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[[File:Hoecke_Croesus_showing_his_treasures.jpg|400px300px|thumbnail|left|Early Seventeenth Century Painting by Frans Francken the Younger of the Lydian King Croesus Showing His Wealth]]__NOTOC__

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 built 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. <dh-ad/>

When Croesus came to the throne at the age of thirty-five, he set about to make his already powerful and wealthy kingdom even more so through a combination of conquest and diplomacy. The king used his wealth to field an army that was able to overcome most of his neighbors, including the Phrygians and Ionian Greeks. Once established as the ruler of Anatolia, Croesus then decided to invite some of the most learned men of the world to visit Sardis. Herodotus noted that during this time “all the great Greek teachers of that epoch . . . paid visits to the capital.” <ref>Herodotus, p. 29</ref> Croesus may have invited these men to his kingdom at least partially to show off his wealth, but the end result was the that Sardis’ intellectual and cultural wealth was increased. Artists as well as philosophers traveled to Lydia to hone their skills and help make the kingdom a financial and cultural center. As Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian scholars, artists, and statesmen visited Lydia to admire its wealth and culture, Croesus became a victim of hubris.

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