Its site is now absolutely deserted, except that a tiny village, Sart, merely a few huts inhabited by seminomadic Yuruks, exists beside the Pactolus, and that there is a station of the Smyrna & Cassaba railway 1 m.
The city lay between a mountain (its acropolis) and the river Pactolus, and its site was marked by two great Ionic columns standing deep in earth.
On the banks of the Pactolus two columns of a temple of the Greek period, probably the great temple of Cybele, are still standing.
A second victory followed on the banks of the Pactolus; by the autumn of 546 Sardis had already fallen and the Persian power advanced at a bound to the Mediterranean.
The statement that the little stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place rolled over golden sands is probably little more than a metaphor, due to the wealth of the city to which the Greeks of the 6th century B.C. resorted for supplies of gold; but trade and the organization of commerce were the real sources of this wealth.