The early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic Greeks, anterior to the reign of Gygês, are not better known to us than those of the Phrygians. Their native music became partly incorporated with the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; to which it was very analogous, both in instruments and in character, though the Lydian mode was considered by the ancients as more effeminate and enervating. The flute was used alike by Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of them to the Greeks; but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes as many as twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said to have been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian banquets.[416] The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even the poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown among the Greek lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, as is sometimes said, was probably of Lydian extraction. [416] Pindar. ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 635: compare Telestês ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 626; Pausan. ix, 5, 4. It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of Lydia or Lydians. He names Mæonians in juxtaposition with Karians, and we are told by Herodotus that the people once called Mæonian received the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus son of Atys. Sardis, whose almost inexpugnable citadel was situated on a precipitous rock on the northern side of the ridge of Tmôlus, overhanging the plain of the river Hermus, was the capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named by Homer, though he mentions both Tmôlus and the neighboring Gygæan lake: the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king named Mêlês, and strange legends were told concerning it.[417] Its possessors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktôlus, which flowed down from Mount Tmôlus towards the Hermus, and brought with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. To this cause historians often ascribe the abundant treasure belonging to Crœsus and his predecessors; but Crœsus possessed, besides, other mines near Pergamus;[418] and another cause of wealth is also to be found in the general industry of the Lydian people, which the circumstances mentioned respecting them seem to attest. They were the first people, according to Herodotus, who ever carried on retail trade; and the first to coin money of gold and silver.[419] [417] Herodot. i, 84. [418] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscultat. 52. [419] Herodot. i, 94.