SARDIS (Ecipaces), the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fine plain watered by the river Pac tolus (Herod. vii. 31 ; Xenophon, Cyrop. Vii. 2-11; Pliny, Hist. Nat.; Strabo, xiii. p. 625). It is in N. lat. 38° 3o' ; E. long. 27° 57'. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and from its wealth and importance was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges. When taken by Cyrus, under Crcesus, its last kin,g, who has become proverbial for Ills riches, Sardis was one of the most splendid and opulent cities of the East. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it rapidly declined in rank and importance. In the time of Tiberius it was destroyed by an earthquake (Strabo, xii. p. 57g), but was rebuilt by order of the emperor (Tacit. Anna/. ii. 47). The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. Hence, perhaps, the point of the phrase in the Apocalyptic message to the city—` Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments ' (Rev. iii. 4). The place that Sardis holds in this message, as one of the Seven Churches of Asia,' is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said, it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian church, having a name to live, while it was dead ' (Rev. iii. I).
Successive earthquakes, and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks, have reduced this once flou rishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendour. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, forming a village called Sart. This, with the ruins, is still found on the true site of Sardis, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, or Bouz-dag, as the Turks call it. The ruins are chiefly those of the theatre, stadium, and of some churches. There are also two remarkable pillars, supposed to have belonged to the temple of Cybele; and, if so, they are among the oldest monuments now existing in the world, the temple having been built only 300 years after that of Solomon. The acro polis seems well to define the site of the city. It is a marked object, being a tall distorted rock of soft sandstone, rent as if by an earthquake. A countless number of sepulchral hillocks, beyond the Hermus, heighten the desolateness of a spot which the multitudes lying there once made busy by their living presence and pursuits. See Smith, Hartley, Macfarlane, and Arundel!, severally, On the Seven Churches of Asia; Arundel], Discoveries in Asia Minor; Storch, Dissert. de Sept. Urb. Asia in Apocal. ; Richter, Wallfahrten ; Schubert, Oforgenland, etc.—J. K.