Sardis

Place Description

Sardis was the capital of Lydia. With wealth from gold washed down in the Pactolus River, the Lydians held a reputation for luxury long before the Persian conquest. Around 395-394 BCE, the Spartan general Aegilaus overran the paradeisos of the Persian king Tissaphernes, a park that “had been set out artfully and expensively with plants and all else that contributes to luxury and the quiet enjoyment of the good things.” Between Sardis and Thybarnae, he stationed 1400 soldiers in a densely wooded place to ambush the Persians (Diodorus 14.80.2). While we have no descriptions, per se, of gardens in the royal palace, the landscape of Sardis lying at the foot of the flowery and vine-clad Mt. Tmolus was a literary topos for fertility and fine-living.

The paradeisos of Cyrus was not destroyed, but rather admired, by another Spartan, the general Lysander (Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 4.20-25). This incident is also noted by Cicero: “Lysander, a man of great capacity, had brought [Cyrus the Younger] gifts from the allies, so that Cyrus was in many ways kindly and generous toward him and also showed him a certain carefully arranged pleasure-park” (De senectute 59). One satrap transplanted Syrian trees and plants to Lydia. On the death of Alexander, the royal paradeisoi in Sardis were taken over by Seleucus of Syria (Plutarch, Demetrios 50.6).

A late fourth-century BCE inscription recovered from Sardis mentions a paradeisos with a distinctly agrarian meaning. “Outside the farmsteads are two paradeisoi requiring 15 artabas of seeds.” Either the term had become very general by this period, or the inscription refers to the practice of combination-cropping between trees (Columella 9.12). Buckler and Robinson suggest an interpretation of paradeisos as “land not only with fruit trees or orchards but with gardens of flowers and vegetables and perhaps also grain.”

Places

• Sardis/Hyde? (Pleiades:550867)
• Sardes (deserted settlement) (TGN:7002615)
• Asia (Roman Province) (Pleiades:981509)
• Asia Minor (general region) (TGN:7002294)