Lydia

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. Lydia was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.

Early history: Maeonia and Lydia

Lydia arose as a Neo-Hittite kingdom following the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the twelfth century BC. Its early name was Maionia (Maeonia): Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, xi. 431) refers to the inhabitants of Lydia as Meiones. Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde (Iliad xx. 385); Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis stood. Later, Herodotus (Histories i. 7) adds that they were named after their first king, Lydos, who was believed to be descended from the divine couple Attis and Cybele. This etiological myth served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi . The Hebrew Lûḏîm  of Jeremiah 46.9 is considered to apply to the Lydians; in Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were also famous archers. Their language, Lydian, was an Indo-European language related to Hittite and a member of the Anatolian language family. Lydian became extinct during the first century BC.

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.

 Lydia in Greek legend

In Greek mythology, Omphale was the ruler of Lydia, whom Heracles was required to serve for a period of time. During his stay in Lydia Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes. Accounts speak of at least one son born to Omphale and Heracles: Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid (Heroides 9.54) mention a son Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus (Bibliotheke 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus, and Pausanias (2.21.3) gives Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman". All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming descent from Heracles: 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.
The gold deposits in the river Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of Croesus (Lydia's last historical king, see below) were said to have been left there when the legendary king Midas of Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in the waters of Pactolus.

 Geography

The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal 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.

According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations.

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 satrapy of the Persian Empire.

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 first 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.