A wealthy banking and textile center in the Lycus valley, rich enough to refuse Roman disaster relief and rebuild itself unaided after the earthquake of AD 60 — famous for glossy black wool and for a medical school's exported eye-salve. It had no water source of its own, drawing by aqueduct from Hierapolis's hot springs and Colossae's cold ones, arriving lukewarm at the tap. The last and sharpest of the seven letters (Rev 3:14-22) answers the city in its own vocabulary: gold refined by fire against its banks, white garments against its black wool, salve that actually heals against the salve it sold the world.