Sardis

Sardis;

Sardis, which was at the height of its property;

and it was while he was monarch of Sardis that the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomad Scythians, came into Asia, and took Sardis, all but the acropolis.

Thirty days later, however, Alcibiades, together with Mantitheus, who had been taken prisoner in Caria, provided themselves with horses and made their escape from Sardis by night to Clazomenae.

And after Lysander had arrived at Rhodes and secured some ships there, he sailed to Cos and Miletus, and from there to Ephesus, where he remained with seventy ships until Cyrus arrived at Sardis.

and when Alcibiades with a single trireme went to visit him, bearing friendly offerings and gifts, Tissaphernes seized him and imprisoned him in Sardis, saying that the King ordered him to make war upon the Athenians.

Cyrus was now setting forth from Sardis with the troops I have mentioned;

And they gladly obeyed—for they trusted him—and presented themselves, under arms, at Sardis.

Xenias, then, arrived at Sardis with the troops from the cities, who were hoplites to the number of four thousand;

And I you, Croesus;

Aye, Cyrus, said he;

And when Croesus saw Cyrus, he said:

After many cycles of years, however, they too came to reverence statues of human form, as Berossus shows in the third book of his Chaldaic Affairs, this having been introduced by Artaxerxes son of Darius son of Ochus, who first set up the statue of Aphrodite Anaïtis in Babylon and Susa and Ecbatana, and showed the Persians and Bactrians and Damascus and Sardis to reverence it.

Further, the story goes that when Lysander came to him bringing the gifts form the allies, this Cyrus showed him various marks of friendliness, as Lysander himself related once to a stranger at Megara, adding besides that Cyrus personally showed him round his paradise at Sardis.