Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/330

Rh 310 S A K S A K the plague (1403), and soon after the whole island became an Aragonese (after the union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile a Spanish) province. It remained Spanish till the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, when it was ceded to the house of Austriti, by which in 1720 it was handed over to Victor Amadous II., duke or Savoy, in exchange for the island of Sicily. Shortly before the date of this acquisition the duke of Savoy (see SAVOY) had had the title of king conferred upon him, and when the cession of Sardinia took place tho title was changed to that of king of Sardinia. With this kingdom the island ultimately became merged in the kingdom of Italy. See La Marmora, Voyage en Sardai<jne (Paris, 2d e<l., 1837-57) ; Rolssanl dc Relict, Ln Stirtlaiijne a tot (foiseau (Paris, 1884) ; Robert Teniiant, Sardinia ami itt Resources (l.oml., 1885). (G. G. C.) SARDIS (c! SapSeis), the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, the seat of a convents under the Roman empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times, was situated in the middle Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, a steep and lofty spur of which formed the citadel. It was about 20 stadia (2 miles) south of the Hermus. The earliest reference to Sardis is in the Persse of yEschylus (472 B.C.) ; in the Iliad the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian (i.e., Lydian) chiefs, and in later times Hyde was said to be the older name of Sardis, or the name of its citadel. It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it be- came so amid the changes which produced a powerful Lydian empire in the 8th century B.C. The city, but not the citadel, was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Athenians in the 6th, and by Antiochus the Great in the 3d century; once at least, under the emperor Tiberius, it was destroyed by an earthquake ; but it was always rebuilt, and continued to be one of the great cities of western Asia Minor till the later Byzantine time. Its importance was due, first to its military strength, secondly to its situation on an important high- way leading from the interior to the ^gean coast, and thirdly to its commanding the wide and fertile plain of the Hermus. The early Lydian kingdom was far advanced in the industrial arts (see LYDIA), and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was tho manufacture and dyeing of delicate woollen stuffs and carpets. The statement that the little stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place rolled over golden sands is probably little more than a metaphor, due to the wealth of the city to which the Greeks of the 6th century B.C. resorted for supplies of gold ; but trade and the practical organization of commerce were the real sources of this wealth. After Constantinople became the <japital of the East a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis then lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance. It still, however, retained its titular supremacy, and continued to be the seat of the metro- politan bishop of tho province. It is enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesian thema given by Constantino Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century ; but in the actual history of the next four centuries it plays a part very inferior to Magnesia ad Sipylum and Philadelphia, which have to the present day retained their pre-eminence in the district. The Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the Seljuk Turks about the end of the llth century ; but the successes of the Greek general Philocales in 1118 relieved the district for the time, and the ability of the Comneni, together with the gradual decay of the Seljuk power, re- tained it in the Byzantine dominions. The country round Sardis was frequently ravaged both by Christians and by Greeks during the 13th century. Soon after 1301 the Seljuk emirs overran the whole of the Hermus and Cayster valleys, and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty. Finally in 1390 Philadelphia, which had for some time been an independent Christian city, surrendered to Sultan Bayazid's mixed army of Ottoman Turks and Byzantine Christians, and the Seljuk power in tho Hermus valley was merged in the Ottoman empire. The latest reference to the city of Sardis relates its capture (and probable destruction) by Timur in 1402. Its site is now absolutely deserted, except that a tiny village, Sart, merely a few huts inhabited by semi-nomadic Yuruks, exists beside the Pactolus, and that there is a station of the Smyrna and Cassaba Railway a mile north of the principal ruins. The ruins of Sardis, so far as they are now visible, are chieily of the Roinnn time ; but probably few ancient sites would more richly reward the excavator with remains of all periods in mi the early pre-Hellenic time downwards. On the banks of the Pac- tolus two columns of a temple of the Greek period, probably the great temple of Cybcle, are still standing. More than one attempt to excavate this temple, the last by Mr G. Dennis in 1882, have been made and prematurely brought to an end by lack of funds. Tho necropolis of the old Lydian city, a vast series of mounds, some of enormous size, lies on the north side of the Hcrmus, four or five miles from Sardis, a little south of the sacred lake Coloe ; here the Mseouian chiefs, sons, according to Homer, of the lake, were brought to sleep beside their mother. The series of mounds is now called Bin Tepe (Thousand Mounds). Several of them have been opened by modern excavators, but in every case it was found that treasure-seekers of an earlier time had removed any articles of value that had been deposited in the sepulchral chambers. SARDONYX, a name applied to those varieties of onyx, or stratified chalcedony, which exhibit white layers alternating with others of red or brown colour. The brown chalcedony is known to modern mineralogists as sard and the red as cornelian. The simplest and commonest type of sardonyx contains two strata, a thin layer of white chalcedony resting upon a ground of either carnelian or sard; but the sardonyx of ancient writers generally presented three layers a superficial stratum of red, an intermediate band of white, and a base of dark brown chalcedony. The sardonyx has always been a favourite stone with the cameo-engraver, and the finest works have usually been executed on stones of five strata. Such, for instance, is the famous Carpegna cameo, in the Vatican, representing the triumph of Bacchus and Ceres, and re- puted to be the largest work of its kind ever executed (16 inches by 12). When the component layers of a sardonyx are of fine colour and sharply defined, the stone is known in trade as an "Oriental sardonyx" a term which is used without reference to tho geographical source whence the stone is obtained. A famous ancient locality for sard was in Babylonia, and the name of the stone appears to be connected with the Persian word sered, "yellowish red," in allusion to the colour of the sard. Pliny, relying on a superficial resemblance, derives the name from Sardis, reputed to be its original locality. The sardonyx is frequently stained, or at least its colour heightened, by chemical processes. Imitations are fabri- cated by cementing two or three layers of chalcedony together, and so building up a sardonyx; while baser counterfeits are formed simply of paste. See ONYX, vol. xvii. p. 776. SARGASSO SEA. See ATLANTIC, vol. iii. pp. 20, 26. SARGON, king of Assyria, 722-705 B.C. (Isa. xx. 1). See BABYLONIA, vol. iii. p. 187, and ISRAEL, voL xiii. p. 412*7. SARI. See MAZANDARAN. SARMATIANS (2a.vpofj.a.T<u, Sup/un-cu, Sarmate). In the time of Herodotus (iv. 110-117) the steppes between the Don and the Caspian were inhabited by the Sauromatae, a nomadic horse-riding people, whose women rode, hunted, and took part in battle like the men, so that legend (pre- sumably the legend of the Greek colonists on the Black Sea) represented the race as descendants of the Amazons by Scythian fathers. It is recounted both by Herodotus