Sardis: the admonition to be watchful held special meaning to Sardis, because it twice had fallen to an enemy due to lack of vigilance on the part of the inhabitants.
In 549 BCE Cyrus captured the acropolis by deploying a climber to scale up a crevice in one of the near perpendicular walls of the mountain fortress.
Late in the 3rd century BCE it was captured again in the same way. A Cretan by the name of Lagoras found a nice crack and with 15 men ascended and opened the gates from within allowing the armies of Antiochus the Great to overpower the rebel Archaeus (216BCE).
An old bible saying: “as in history so in life, to consider oneself secure and fail to remain vigilant is to court disaster.”
