83-611: Lydia ( Ancient Greek : Λυδία , romanized : Ludía ; Latin : Lȳdia ) was an Iron Age kingdom situated in the west of Asia Minor , in modern-day Turkey . Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire . Its capital was Sardis . At some point before 800 BC, the Lydian people achieved some sort of political cohesion, and existed as an independent kingdom by
166-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
249-754: 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 . 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
332-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
415-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
498-455: 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
581-708: A powerful empire. Soon after Alyattes's ascension and early during his reign, with Assyrian approval 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
664-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
747-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
830-407: 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)
913-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
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#1732765097462996-487: A third attack by the Cimmerians, led by their king Lygdamis . This time, the Lydians were defeated, Sardis was sacked, and Gyges was killed. Gyges was succeeded by his son Ardys , who resumed diplomatic activity with Assyria and would also have to face the Cimmerians. Ardys attacked the Ionian Greek city of Miletus and succeeded in capturing the city of Priene , after which Priene would remain under direct rule of
1079-466: 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
1162-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
1245-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
1328-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
1411-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
1494-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1577-577: Is demonstrable from contemporary records. According to semi-mythical accounts of his reign, he was the son of a man named Dascylus and came to power by overthrowing King Candaules with the assistance of a Carian prince from Mylasa named Arselis. Gyges's rise to power happened in the context of a period of turmoil following the invasion of the Cimmerians , a nomadic people from the Pontic steppe who had invaded Western Asia , who around 675 BC destroyed
1660-518: 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, and the world's first bimetallic monetary system circa 550 BC. It took some time before ancient coins were used for commerce and trade. Even
1743-729: 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 . 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
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#17327650974621826-411: Is probable that Ardys was killed during this Cimmerian attack. Ardys was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who had an even more short-lived reign. Sadyattes died in 635 BC, and it is possible that, like his grandfather Gyges and maybe his father Ardys as well, he died fighting the Cimmerians . Amidst extreme turmoil, Sadyattes was succeeded in 635 BC by his son Alyattes , who would transform Lydia into
1909-883: 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. Instead, Etruscan language is considered part of the pre-Indo-European Tyrrhenian language family , along with the Lemnian and Rhaetian language . 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
1992-550: 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
2075-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
2158-541: The Hittite Empire , acting both as allies, enemies, and vassals at various points in time. By roughly 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
2241-547: The Luwic subgroup, unlike the other nearby Anatolian languages Luwian , Carian , and Lycian . Lydia's early history remains shrouded in obscurity. During the Late Bronze Age (1600 BC-1200 BC), the territory that later became Lydia overlapped with two kingdoms called Mira and Šeḫa , themselves part of a broader political entity called Arzawa . Like the other Arzawa Lands, these kingdoms had tumultuous relations with
2324-442: The Medes from Western Asia in the 590s BC. This final defeat of the Cimmerians was carried out by the joint forces of Madyes, whom Strabo credits with expelling the Treres and Cimmerians from Asia Minor, and of Alyattes, whom Herodotus and Polyaenus claim finally defeated the Cimmerians. Alyattes turned towards Phrygia in the east, where extended Lydian rule eastwards to Phrygia. Alyattes continued his expansionist policy in
2407-606: The Saite Egyptian kingdom, then ruled by the pharaoh Amasis II . Croesus also established trade and diplomatic relations with the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nabonidus , and he further increased his contacts with the Greeks on the European continent by establishing relations with the city-state of Sparta . In 550 BC, Croesus's brother-in-law, the Median king Astyages, was overthrown by his own grandson,
2490-696: 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 . 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 ,
2573-633: 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 2019 genetic study revealed that Etruscans (900–600 BC) and Latins (900–500 BC) from Latium vetus shared genetic similarities, with both groups having a mixture of two-thirds Copper Age ancestry and one-third Steppe-related ancestry . This study also suggested indigenous origins for
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2656-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
2739-515: 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
2822-409: The 3rd century AD, based on the nearby Exarchate of Ephesus. Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296 AD, 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
2905-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
2988-532: The 600s BC. At its greatest extent, during the 7th century BC, it covered all of western Anatolia . In 546 BC, it became a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire , known as Sparda in Old Persian . In 133 BC, it became part of the Roman province of Asia . Lydian coins, made of electrum , are among the oldest in existence, dated to around the 7th century BC. Lydia is generally located east of ancient Ionia in
3071-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
3154-508: 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 . In 644 BC, Lydia faced
3237-584: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Iardanus (father of Omphale) In Greek mythology , Iardanus or Iardanos ( Ancient Greek : Ἰάρδανος), also called Iardanes ( Ancient Greek : Ἰαρδάνης),
3320-634: 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
3403-571: The Etruscans, despite their pre-Indo-European language. 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
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3486-603: 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). Under the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610–641), Lydia became part of Anatolikon , one of
3569-677: The Lydian kingdom until its end. 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. They defeated the Lydians again and for a second time sacked the Lydian capital of Sardis , except for its citadel. It
3652-461: 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
3735-527: 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. Alyattes died shortly after the Battle of the Eclipse, in 585 BC itself, following which Lydia faced a power struggle between his son Pantaleon, born from a Greek woman, and his other son Croesus , born from a Carian noblewoman, out of which
3818-683: 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. Lydia remained a satrapy after Persia's conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon . When Alexander's empire ended after his death, Lydia was possessed by the major Asian diadoch dynasty,
3901-542: The Persian king Cyrus the Great , and Croesus responded by attacking Pteria , the capital of a Phrygian state vassal to the Lydians which might have attempted to declare its allegiance to the new Persian Empire of Cyrus. Cyrus retaliated by intervening in Cappadocia and defeated the Lydians at Pteria in a battle , and again at Thymbra before besieging and capturing the Lydian capital of Sardis , thus bringing an end to
3984-542: The River Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and during imperial Roman times Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean Sea on the other. The Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family , related to Luwian and Hittite . Due to its fragmentary attestation, the meanings of many words are unknown but much of
4067-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
4150-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
4233-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
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#17327650974624316-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
4399-527: 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
4482-515: The end of the Lydian kingdom; theoretically, it may even have taken place after the fall of Babylon in 539 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
4565-467: 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. Lydia was an independent kingdom from an unknown time until 546 BC. According to Herodotus, one of Lydus's descendants
4648-673: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
4731-412: The grammar has been determined. Similar to other Anatolian languages, it featured extensive use of prefixes and grammatical particles to chain clauses together. Lydian had also undergone extensive syncope , leading to numerous consonant clusters atypical of most Indo-European languages. Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC. The Lydian language is usually not categorized as part of
4814-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
4897-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
4980-428: The history of Lydia, never linked the Etruscans to Lydia or mentioned Tyrrhenus as a Lydian ruler. In contemporary scholarship, Etruscologists overwhelmingly support an indigenous origin for the Etruscans, 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
5063-416: 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
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#17327650974625146-419: The idea of Lydian migration to Etruria. The Etruscan civilization's earliest phase, the Villanovan culture , emerged around 900 BC, 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
5229-471: The kingdom of Argos ".) In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the double-axe symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization, the labrys . Omphale , daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler 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
5312-491: The latter emerged successful. Croesus brought Caria under the direct control of the Lydian Empire, and he subjugated all of mainland Ionia , Aeolis , and Doris , but he abandoned his plans of annexing the Greek city-states on the islands of the Aegean Sea and he instead concluded treaties of friendship with them, which might have helped him participate in the lucrative trade the Aegean Greeks carried out with Egypt at Naucratis . According to Herodotus, Croesus ruled over all
5395-405: 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
5478-425: 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
5561-418: The modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak , Manisa and inland Izmir . The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries. It was bounded first by Mysia , Caria , Phrygia and coastal Ionia . Later, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia, which, with its capital at Sardis , controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia . After the Persian conquest
5644-486: The most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup being H . The Lydians in early Antiquity adhered to a religion which remains marginally attested due to the known sources covering it being largely of Greek origin, while Lydian inscriptions regarding religion are small in number and no Lydian corpus of ritual texts like the Hittite ritual tablets have been recovered. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
5727-400: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
5810-422: 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 Byzantine rump state called the Nicene Empire based at Nicaea until 1261. Lydia
5893-497: The peoples to the west of the Halys River, although the actual border of his kingdom was further to the east of the Halys, at an undetermined point in eastern Anatolia. Croesus continued the friendly relations with the Medes concluded between his father Alyattes and the Median king Cyaxares , and he continued these good relations with the Medes after he succeeded Alyattes and Astyages succeeded Cyaxares. And, under Croesus's rule, Lydia continued its good relations started by Gyges with
5976-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
6059-441: 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. The relationship between
6142-602: The previous major power in Anatolia, the kingdom of Phrygia. Gyges took advantage of the power vacuum created by the Cimmerian invasions to consolidate his kingdom and make it a military power, he contacted the Neo-Assyrian court by sending diplomats to Nineveh to seek help against the Cimmerian invasions, and he attacked the Ionian Greek cities of Miletus , Smyrna , and Colophon . Gyges's extensive alliances with
6225-507: The rule of the Mermnad dynasty and to the Lydian Empire. Lydia would never regain its independence and would remain a part of various successive empires. Although the dates for the battles of Pteria and Thymbra and of end of the Lydian empire have been traditionally fixed to 547 BC, 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
6308-515: The smallest-denomination electrum coins, perhaps worth about a day's subsistence, would have been too valuable for buying a loaf of bread. 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
6391-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
6474-441: 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
6557-491: 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). Gyges is the first king whose existence
6640-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
6723-554: 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 . 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
6806-501: 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
6889-462: 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
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