Descrizione

Original bdg. HC. 4to. (31 x 23 cm). In English. 118, [1] p., color ills. The Lydians and Sardis. In ancient literature the Lydians are frequently mentioned as one of the distinguished peoples of western Anatolia in about the middle of the first millennium BCE and they ruled, although for a relatively short period of some hundred and fifty years, from the Aegean shore to the great curve of the Halys. The scribes of the Old Testament knew and included the Lydians in the Table of the Nations. Their burial mounds which are spread on the flats of the Hermus near Sardis have been a sight of wonder for travellers since antiquity. The information supplied by ancient literature, much of which we owe to Herodotus and Xenophon and research in the first half of the last century, has been supplemented by what is being revealed by excavations in and around their capital Sardis and other regions of Lydia during the last few decades. What may be known about the Lydians by the general reader, however, may not amount to more than some stories such as that of the fabulous wealth of King Croesus which inspired tales of prosperity and gave birth to the expression ¿rich as Croesus¿ or that the Lydians were the people who invented metal coinage. The objective of this book is to present the history and culture of the Lydians as a whole without trying to give all of what is known about them. Despite its limited size, much of what the book comprises is not accessible to the general reader as a whole anywhere else.