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A part of the second to the last sentence before the "Croesus on the Throne" paragraph was deleated
Herodotus and other Greek writers had a complicated view of the Lydians. They were impressed by the industrious nature of the Lydians and marveled at the monuments they used to build with their wealth, but the perceived ostentatious nature of the Lydians, especially Croesus, was viewed with derision. Greeks who visited Lydia usually spent most of their time in the capital city of Sardis, which provided many sights to see. American archaeological expeditions have revealed that Sardis became an “impressive” city in the early seventh century BC. Sardis boasted of a large acropolis where the main palace was located and below was a walled city on the plain. The remains of the houses show that even the average Lydian enjoyed a reasonable amount of material wealth – the homes were spacious with roofed tiles and decorated with terracotta friezes. <ref>Kuhrt, pgs. 567-70</ref>
Just outside of Sardis was the source of much of the Lydians’ wealth: the Pactolus River. The river was known for its valuable electrum deposits, which is a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold. After the electrum was mined from the river, it was then brought to Sardis were it was refined into gold and silver in what was one of the world’s first precious metals refineries. <ref>Kuhrt, p. 570</ref> Modern scholars generally attribute the mining of gold and the minting of coins in Sardis to Gyges. Although the mining of precious metals was done in other Bronze Age cultures long before the Lydians, the use of coins as a currency standard was a revolutionary step forward in economics. Up until that point in world history, most people traded gold as dust or in ingots, which was often unreliable and cumbersome, but the Lydians were the first people to “use gold and silver coinage and to introduce retail trade.” <ref>Herodotus, p. 44</ref> Because of the Lydians, people no longer had lug cumbersome currency types, as coins proved to be much more convenient and adaptable. The wealth of Lydia was already well established by the time Croesus came to power, but like a good entrepreneur he was able to parlay his inherited riches into even more wealth.
===Croesus on the Throne===
