the Halys River as the border. The eclipse is usually identified with the one of 585 BCE, which is one of the most useful fixed dates for the whole period.
Sardis at the centre
Everything in the kingdom radiated from Sardis, a city on a spur of rock beneath the mountain Tmolus, close to the Pactolus stream. It served as royal seat, treasury and market. Excavations have uncovered houses, workshops and, notably, evidence of metal refining on a considerable scale. Large burial mounds at nearby Bin Tepe, the biggest associated with Alyattes, show how much labour the kings could command. The city, its wealth and the story of its last king deserve a longer treatment, which is given in the article on Sardis and Croesus.
The Lydian economy is best known for coinage. Lydian rulers or their moneyers produced some of the earliest stamped coins in the Mediterranean region, using a natural gold and silver alloy. This matters enough to have a dedicated article, so it is enough here to say that trade and metal were central to Lydian prestige.
Croesus and the Persian conquest
Croesus came to the throne around 560 BCE. He brought the Greek cities of Ionia into a tributary relationship, including Ephesus, and Herodotus says he gave rich gifts to Greek sanctuaries. At Ephesus, some column bases are thought to carry his name, which suggests he helped fund the Temple of Artemis there. Greeks also remembered his gifts to the Delphi sanctuary and his consultation of the oracle before going to war.
His opponent was Cyrus the Great, who had overthrown the Median king and was building what became the Persian empire. Croesus crossed the Halys, fought an indecisive battle, retired to Sardis, and was then besieged and defeated. Sardis fell, probably in 546 BCE, and the Lydian kingdom ended as an independent state. Later stories about what happened to Croesus himself, including a pyre, differ in the sources and cannot be treated as settled.
After the kingdom
Lydia did not vanish. Sardis became a major Persian administrative centre, the seat of a governor and an important point on the road to the Persian heartland. The satrapy system was applied across Anatolia, and Sardis kept its role as a regional capital for centuries. Lydians continued to live there, and their language is attested in inscriptions into the Hellenistic period. Under Alexander’s successors and later under the Roman Asia province, Sardis remained a large and important city.
The Greek and Persian worlds both took over elements of Lydian practice, from money to the habit of treating gold as the measure of royal success. Yet it was the fall of the kingdom, rather than its everyday life, that stuck in Greek memory. Croesus became a byword for wealth and for the uncertainty of fortune, which is probably why his name is better known than that of the people he ruled. The Greco-Persian conflict that followed in the next decades also brought Greeks and Persians into direct contact in this same region.
Why it matters
Lydia shows how a mid-sized Anatolian kingdom could sit between greater powers and still affect the world around it. It linked the Greek coast with inland Anatolia, absorbed influences from Phrygians and Greeks, and passed on practices that later states would adopt. Careful readers should still remember that the written record is partial and mostly foreign, and that archaeology is needed to balance the stories told by Greek authors.