The city and its reputation
For the Greeks, Sardis was the place where wealth and power could be seen at their most dazzling. Its last king, Croesus, remained a proverbial figure for centuries, and the phrase “as rich as Croesus” survives today. The sources that built this image were Greek, mostly Herodotus, and they were written for a Greek audience interested in how fortune could change. The archaeology of Sardis is more modest than the legend but still impressive, and it supplies a useful check. How Lydian money worked and how the first coins were made belong to the separate article on gold and trade, so this one stays with the city, the king and the war that ended the kingdom.
Sardis on its rock
Sardis stood in the Hermus valley at the foot of Mount Tmolus. Its acropolis was a steep rocky spur, difficult to attack, which helps explain its reputation as nearly impregnable. Below lay the lower city, where the Pactolus stream ran through the settlement. The site was occupied long before the Lydian kings, and it remained important under Persians, Greeks and Romans.
American-led excavations in the twentieth century, and continuing work since, recovered evidence of Lydian houses, craft quarters and fortification walls. They also revealed a precinct where gold and silver were refined. Beyond the city, to the north, lies the large cemetery of Bin Tepe, with enormous earth mounds that served as royal and elite tombs. The tumulus associated with Alyattes is among the biggest and shows how much labour the kings could command, though the identification with a particular ruler rests largely on Herodotus.
The wealth of Croesus
Croesus ruled from about 560 BCE and is remembered as the king who inherited a prosperous state and extended it. He brought many Greek cities of the Aegean coast under tribute, and Herodotus describes the dedications he sent to Greek sanctuaries. At Delphi, the story goes, he presented gold ingots, bowls, statues and other offerings. Herodotus lists some of them in detail, though the numbers and weights he gives are a matter of caution, since the original dedications were long gone and the figures may have been exaggerated in transmission.
It is fair to say that Croesus was wealthy and that he used wealth for diplomacy and prestige. How rich he was compared with other rulers of his day cannot be measured. The proverb tells us more about Greek imagination than about accounts and ledgers.
Solon and the question of happiness
Herodotus places a visit by the Athenian Solon at Sardis. Croesus asks him who is the happiest of men, expecting to be named, and Solon refuses to call anyone happy until his life has ended. The story is a literary device, and chronology makes a real meeting difficult, since Solon’s reforms belong to the early sixth century and Croesus’s reign began later. Still, the anecdote shows how Greeks used Croesus as a figure of reflection. The Solon reforms in Athens are better studied in their own right, and what matters here is that Herodotus used the king’s wealth to set up a lesson about the limits of fortune.
Consulting the oracle
Before going to war with Persia, Croesus is said to have tested several oracles by sending messengers with the same question and comparing the replies. Delphi passed the test, according to Herodotus, and Croesus then asked whether he should march against Cyrus. The answer was that if he crossed the Halys River he would destroy a great empire. He took it as encouragement. The story is often cited as a classic case of oracle response ambiguity, because the empire that fell proved to be his own. Whether the priests actually said these words is unknown, and some historians suspect the story took shape after the event. The Delphi sanctuary itself is covered in other articles.
Cyrus and the siege of Sardis
Cyrus the Great had defeated the Median king and was expanding rapidly. Herodotus says that Croesus crossed the Halys, fought an indecisive battle at a place called Pteria, and returned to Sardis to gather allies and winter. Cyrus pursued him, and the armies met on the plain before the city. Herodotus describes the Lydian cavalry being unsettled by camels placed in front of the Persian line, because horses dislike the smell. This detail may be a story. The Persians then besieged the city, and the acropolis, believed secure, was entered by a soldier who followed a path where a fallen helmet had been retrieved. The siege is reported to have lasted fourteen days.
The date is usually given as about 546 BCE, though some scholars use 547. Details of the siege in later writers vary, and Herodotus is our main continuous source.
What happened to Croesus
The fate of Croesus differs from source to source. In Herodotus, Cyrus first orders him burned on a pyre, then spares him after he calls on Solon’s name, and keeps him as an adviser. A Greek vase painting and a poem by Bacchylides offer other versions, and Persian sources say little. A responsible summary is that Croesus lost his throne, that Sardis was taken, and that the ending of his life is unclear.
Sardis after the king
Sardis did not disappear. It became the capital of a Persian satrapy and the western end of the Royal Road, and later supported Greek, Roman and Byzantine communities. The satrapy system gave the Persians a method for ruling Anatolia, and Sardis was its showpiece. The city recovered from a revolt in 499 BCE, when Ionian Greeks burned part of it during the uprising against Persian rule. The Lydian past was remembered, but it was remembered mainly through the figure of its last king.