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Lydia was an ancient kingdom of Asia Minor, known to Homer
as Mæonia. Its principal city was Sardis.
The boundaries of Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia Major, Caria, Phrygia
and Ionia. Later on, the military power of Alyattes and of 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.
The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth. Lydia was one of the
first countries to mint coins, and Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Croesus was
beaten by Cyrus in 548 BC,
and the kingdom became a province of the Persian empire.
Homer speaks only of Maeonians (Iliad ii. 865, V. 43, 11. 431), and their city Hyde the place of the Lydian capital
Sardis is taken by Hyde (Ii. xx. 385), unless this was the name of the district in which Sardis stood (see Straho xiii. p.
626).
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 such an eponym descended from a god.
Straightforward deconstruction reveals a social upheaval, perhaps in the early 1st millennium BCE (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 (outsider?) dynasty.
Some Maeones still existed in historical times inhabiting the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town called
Maeonia existed, accordinmg to Pliny (Natural History book v:30) and Hierocles.
Selected Monarchs of Lydia with date of accession.
Lydia Maria
Child was a writer, editor and
activist.
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