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Updated: June 27, 2025
It was beautifully situated on the river Pactolus, in the middle Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, and was once the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, the place of residence of Croesus and other Lydian kings. It was a city of great opulence and splendor, and "distinguished for the voluptuous and debauched manners of its inhabitants."
When we last surveyed Asia Minor as a whole it was in large part under the dominance of a central power in Phrygia. This power is now no more, and its place has been taken by another, which rests on a point nearer to the western coast. Now at last it has come to the Hermus valley, up which blows the breath of the Aegean Sea.
Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater, the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Caÿster and Maenander? Had she not made maps of it from her young husband's accounts and then with enthusiasm traced his steps by its stony, hilly streets from forum to stadium and from school to museum?
Hence, he called the city which he built Pythopolis, after the Pythian god, and the neighbouring river, in honour of the young man, Solon. He left the two surviving brothers to govern it, and give it laws; and along with them Hermus, who was of one of the best families in Athens.
The road went down into the valley, passing through a little wood of birches, the stems of which, up to the very tree-top, were twined with vines covered with bunches of grapes. The horsemen stopped at a bend in the road, for there, before them, in the celebrated valley of the Hermus, lay the golden Sardis, formerly the capital of the Lydian kingdom and residence of its king, Croesus.
In the valley of the Hermus, near Magnesia at the foot of Mount Sipylus not far from Smyrna, the Roman troops fell in with the enemy late in the autumn of 564.
The road went down into the valley, passing through a little wood of birches, the stems of which, up to the very tree-top, were twined with vines covered with bunches of grapes. The horsemen stopped at a bend in the road, for there, before them, in the celebrated valley of the Hermus, lay the golden Sardis, formerly the capital of the Lydian kingdom and residence of its king, Croesus.
Without venturing at once into any of the great emporia, he raised his standard at Leucae, a small but strongly defended seaport lying almost midway between Phocaea and Smyrna, and placed on a promontory just south of the point where the Hermus issues into its gulf. Some of the leading towns seem to have answered to his call.
For this cause he there founded a city, which he called, from the name of Apollo, Pythopolis, and, in honor of the unfortunate youth, he named the river that runs by it Soloon, and left the two surviving brothers intrusted with the care of the government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of Hermus; though by an error in the accent it has been taken for the House of Hermes, or Mercury, and the honor that was designed to the hero, transferred to the god.
We know practically nothing about it; but since some three centuries later the Lydian people was rich and luxurious in the Hermus valley, which had once been a fief of the Hatti, we must conclude that it had been enjoying security as far back as 1000 B.C. Who those Heraclid princes were exactly is obscure. We shall say more of him and his worshippers presently.
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