Lydia
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- This article is about the ancient kingdom in Anatolia. For other uses of this word, see Lydia (disambiguation).
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 Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. It was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.
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Early history
Lydia arose as a "Neo-Hittite" kingdom following the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC. Herodotus (Histories i. 7) and Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, 11. 431) both refer to them as Meiones (Μείονες). However, Herodotus 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 mythological name gave rise to the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (Λυδοί) 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. In Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were also famous archers.
Lydia in Greek legend
Template:Main 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. As Omphale and Heracles married, it would be expected that accounts should speak of at least one son born to them. 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
Image:Lydia original area of lydia.jpg Image:Map of Lydia ancient times.jpg The 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 546 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
The Lydian language was an 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]
Autochthonous Dynasties
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 (687-652BC 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. 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 619-560BC) - 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 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 the Great and was defeated in 546 BC.
Persian and hellenistic empires
- 546BC the Achaemenid King of Kings Cyrus the Great captured Sardis and Lydia became a satrapy, part of the Persian Empire.
- It remained a satrapy after Persia's conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, going -after his death caused the empire to fall apart- to the major Asian diadoch dynasty, the Seleucids, till this was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia falling 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/Lydia
When the Romans entered its capital Sardis in 133 BC, Lydia, as the other western parts of the Attalid legacy, became part of Asia Minor, a very rich Roman province, worthy to keep 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.
Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296AD, Lydia was the name of a separate Roman province (much smaller then the original satrapy) around Sardis. Together with the provinces of Caria, Hellespontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia prima & 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).
Byzantine and later period
Under the Byzantine emperor Haraclius (610-641), it became part of Anatolikon, one of the original themata, later of Thrakesion. While the caliphate and next the Seljuk Turks (sultanate of Ikonion) conquered most of Anatolia for islam, Lydia was part of the Byzantine rest empire, during the Catholic crusader's occupation of Constantinople still part of the Byzantine orthodox 'Greek Empire' at Nicaea, finally falling prey to new beyliks, which would all be absorbed by the Ottoman state in 1390, which made it part of its vilayet (province) of Aydin, ending up as westernmost part of the modern republic of Turkey.
See also
da:Lydien de:Lydien et:Lüüdia fi:Lyydia fr:Lydie he:לידיה it:Lidia ja:リディア nl:Lydië no:Lydia pl:Lidia (kraina) pt:Lídia ru:Лидия sl:Lidija sv:Lydien tr:Lidyalılar zh:呂底亞