them by treaty in 1306. Finally in 1390 Philadelphia, which had for some time been an independent Christian city, surrendered to Sultan Bayezid's mixed army of Ottoman Turks and Byzantine Christians, and the Seljuk power in the 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 & Cassaba railway 1 m. north of the principal ruins.
The ruins of Sardis, so far as they are now visible, are chiefly of the Roman time; but though few ancient sites offered better hope of results, the necessity for heavy initial expenditure was a deterrent (e.g. to H. Schliemann). On the banks of the Pactolus two columns of a temple of the Greek period, probably the great temple of Cybele, are still standing. More than one attempt to excavate this temple, the last by G. Dennis in 1882, has been made and prematurely brought to an end by lack of funds. In 1904 a few trial pits were sunk by M. Mendel for the Constantinople Museum, and the site was ultimately conceded to an American syndicate, for whom H. C. Butler of Princeton University undertook the task of excavation. The necropolis of the old Lydian city, a vast series of mounds, some of enormous size, lies on the north side of the Hermus, 4 or 5 m. from Sardis, a little south of the sacred Gygaean Lake, Coloe; here the Maeonian chiefs, sons, according to Homer, of the lake, were brought to sleep beside their mother. he 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 which had been deposited in the sepulchral chambers.
See K. Buresch, Aus Lydien (1898); G. Rader, La Lydie (1893); Kybebe (1908); W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Several Churches (1904), and article in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible (1902). (D. G. H.)
SARDONYX, an ornamental' stone much used for seals and
cameos. It usually consists of a layer of sard or carnelian with
one of milk-white chalcedony, but it may present several alternating
layers of these minerals. The sardonyx is therefore
simply an onyx in which some of the bands are of sard or
carnelian: if, however, the latter is present the stone is more
appropriately called a “carnelian onyx.” It was considered by
ancient authorities that a fine Oriental sardonyx should have at
least three strata—a black base, a white intermediate zone and
a superficial layer of brown or red; these colours typifying the
three cardinal virtues—humility (black), chastity (white) and
modesty or martyrdom (red). The ancients obtained sardonyx
from India, and the Indian locality, Mount Sardonyx, referred
to by Ptolemy, is supposed to have been near Broach, where
agates and carnelians are still worked. In the Revised Version of
the Old Testament, Ex. xxviii. 18, “sardonyx” is given in the
margin as an alternative reading for “diamond,” the word by
which the Hebrew yahalom is usually translated. The stone
known to the Romans as aegyptilla may have been a kind of
sardonyx, or perhaps a nicolo, which is an onyx with a thin
translucent milky layer on the surface. Imitations of sardonyx
have been made by cementing together two or three stones
of the required col ours, while baser counterfeits have been produced
in paste. By coating a sard or carnelian with sodium
carbonate and then placing the stone on a red-hot iron a white
layer may be produced, so that a. kind of sardonyx is obtained
(see Carnelian). Most of the modern sardonyx is cut from
South American agate, modified in colour by artificial treatment.
(See Agate; Gem.)
SARDOU, VICTORIEN (1831–1908), French dramatist, was
born in Paris on the 5th of September 1831. The Sardous were
settled at Le Cannet, a village near Cannes, where they owned
an estate, planted with olive trees. A night's frost killed all
the trees and the family was ruined. Victorien's father, Antoine
Léandre Sardou, came to Paris in search of employment. He
was in succession a book-keeper at a commercial establishment,
a professor of book-keeping, the head of a provincial school, then
a private tutor and a schoolmaster in Paris, besides editing
grammars, dictionaries and treatises on various subjects. With
all these occupations, he hardly succeeded in making a livelihood,
and when he retired to his native country, Victorien was left on
his own resources. He had begun studying medicine, but had
to desist for want of funds. He taught French to foreign pupils;
he also gave lessons in Latin, history and mathematics to
students, and wrote articles for cheap encyclopaedias. At the
same time he was trying to make headway in the literary world.
His talents had been encouraged by an old bas-bleu, Mme de Bawl,
who had published novels and enjoyed some reputation in the
days of the Restoration. But she could do little for her protégé.
Victorien Sardou made efforts to attract the attention of Mlle
Rachel, and to win her support by submitting to her a drama,
La Reine Ulfra, founded on an old Swedish chronicle. A play of
his, La Taverne des étudiants, was produced at the Odéon on the
1st of April 1854, but met with a stormy reception, owing to a
rumour that the débutant had been instructed and commissioned
by the government to insult the students. La Taverne was
withdrawn after five nights. Another drama by Sardou, Bernard
Palissy, was accepted at the same theatre, but the arrangement
was cancelled in consequence of a change in the management. A
Canadian play, Fleur de Liane, would have been produced at the
Ambigu but for the death of the manager. Le Bossu, which he
wrote for Charles Albert Fechter, did not satisfy the actor;
and when the play was successfully produced, the nominal
authorship, by some unfortunate arrangement, had been
transferred to other men. M Sardou submitted to Adolphe
Montigny (Lemoine-Montigny), manager of the Gymnase, a play
entitled Paris à l'envers, which contained the love scene, afterwards
so famous, in Nos Intimes. Montigny thought fit to consult
Eugene Scribe, who was revolted by the scene in question.
Sardou felt the pangs of actual want, and his misfortunes culminated in an attack of typhoid fever. He was dying in his garret, surrounded with his rejected manuscripts. A lady who was living in the same house unexpectedly came to his assistance. Her name was Mlle de Brécourt. She had theatrical connexions, and was a special favourite of Mlle Déjazet. She nursed him, cured him, and, when he was well again, introduced him to her friend. Then fortune began to smile on the author. It is true that Candide, the first play he wrote for Mlle Déjazet, was stopped by the censor, but Les Premières Armes de Figaro, Monsieur Gorat, and Les Prés Saint Gervais, produced almost in succession, had a splendid run, and Les Pattes de mouche (1860: afterwards anglicized as A Scrap of Paper) obtained a similar success at the Gymnase. Fedora (1882) was written expressly for Sarah Bernhardt, as were many of his later plays. He soon ranked with the two undisputed leaders of dramatic art, Augier and Dumas. He lacked the powerful humour, the eloquence and moral vigour of the former, the passionate conviction and pungent wit of the latter, but he was a master of clever and easy flowing dialogue. He adhered to Scribe's constructive methods, which combined the three old kinds of comedy—the comedy of character, of manners and of intrigue—with the drame bourgeois, and blended the heterogeneous elements into a compact body and living unity. He was no less dexterous in handling his materials than his master had been before him, and at the same time opened a wider field to social satire. He ridiculed the vulgar and selfish middle-class person in Nos Intimes (1861: anglicized as Peril), the gay old bachelors in Les Vieux Garçons (1865), the modern Tartufes in Séraphine (1868), the rural element in Nos Bans Villageois (1866), old-fashioned customs and antiquated political beliefs in Les Ganaches (1862), the revolutionary spirit and those who thrive on it in Rabagas (1872) and Le Roi Carotte (1872), the then threatened divorce laws in Divorçons (1880).
He struck a new vein by introducing a strong historic element in some of his dramatic romances. Thus he borrowed Theodora (1884) from Byzantine annals, La Haine (1874) from Italian chronicles, La Duchesse d'Athènes from the forgotten records of medieval Greece. Patrie (1869) is founded on the rising of the Dutch gueux at the end of the 16th century. The scene of La Sorcière (1904) was laid in Spain in the 16th century. The French Revolution furnished him with three plays, Les Merveilleuses, Thermidor (1891) and Robespierre (1902). The last named was written expressly for Sir Henry Irving, and produced at the Lyceum theatre, as was Dante (1903). The imperial