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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Only a few years later Cyrus stormed 

 the castle of Sardes, and fable has it 

 that Croesus' life was spared, even when 

 he stood upon the funeral pyre, by the 

 Persian monarch when he heard from 

 the captured Lydian king the story of 

 Solon's warning. 



Under Persian rule Sardes was the 

 seat of a satrap. In 499 B. C. the 

 Greeks marched from Ephesus and 

 stormed the city, but did not succeed in 

 getting possession of the castle. Xerxes 

 made it his base of operations against 

 the Ionian cities and Greece, and later 

 Alexander, in turn, made it his base of 

 operations against the Persian Empire. 

 Under Rome Sardes had a new era of 

 prosperity, especially when Tiberius re- 

 built the city after the disastrous earth- 

 quake of the year 17 A. D. Sardes was 

 finally destroyed by Tamerlane in 1402, 

 and since that time the site has been 

 more or less in the condition we find it 

 today. 



The ruins of Sardes consist today of 

 the following buildings : Odeion, theater, 

 stadion, a large double gate of an old 

 fortification, an old Christian church, a 

 Roman gymnasium or bath, several un- 

 known temples, arches of an old bridge 

 over the Pactolus, two pillars of what is 

 supposed by many to be the Cybele Tem- 

 ple, and last of all what is left of the so- 

 called castle of Croesus. 



Of the old Christian church, which 

 may have been one of the Seven 

 Churches of Asia, nothing now remains 

 but four huge pillars or prongs upon 

 which storks have comfortably built 

 their nests. It is unquestionably con- 

 structed from material taken from much 

 older buildings at Sardes, as the archi- 

 traves are Ionian in style. The founda- 

 tions of the pillars are built upon large 

 blocks of marble, while the arches have 

 been constructed of brick. Between the 

 foundations and where the brick work 

 begins many interesting pieces of marble 

 have been fitted in. 



The necropolis is about an hour on 

 horseback from the station at Sardes. 

 There are in all some sixty enormous 

 mounds containing tomb chambers, all 



of which were plundered ages ago. The 

 largest is the celebrated mausoleum of 

 Alyattes, described by Herodotus. It is 

 something like 200 feet in height and 

 more than 1,500 feet in diameter at the 

 base, which rests upon an immense foun- 

 dation of stone. 



FEW EXPLORATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE IN 

 SARDES 



In my judgment, Sardes would make 

 an excellent place for excavations, as 

 practically nothing has ever been done 

 thus far to unearth any of the buildings. 

 The field is a vast one, and it lies high 

 and dry above the Hermus and Pactolus, 

 so there would be no fear from freshets 

 and swamps. I am fully satisfied that 

 under all those Roman buildings which 

 lie about the field, and are more or less 

 buried in the soil which earthquakes and 

 rain have brought down from the castle 

 hill, there are many Lydian and Greek 

 monuments as old as the pillars of the 

 Cybele temple and dating from the ear- 

 liest times. 



That such an inviting mine has been 

 neglected so long is to be wondered at. 

 If nothing else were brought to light 

 than the inscriptions taken from the an- 

 cient Greek temples and built into the 

 Roman public buildings, such finds alone 

 would be an ample reward for any labor 

 and money spent in this direction. 



The site of ancient Sardes today, apart 

 from the natural beauty of the ruins, the 

 picturesqueness of which is greatly en- 

 hanced by some ivy vines which creep 

 over them, and by the storks which have 

 built nests where they show up to the 

 best advantage, as well as fields green 

 with grass and grain, presents a subject 

 which is food for retrospection. The 

 plunge of Croesus, from the highest sum- 

 mit of worldly wealth and power to the 

 deepest pit of humiliation and disgrace, 

 has few parallels in history. 



From the castle where Croesus re- 

 ceived in state the ambassadors sent by 

 the tributary cities of Smyrna, of Ephe- 

 sus, and of Miletus, where a court was 

 held, the splendor of which had not been 

 heard of since the days of Solomon, to 



