or Sardes, anciently the capital of Lydia, in Asia Minor, stood at the foot of Mount Tmolus, now called Bozdag, in a beautiful plain, about 50 miles N.E. of Smyrna. It was an ancient town, and built at first in a rude manner, so as to be very liable to conflagrations; but the citadel on a steep rock was almost impregnable, being fortified by three walls. It was thus enabled to hold out when the lower town was taken by the Cimmerians in the reign of Ardys. Under Croesus, the last of the Lydian monarchs, Sardis rose to a high degree of prosperity; and after his fall in 546 B.C., it was the residence of the Persian satraps of Western Asia. During the Ionian revolt, B.C. 501, the insurgents, aided by the Athenians, took the city; and on that occasion it was accidentally set on fire and burned to the ground. Sardis was rebuilt; but its burning was the chief event that called down the indignation of the Persians against Athens, and led to the Persian wars with Greece. The city remained under the Persian empire till the time of Alexander the Great, to whom it opened its gates after his victory at the Granicus. After the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, Sardis fell to the kingdom of Syria; and when the two Scipios conquered Antiochus at Magnesia, B.C. 190, it became a part of the Roman empire.

As we learn from the Book of Revelation, a Christian church was early founded at Sardis, and was one of the seven to which that book was addressed. The city continued wealthy and powerful till the fall of the Byzantine empire; it was taken by the Turks in the eleventh century, but suffered a severer blow from Tamerlane, who almost entirely destroyed it about 200 years later. The ruins, though covering a large space of ground, are not very interesting; in the middle of them stands the modern village of Sart.