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The Lydians (Greek language: Λυδοί; known as Sparda to the Achaemenids, Old Persian cuneiform ) were an Anatolians people living in Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group.
Questions raised regarding their origins, reaching well into the 2nd millennium BC, continue to be debated by language historians and archeologists.; A distinct Lydian culture lasted, in all probability, until at least shortly before the Common Era, having been attested the last time among extant records by Strabo in Kibyra in south-west Anatolia around his time (1st century BC).
The Lydian capital was at Sfard or Sardis. Their recorded history of statehood, which covers three dynasties traceable to the Late Bronze Age, reached the height of its power and achievements during the 7th and 6th centuries BC, a time which coincided with the demise of the power of neighboring Phrygia, which lay to the north-east of Lydia.
Lydian power came to an abrupt end with the fall of their capital in events subsequent to the Battle of Halys in 585 BC and defeat by Cyrus the Great in 546 BC.
The name for the Lydians was Μαίονες, cited among the allies of the Troy during the Trojan War, and from this name "Maeonia" and "Maeonians" derive and while these Bronze Age terms have sometimes been used as alternatives for Lydia and the Lydians, nuances have also been brought between them. The first attestation of Lydians under such a name occurs in Neo-Assyrian sources. The annals of Assurbanipal (mid-7th century BC) refer to the embassy of Gu(g)gu, king of Luddi, to be identified with Gyges, king of the Lydians.Pedley, John G., Ancient Literary Sources on Sardis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972, № 292-293, 295 It seems likely that the term Lydians came to be used with reference to the inhabitants of Sardis and its vicinity only with the rise of the Mermnad dynasty.Ilya Yakubovich, Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language, Leiden: Brill, 2010, p. 114 Herodotus states in his Histories that the Lydians "were the first men whom we know who coined and used gold and silver currency". While this specifically refers to in electrum, some numismatists think that coinage per se arose in Lydia.M. Kroll, review of G. Le Rider's La naissance de la monnaie, Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 80 (2001), p. 526. He also states that during the kingship of Croesus, there was no other Asia Minor ethnos braver and more militant than the Lydians.
He also attributes the Lydians with inventing a variety of ancient games, notably knucklebones, claiming the games' rise in popularity to be during a particularly severe drought, where the games afforded the Lydians a psychological reprieve from their troubles.
Presently available texts begin around the mid-7th century and extend until the 2nd century BC, which leads one scholar to conclude, "Lydians wrote early, but ''in they did not write much." (1983). 9780674789258, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674789258
Among other divine figures of the Lydian pantheon which still remain relatively obscure, Santai, Kuvava's escort and sometimes a hero burned on a pyre, and Marivda(s), associated with darkness, may be cited.
Several accounts on the dynasty of Tylonids succeeding the Atyads or Tantalids are available and once into the last Lydian dynasty of Mermnads, the legendary accounts surrounding Ring of Gyges, and Gyges's later enthronement to the Lydian throne and foundation of the new dynasty, by replacing the King Kandaules, the last of the Taylanids, this in alliance with Kandaules's wife who then became his queen, are Lydian stories in the full sense of the term, as recounted by Herodotus, who himself may have borrowed his passages from Xanthus of Lydia, a Lydian who had reportedly written a history of his country slightly earlier in the same century.
Several expressions on Lydians were in common use in ancient Greek and in Latin languages, and a collection and detailed treatment of these were done by Erasmus in his Adagia.
There are also several works of visual arts depicting Lydians or using as theme subject matters of Lydian history.
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