The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

Buyers and sellers and hangers-on belonged to the most diverse races. Lydians sold everything, and notably eunuchs. Pterians brought wool and grain; Phrygians, cattle; Greeks spread out pottery, jewels, objects of art conceived after Asiatic types, but fashioned with much more elegance and finish; Carians brought arms, plumed helmets, and graven bucklers, while the Chaldeans offered amulets with a mysterious air.

In a town so cosmopolitan, where industry and commerce brought together so much wealth, morals were naturally very dissolute. Luxury, show, and pleasure were sought after. Every one wore clothes of vivid colour, long and floating tunics, like the bassara, which fell to the feet. Princes had caftans of purple with gold embroidery. As to the coiffure, it generally consisted in a simple ribbon of cloth or gold which bound the hair and prevented it falling over the face. This was the ampyx, used above all by the Greek-loving Lydians. Partisans of old Eastern fashions preferred the mitre. Rings swung in the pierced ears. On the garments shone a profusion of jewels, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and pendeloques. Every one was scented, locks glistened with aromatic oils, faces had that sickly look given by rouge and cosmetics.

All minds were continuously set on pleasure. At Colophon, where Lydian customs were widely copied, flute and zither players received an official salary to play from dawn till dusk. It is probable that the same custom existed at Sardis. To the Lydians are attributed the invention of the majority of games, such as dice and ball. Their banquets were models of careful taste. This was in contrast to Thessalonian banquets, which were orgies of guzzlers, with piles of victuals, whose sole merit was in being able to fill chariots. In his Gastronomy, the poet Archestratus, a connoisseur and good liver, recommends the real lover of delicacies to have a Lydian pastry cook. Herodotus likewise boasts of the confectionery of Callatebus. At Sardis the favourite dishes were karuke and kandaulos, stews so complicated that the recipes, as transmitted to us by the authors, are as unintelligible grammatically as they are amazing in a culinary way. What is most clearly known of these strange compositions is that they were made of aphrodisiac ingredients and had the reputation of inciting to love. Their action on the organism was compared to that of whips.

There was at Sardis a rendezvous for all the debauchées. This was a sort of park, planted with trees of such thick foliage that the stars could not pierce their impenetrable branchings. According to the imitation that Polycrates made of it at Samos, it was not a simple garden ornamented with arbours and shrubberies, flower beds and fountains, rare animals and exotic plants, but a real town, full of buildings and lanes, small hotels and shops.