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- This article is about the ancient kingdom in Anatolia. For other uses of this word, see Lydia (other meanings).
Lydia is a historic region of western Anatolia, congruent with Turkey's modern provinces of İzmir and Manisa. Its traditional capital was the city of Sardis (Turkish: Sart). However, at its greatest extent, the Kingodom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. It was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 650 BC.
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Pre-history
The region of Lydia was probably settled by Indo-European peoples in the late Bronze Age (around the twelfth century BC), during the decay of the Hittite Empire. Herodotus (Histories i. 7) and Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, 11. 431) both refer to them as Meiones (Μηιονες). However, Herodotus adds that they were named after their first king, Lydos (Λυδος), who was believed to be descended from the divine couple Attis and Cybele. This mythological name gave rise to the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (Λυδοι) and the Hebrew Lûḏîm (לודים, cf. Jer. 46.9). Their language, Lydian, is related to Hittite and a member of the Anatolian language family. Lydian became extinct during the first century BC.
Lydia in Greek legend
- Main article: Omphale
In Greek mythology, Omphale was a queen or princess of Lydia. It was also during his stay in Lydia that Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes. It would be expected that accounts should speak of at least one son born to Heracles by Omphale. Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid in his Heroides (9.54) mention a son named Lamos. But Apollodorus (2.7.8) gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as Agelaus. Pausanias (2.21.3) gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman" by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale. 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. This is likely careless error rather than independent tradition as all other accounts place Atys and Lydus and Tyrrhenus brother of Lydus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.
Geography
Original size of Lydia
map of the Lydian empireThe boundaries of Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and 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.
The Lydians were the first people to establish retail shops which were permanent according to Herodotus. 1
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 in 548 BC, and the kingdom became a province of the Persian Empire.
Homer speaks only of Maeonians (Iliad ii. 865, V. 43, 11. 431) and describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde (Ii. xx. 385); but Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis stood (see Straho xiii. p. 626).
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 1st 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.
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.
Language
Lydian language was a Indo-European language, which belongs to the New Anatolian languages, coming from Hittite, but with some changes. The language uses many prefixes and particles. 2
Dynasties
- Main article: List of Kings of Lydia
Lydia was ruled by three dynasties: the Atyads (1300BC or earlier) -
Heraclids (Tylonids) (to 687BC) (According to Herodotus the Heraclids ruled for 22 generations during the period from 1185BC lasting for 505 years). Alyattes was the king of Lydia in 776BC. The last king of this dynasty was Mursylos (Greek) or Candaules (Lydian)
Mermnads.
- Gyges (687-652) or (690-657) - 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). 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 (652-621)
- Sadyattes (621-609) or (624-610) - 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. After ruling for twelve years he was assassinated by his former friend Gyges, who succeeded him on the throne of Lydia.
- Alyattes II (609 or 619 -560) - one of the greatest rulers on 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 says that
- "On the refusal of Alyattes to give up his suppliants 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) - the expression "rich as Croesus" came from this king.
- 546BC Persian Cyrus the Great captured Sardis and Lydia became part of the Persian Empire. It was later controlled by Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, Pergamum and the Roman Empire. Under the rule of Emperor Diocletian it was a separate Roman province.
Roman province of Lydia
Lydia was the name for a Roman province. When the Romans took Sardis in 133 BC, it became the capital of the Roman province of Lydia. Acts of the Apostles 16:14 mentions a business woman called Lydia who came from Thyatira from the province of Lydia.