Sardis

Nay, he actually took part in the king's hunts and in his household diversions, so far that he even had access to the queen-mother and became intimate with her, and at the king's bidding heard expositions also of the Magian lore.

And when Demaratus the Spartan, being bidden to ask a gift, asked that he might ride in state through Sardis, wearing his tiara upright after the manner of the Persian kings, Mithrapostus the king's cousin said, touching the tiara of Demaratus, This tiara of thine hath no brains to cover.

Indeed, thou wilt not be Zeus merely because thou graspest the thunderbolt.

The king also repulsed Demaratus in anger at his request, and was minded to be inexorable towards him.

But when they drew near and lifted up the hanging, they were fallen upon by the guards and apprehended.

Thus Themistocles escaped the peril, and because he was amazed at the epiphany of the goddess, he built a temple in Magnesia in honor of Dendymene, and made his daughter Nesitolema her priestess.

When he had come to Sardis and was viewing at his leisure the temples built there and the multitude of their dedicatory offerings, and saw in the temple of the mother the so-called water-carrier, a maid in bronze two cubits high, which he himself, when he was water-commissioner at Athens, had caused to be made and dedicated from the fines he exacted of those whom he convicted of stealing and tapping the public water, whether it was because he felt some chagrin at the capture of the offering, or because he wished to show the Athenians what honor and power he had in the king's service, he addressed a proposition to the Lydian satrap and asked him to restore the maid to Athens.

But the barbarian was incensed and threatened to write a letter to the king about it.

For Libya is said by most Greeks to be named after a native woman of that name, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus.

Yet the Lydians claim a share in the latter name, saying that Asia was not named after Prometheus's wife, Asia, but after Asias, the son of Cottus, who was the son of Manes, and that from him the Asiad clan at Sardis also takes its name.

But as for Europe, no men have any knowledge whether it is bounded by seas or not, or where it got its name.

Nor is it clear who gave the name, unless we say that the land took its name from the Tyrian Europa, having been, it would seem, before then nameless like the rest.

Such, then, are the stories about this region.

Whatever the truth may be, Megabazus made its coastal area subject to the Persians.

As soon as Darius had crossed the Hellespont and came to Sardis, he remembered the good service done him by Histiaeus of Miletus and the counsel of Cyes the Mytilenaean; and after sending for them to come to Sardis he offered them a choice of whatever they wanted.

Histiaeus, seeing that he was tyrant of Miletus, desired no further sovereignty than that, but asked for Myrcinus in the Edonian land, so that he might build a city there.

Who would rather you have, Jesus or the approval of culture and society? Ask yourself that question.

The fifth message is to the church of Sardis.

Chapter 3, verses 1 to 6.

I pray to God that not a single person would be like those folks in the church of Sardis.

There is nothing good that Jesus could find to say about the church of Sardis.

He said, I know your deeds, you have the reputation of being alive, but you're dead.

One of the greatest tragedies is when a church's reputation exceeds its reality.