Origins Lydia's early history remains shrouded in obscurity. During the
Late Bronze Age (1600 BC–1200 BC), the territory that later became Lydia was part of a broader
polity called
Arzawa; in particular, Lydia would subsume sub-kingdoms of Arzawa named
Mira and
Šeḫa, as well as the city-state of
Apasa (the precursor of the Greek Eφεσος
Ephesus). Like the other Arzawa sub-states, they had tumultuous relations with the
Hittite Empire, acting both as allies, enemies, and vassals at various points in time. At approximately around 800 BC, the
Lydian people appear to have established their presence and achieved some degree of political cohesion. However, precise dates and events are impossible to determine due to the absence of contemporary written records. The only firm evidence for this early period comes from the archaeological excavations at Sardis. Although certain literary accounts purport the existence of two early Lydian dynasties, namely the house of
Atys – after whose son
Lydus the Lydians were supposedly named – and the Heraclids, who allegedly ruled for twenty-two generations before 685 BC, these sources are steeped in mythology and lack historical credibility.
Kingdom of Lydia Lydia was an independent kingdom from an unknown time until 546 BC.
Candaules According to Herodotus, one of Lydus's descendants was
Iardanus, with whom
Heracles was in service at one time. Heracles had an affair with one of Iardanus' slave-girls and their son
Alcaeus was the first of the Heraclid Dynasty said to have ruled Lydia for 22 generations starting with
Agron. In the 8th century BC,
Meles became the 21st and penultimate Heraclid king and the last was his son
Candaules (died c. 687 BC).
The Mermnad Empire (680–546 BC) Gyges Gyges was the first Lydian king whose existence is demonstrable from contemporary records. and he attacked the
Ionian Greek cities of
Miletus,
Smyrna, and
Colophon. Gyges's extensive alliances with the Carian dynasts allowed him to recruit Carian and Ionian Greek soldiers to send overseas to assist the
Egyptian king
Psamtik I of the city of
Sais, with whom he had established contacts around 662 BC. With the help of these armed forces, Psamtik I united Egypt under his rule after eliminating the eleven other kinglets with whom he had been co-ruling
Lower Egypt. Ardys's reign was short-lived, and in 637 BC, that is in Ardys's seventh regnal year, the
Thracian Treres tribe who had migrated across the
Thracian Bosporus and invaded
Anatolia, under their king Kobos, and in alliance with the
Cimmerians and the
Lycians, attacked Lydia. Ardys was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who had an even more short-lived reign. and in alliance with the Lydians, the
Scythians under their king
Madyes entered Anatolia, expelled the Treres from Asia Minor, and defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat again, following which the Scythians extended their domination to Central Anatolia until they were themselves expelled by the
Medes from Western Asia in the 590s BC. Alyattes continued his expansionist policy in the east, and of all the peoples to the west of the Halys River whom Herodotus claimed Alyattes's successor Croesus ruled over – the
Lydians,
Phrygians,
Mysians,
Mariandyni,
Chalybes,
Paphlagonians,
Thyni and
Bithyni Thracians,
Carians,
Ionians,
Dorians,
Aeolians, and
Pamphylians – it is very likely that a number of these populations had already been conquered under Alyattes, and it is not impossible that the Lydians might have subjected Lycia, given that the Lycian coast would have been important for the Lydians because it was close to a trade route connecting the
Aegean region, the
Levant, and
Cyprus. royal funeral
tumulus (tomb of Alyattes, father of Croesus), Lydia, 6th century BC. Alyattes's eastern conquests brought the Lydian Empire in conflict in the 590s BC with the
Medes, and a war broke out between the Median and Lydian Empires in 590 BC which was waged in eastern Anatolia lasted five years, until a
solar eclipse occurred in 585 BC during
a battle (hence called the Battle of the Eclipse) opposing the Lydian and Median armies, which both sides interpreted as an omen to end the war. The Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar II and the king
Syennesis of
Cilicia acted as mediators in the ensuing peace treaty, which was sealed by the marriage of the Median king Cyaxares's son
Astyages with Alyattes's daughter
Aryenis, and the possible wedding of a daughter of Cyaxares with either Alyattes or with his son Croesus.
Croesus , last king of Lydia, Attic red-figure amphora, painted ca. 500–490 BC. Alyattes died shortly after the Battle of the Eclipse, in 585 BC itself, more recent estimates suggest that Herodotus's account being unreliable chronologically concerning the fall of Lydia means that there are currently no ways of dating the end of the Lydian kingdom; theoretically, it may even have taken place after the fall of
Babylon in 539 BC.
Persian Empire tomb, Lydian soldier of the
Achaemenid army, circa 480 BC In 547 BC, the Lydian king
Croesus besieged and captured the Persian city of
Pteria in
Cappadocia and enslaved its inhabitants. The Persian king
Cyrus The Great marched with his army against the Lydians. The
Battle of Pteria resulted in a stalemate, forcing the Lydians to retreat to their capital city of Sardis. Some months later the Persian and Lydian kings met at the
Battle of Thymbra. Cyrus won and captured the capital city of Sardis by 546 BC. Lydia became a province (
satrapy) of the Persian Empire.
Hellenistic Empire Lydia remained a satrapy after the invasion and conquest of Persia by
Alexander the Great. When Alexander's empire ended after his death, Lydia was possessed by the major Asian
diadoch dynasty, the
Seleucids, and when it was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia was acquired by the
Attalid dynasty of
Pergamum. Its last king avoided the spoils and ravage of a Roman war of conquest by leaving the realm by testament to the
Roman Empire.
Roman province of Asia When the Romans entered the capital Sardis in 133 BC, Lydia, as the other western parts of the Attalid legacy, became part of the
province of Asia, a very rich
Roman province, worthy of a governor with the high rank of
proconsul. The whole west of Asia Minor had
Jewish colonies very early, and Christianity was also soon present there.
Acts of the Apostles 16:14–15 mentions the baptism of a merchant woman called "Lydia" from
Thyatira, known as
Lydia of Thyatira, in what had once been the satrapy of Lydia.
Christianity spread rapidly during the 3rd century CE, based on the nearby Exarchate of Ephesus.
Roman province of Lydia Under the
tetrarchy reform of Emperor
Diocletian in 296 CE, Lydia was revived as the name of a separate Roman province, much smaller than the former satrapy, with its capital at Sardis. Together with the provinces of
Caria,
Hellespontus,
Lycia,
Pamphylia,
Phrygia prima and
Phrygia secunda,
Pisidia (all in modern Turkey) and the Insulae (
Ionian islands, mostly in modern Greece), 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 (Egypt) and
Thraciae (on the Balkans, roughly Bulgaria).
Eastern Roman Empire (and Crusader) age Under the Eastern Roman emperor Heraclius (610–641), Lydia became part of
Anatolikon, one of the original
themata, and later of
Thrakesion. Although the
Seljuk Turks conquered most of the rest of Anatolia, forming the
Sultanate of Ikonion (Konya), Lydia remained part of the Byzantine Empire. While the Venetians occupied Constantinople and Greece as a result of the
Fourth Crusade, Lydia continued as a part of the Eastern Roman
rump state called the
Nicene Empire based at
Nicaea until 1261.
Under Turkish rule Lydia was captured finally by Turkish
beyliks, which were all absorbed by the
Ottoman state in 1390. The area became part of the Ottoman
Aidin Vilayet (
province), and is now in the modern republic of
Turkey.
Legacy First coinage According to
Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to use gold and silver
coins and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations. It is not known, however, whether Herodotus meant that the Lydians were the first to use coins of pure gold and pure silver or the first precious metal coins in general. Despite this ambiguity, this statement of Herodotus is one of the pieces of evidence most often cited on behalf of the argument that Lydians invented coinage, at least in the West, although the first coins (under
Alyattes I, reigned c.591–c.560 BC) were neither gold nor silver but an alloy of the two called
electrum. The dating of these first stamped coins is one of the most frequently debated topics of ancient numismatics, with dates ranging from 700 BC to 550 BC, but the most common opinion is that they were minted at or near the beginning of the reign of King Alyattes (sometimes referred to incorrectly as Alyattes II). The first coins were made of
electrum, an
alloy of gold and silver that occurs naturally but that was further debased by the Lydians with added silver and copper. The largest of these coins are commonly referred to as a 1/3
stater (
trite) denomination, weighing around 4.7 grams, though no full staters of this type have ever been found, and the 1/3 stater probably should be referred to more correctly as a stater, after a type of a transversely held scale, the weights used in such a scale (from ancient Greek ίστημι=to stand), which also means "standard." These coins were stamped with a lion's head adorned with what is likely a sunburst, which was the king's symbol. The most prolific mint for early electrum coins was Sardis which produced large quantities of the lion head thirds, sixths and twelfths along with lion paw fractions. To complement the largest denomination, fractions were made, including a
hekte (sixth),
hemihekte (twelfth), and so forth down to a 96th, with the 1/96 stater weighing only about 0.15 grams. There is disagreement, however, over whether the fractions below the twelfth are actually Lydian. Alyattes' son was
Croesus (Reigned c.560–c.546 BC), who became associated with great wealth. Croesus is credited with issuing the
Croeseid, the first true
gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation, The first coins to be used for retailing on a large-scale basis were likely small silver fractions, Hemiobol,
Ancient Greek coinage minted in
Cyme (Aeolis) under
Hermodike II then by the
Ionian Greeks in the late sixth century BC. Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC, near the beginning of his reign, Croesus paid for the construction of the
temple of Artemis at
Ephesus, which became one of the
Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was defeated in battle by
Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BC, with the Lydian kingdom losing its autonomy and becoming a Persian
satrapy.
In Greek mythology For the Greeks,
Tantalus was a primordial ruler of mythic Lydia, and
Niobe his proud daughter; her husband
Amphion associated Lydia with
Thebes in Greece, and through
Pelops the line of Tantalus was part of the
founding myths of
Mycenae's second dynasty. (In reference to the myth of
Bellerophon, Karl Kerenyi remarked, in
The Heroes of The Greeks 1959, p. 83. "As
Lykia was thus connected with
Crete, and as the person of
Pelops, the hero of Olympia, connected Lydia with the Peloponnesos, so Bellerophontes connected another Asian country, or rather two, Lykia and
Karia, with the kingdom of
Argos".) river, from which Lydia obtained
electrum, a combination of silver and gold. In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the double-axe symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization, the
labrys.
Omphale, daughter of
Iardanos, was a princess of Lydia, whom
Heracles was required to serve for a time. His adventures in Lydia are the adventures of a Greek hero in a peripheral and foreign land: during his stay, Heracles enslaved the Itones; killed Syleus, who forced passers-by to hoe his vineyard; slew the
serpent of the river Sangarios (which appears in the heavens as the constellation
Ophiucus) and captured the simian tricksters, the
Cercopes. Accounts tell of at least one son of Heracles who was born to either Omphale or a slave-girl: Herodotus (
Histories i. 7) says this was
Alcaeus who began the line of Lydian
Heracleidae which ended with the death of
Candaules c. 687 BC.
Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and
Ovid (
Heroides 9.54) mentions a son called Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus (
Bibliotheke 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus and
Pausanias (2.21.3) names Tyrsenus as the son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman". All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor. Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. He also mentions (1.94) the legend that the
Etruscan civilization was founded by colonists from Lydia led by
Tyrrhenus, brother of Lydus.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was skeptical of this story, indicating that the
Etruscan language and customs were known to be totally dissimilar to those of the Lydians. In addition, the story of the "Lydian" origins of the Etruscans was not known to
Xanthus of Lydia, an authority on the history of the Lydians. Later chronologists ignored Herodotus' statement that
Agron was the first Heraclid to be a king, and included his immediate forefathers Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their list of kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) has Atys, father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, as a descendant of Heracles and Omphale but that contradicts virtually all other accounts which name Atys, Lydus, and Tyrrhenus among the pre-Heraclid kings and princes of Lydia. The gold deposits in the river
Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of
Croesus (Lydia's last king) were said to have been left there when the legendary king
Midas of
Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in its waters. In
Euripides' tragedy
The Bacchae,
Dionysus, while maintaining his human disguise, declares his country to be Lydia.
Lydians, the Tyrrhenians and the Etruscans The relationship between the
Etruscans of northern and central Italy and the Lydians has long been a subject of conjecture. The Greek historian
Herodotus believed they came from Lydia, but
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a 1st-century BC historian, argued that the Etruscans were indigenous to Italy and unrelated to the Lydians. Dionysius pointed out that the 5th-century historian
Xanthus of Lydia, who was regarded as an important source and authority for the history of Lydia, never linked the Etruscans to Lydia or mentioned Tyrrhenus as a Lydian ruler. dismissing Herodotus' account as based on erroneous etymologies.
Michael Grant argue that the Etruscans may have propagated this narrative to facilitate their trading in Asia Minor, when many cities in Asia Minor, and the Etruscans themselves, were at war with the Greeks. The French scholar
Dominique Briquel contends that "the story of an exodus from Lydia to Italy was a deliberate political fabrication created in the Hellenized milieu of the court at Sardis in the early 6th century BC." Ultimately, these Greek-authored accounts of the Etruscan origins are only the expression of the image that Etruscans' allies or adversaries wanted to divulge and should not be considered historical. Archaeological evidence does not support the idea of Lydian migration to Etruria. which itself developed from the previous
Proto-Villanovan culture of Italy in the late
Bronze Age. This culture has no ties to Asia Minor or the Near East. Linguists have identified an
Etruscan-like language in a
set of inscriptions on
Lemnos island, in the Aegean Sea. Since the
Etruscan language was a
Pre-Indo-European language and neither Indo-European or Semitic, Etruscan was not related to
Lydian, which was a part of the
Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages. A 2013 genetic study suggested that the maternal lineages of western Anatolians and modern Tuscans had been largely separate for 5,000 to 10,000 years, with Etruscan
mtDNA closely resembling modern Tuscans and Neolithic
Central European populations. This suggests Etruscans descended from the
Villanovan culture, indicating their indigenous roots, and a link between Etruria, modern Tuscany, and Lydia dating back to the
Neolithic period during the migration of
Early European Farmers from Anatolia to Europe. A 2021 study confirmed these findings, showing that Etruscans and Latins in the Iron Age had similar genetic profiles and were part of the European cluster. The Etruscan DNA was completely absent a signal of recent admixture with Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Etruscans exhibited a blend of WHG, EEF, and Steppe ancestry, with 75% of males belonging to
haplogroup R1b and the most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup being
H. == Culture and society ==