Magnesia Sipylum ( or ; modern Manisa, Turkey) was a city of Lydia, situated about 65 km northeast of Smyrna (now İzmir) on the river Hermus (now Gediz) at the foot of Mount Sipylus. The city should not be confused with its older neighbor, Magnesia on the Maeander, both founded by colonists from the Greek region of Magnesia.
History
The first uncontested mention of the city is from the 5th century BC in the work of Hellanicus of Lesbos. The first famous event connected with the city is in 190 BC, when Antiochus the Great was defeated in the battle of Magnesia by the Roman consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus. It became a city of importance under Roman rule and, though nearly destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, was restored with financial help from that emperor and flourished through the Roman Empire. It was an important regional centre through the Byzantine Empire, and during the 13th-century interregnum of the Empire of Nicea. Magnesia housed the Imperial mint, the Imperial treasury, and served as the functional capital of the Empire until the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. The city prospered under the Laskaris and its warehouses and depots received goods from as far as Egypt and India through the Italian city-states.
In the late 13th and early 14th centuries the region of Magnesia was subject to repeated raids by invading Turkish bands. After a failed campaign in 1302 by then co-emperor Michael IX and his unsuccessful defence of the city, most inhabitants fled to the Aegean coast and the European part of the Byzantine Empire. At least 100 refugees were killed by the Turks on their way to neighbouring Pergamon. As a result of the Turkish invasion of the region, and the destruction of the city, the area became largely desolate.
Inscriptions
Two funerary stelae from the Late Hellenistic period have been discovered in or near the site of ancient Magnesia ad Sipylum, and are now housed in the Manisa Museum. One stele, found in Muradiye (northwest of Manisa), is a marble pedimental slab with side acroteria; the central top piece is missing. The inscription reads: "Alkimos, son of Herakleides. Farewell!". A person of the same name and patronymic appears in a contemporary inscription from the Cayster Valley, where he is recorded as a symbolaphoros representing the village of Tauroch.