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[Lat. Aizani]

Site of Hellenistic and Roman city, 54 km south-west of Kütahya in Turkey. Its remains comprise a Temple of Zeus, two agoras, a heroön, a macellum (market), a round structure with the Edict on Prices of Diocletian (ad 301) carved on its exterior walls, a stadium and theatre complex, a bath–gymnasium, bridges and quays. Most date to the 2nd century ad, the period of the city’s greatest prosperity. The theatre–stadium group and the Temple of Zeus were both built during the reign of Hadrian (reg ad 118–37).

The temple is particularly significant because of its excellent state of preservation and its combination of Greco-Anatolian and Roman architectural forms. Inscriptions on the exterior walls of the cella attest to the date of construction. They also record a gift of land to Zeus made by the Hellenistic rulers Attalos I Soter (reg 241–197 bc) and either Prusias I (...

Egyptian city situated on the Mediterranean coast west of the delta of the River Nile, capital of Egypt from c. 320 bc to ad 642, seaport and centre of ancient Greek culture.

Judith McKenzie

Alexandria was founded in 331 bc by Alexander, on the site of the small Egyptian settlement of Rhakotis. Its location, with access by canal to the River Nile, enabled it to become an important and highly prosperous trading centre, and by c. 320 bc Alexandria was the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. During Ptolemaic times (304–30 bc) it became a major centre of learning, with famous scholars of literature, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and geography, and it played a major role in the transmission of Greek culture to the East.

With the defeat of the last Ptolemaic monarch, Cleopatra VII (51–30 bc), by Octavian (later called Augustus) at the Battle of Actium in 30...

[now Antakya]

Greek and Roman city on the River Orontes in south-east Turkey (ancient Syria), which flourished from c. 300 bc to the 7th century ad.

Its advantageous site on the edge of the Amuk Plain at the foot of Mt Silpius, commanding important trade routes linking Anatolia with Palestine and the Mediterranean with inland Syria, attracted the attention of Seleukos I (reg 305–281 bc), who founded the city (c. 300 bc) as the capital of his Syrian empire. With its port at Seleucia and residential suburb at Daphne, Antioch prospered as capital of the Roman province of Syria from 64 bc. The city enjoyed the attentions of Roman benefactors from Julius Caesar onwards and attained the height of its prosperity during the 2nd to the 7th century ad, becoming the diocesan capital of Oriens. Its influence was particularly strong in early Christian affairs: Paul and Barnabas were active at Antioch, while Peter was regarded as its first bishop. ...

[‘Pisidian’]

Greek and Roman city in western Asia Minor (now Turkey) on a plateau above Yalvaĉ. It was founded by the Seleucids in the 3rd century bc and refounded as a colony for veteran soldiers by Augustus c.25 bc; it flourished until the Early Christian period. The site was excavated in 1924 by D. M. Robinson and was the object of a detailed archaeological survey by S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens in 1982–3. Further excavations have taken place during the 1980s and 1990s, directed by M. Taslianan. About 4 km south of the city Hellenistic remains survive at the sanctuary of Mên Askaênos, where an imposing temenos with porticos on four sides enclosed a mid-2nd-century bc Ionic temple (6 by 11 columns) on a high, stepped podium. The design of the temple was influenced by the layout of the temples of Zeus Sosipolis and Artemis Leukophryene at Magnesia on the Maeander...

[Lat. Apamea; Arab. Afāmiya, Fāmiya; now Qal‛at al-Muḍīq]

Hellenistic and Roman city in northern Syria, on a plateau on the south-west tip of Jebel Zawiye overlooking the valley of the Asi (formerly the Orontes). It was founded in 300–299 bc by Seleukos I Nikator (reg 301–281 bc) on the site of an ancient Bronze Age capital; it was one of the four great cities known as the Tetrapolis. The disastrous earthquake of 15 December ad 115 carried away most of the original buildings, but in many places there remain powerful courses, solidly anchored on rock, of the Hellenistic walls, eloquent testimony to their 7 km circuit of the city. The Apameia that the excavations of a Belgian archaeological expedition brought to light from 1928 onwards is essentially a Roman city, capital of the province of Syria Secunda from c. ad 415. Apameia contributed greatly to the cultural life of the empire and a famous school of Neo-Platonic philosophy existed there from the 2nd to the 4th century ...

Hellenistic and Roman site in south-west Caria, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), on a plateau in the Baba Dag mountains above a tributary valley of the Maeander (Büyük Menderes).

Kenan T. Erim

As its name suggests, Aphrodisias was a major cult centre of a goddess of nature and fertility, originally of local character but eventually influenced by other similar Anatolian and Near Eastern divinities. She was identified with Aphrodite only in late Hellenistic times, so the use of the name Aphrodisias for the site must also be dated to that time; Stephanos of Byzantium indicated that it was also known by other names (Nations cdlxxvi.6–7). Access to the site was for a long time difficult. From the late 18th century several archaeologically inclined travellers, including members of the Society of Dilettanti, described visible remains and copied inscriptions. Early excavations, undertaken by a French amateur archaeologist, Paul Gaudin, in 1904–5 and by an Italian mission under ...

[now Bilkis]

Site in southern Turkey of a Greek and Roman city that flourished c. 100 bc–ad 300. It is eight miles from the mouth of the River Köprüçay (anc. Eurymedon) in the region once known as Pamphylia. It was a Greek colony that claimed to have been founded by Argos, but was incorporated with all Pamphylia into the Lydian empire of Croesus (c. 560 bc), and was then lost by Croesus to Cyrus of Persia in 546 bc. Despite the Athenian general Kimon’s double victory over the Persians at the mouth of the Eurymedon (c. 468 bc), and its subsequent membership of the Athenian-dominated Delian League, Aspendos remained voluntarily under Persian control until taken by Alexander the Great (334/333 bc). Thereafter it changed hands several times, being held successively by Antigonos, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids until it was ceded to Rome in ...

[Arab. Shaḥḥāt]

City in Libya, 8 km from the coast and 620 m above sea-level on a plateau of the al-Jabal al-Akh?ar (Green Mountain). The Greek city flourished from its founding as a Dorian colony c. 630 bc to Hellenistic times, and its Greek culture was maintained during the long period of Roman rule, when its fortunes declined somewhat.

F. B. Sear

Cyrene’s principal monuments, restored by their Italian excavators, reveal the splendours of the Greek city. It changed only superficially in Roman times, when alterations to existing buildings were more common than new projects.

Herodotus (IV. cl–clviii) related how a party of Therans, forced by drought to leave their native island, settled at Cyrene because of its high rainfall. Their leader, Battos, became king and established a dynasty that lasted until 440 bc. The site is protected on three sides by gorges with gently sloping ground to the east. A low hill, the acropolis, rises to the west and immediately below its north slopes is the Sanctuary of Apollo. Springs emerge from the rock at this point, ensuring a constant water supply. The plateau is divided by the valley street, which runs from the east gate down to the Sanctuary of Apollo and then past the north necropolis to the port of Apollonia, 19 km away. Parallel to the valley street is the Street of Battos, which runs from the south-east gate through the agora to the acropolis. A main transverse street intersected both streets just east of the Hellenistic gymnasium. The earliest settlers presumably occupied the acropolis, and the eastern fringe of the later agora seems to have been used as a burial ground, which suggests that the early town could not have extended far to the east. Other evidence for the early city is pottery from ...

[now Qal‛at as Sāliḩīyah.]

Site of a Hellenistic and Roman walled city in eastern Syria, on a plateau between two gorges on the west bank of the middle Euphrates. The name combines elements that are Semitic (Dura) and Macedonian Greek (Europos). Dura Europos was founded by the Seleucids in the late 4th century bc at the intersection of east–west caravan routes and the trade route along the Euphrates. It was later a frontier fortress of the Parthian empire and after its capture in ad 165 fulfilled the same role for the Roman empire. After the Sasanian siege in ad 256–7 the city was abandoned. The results of excavations by French and American archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s threw light on the process of synthesis between Classical and indigenous populations and cultures in Syria-Palestine during Hellenistic and Imperial Roman times. The excavated remains include a synagogue (see §3) with an important cycle of biblical paintings and an Early Christian meeting-house (...

[Ephesus.]

Site of an important Classical city on the west coast of Turkey, c. 2 km south-west of modern Selçuk. It has been occupied since perhaps as early as the 10th century bc, and its Late Classical Temple of Artemis (Artemision), built on the site of an earlier temple from the Archaic period, was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

M. Rautmann

According to Greek tradition, Ephesos was founded in the 10th century bc by Ionian settlers near the mouth of the River Cayster. From the mid-6th century bc it was ruled successively by the Lydians, Croesus of Lydia extending the unfortified city inland, and the Persians. It was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 bc, and throughout antiquity Ephesos was an important trading centre, its prestige enhanced by the construction of the colossal Temple of Artemis (6th century bc, rebuilt 4th century bc) on the plain to the north-east of the city. In the early ...

Greek island off the south-west coast of Turkey. The island, the second largest in the Dodekanese, is long and narrow (l. 45 km) and very fertile on its northern side. The most important site is Kos town (founded 366 bc) at the island’s north-east end. In the Hellenistic period Kos was famous for its Sanctuary of Asklepios. The Knights Hospitaller ruled the island from 1315 to 1522, but they were driven out by the Turks. After World War I it was under Italian control; it was ceded to Greece in 1947.

Christopher Mee

Only two of the prehistoric sites on Kos have been systematically excavated, both by Luigi Morricone between 1935 and 1946: the settlement on the Serraglio in the town of Kos and the associated cemetery at Eleona and Langada. The earliest, unstratified, pottery from the Serraglio is of Early Bronze iii date (c. 2400–c. 2050...

[Gr. Lésvos; now Mitilíni]

Large and mountainous Greek island off the coast of Turkey in the north-east Aegean, south of Lemnos and north of Chios. An important centre in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3600–c. 2000 bc), after c. 1000 bc it became a principal area of Aeolic Greek civilization. Somewhat neglected apart from a systematic German survey in the late 19th century, Lesbos numbers Mytilene (the capital), Methymna, Eressos, Pyrra, Antissa and Arisbe among its cities (see fig.), but only at the first has much work been done.

The only Bronze Age site on the island excavated and published is Thermi, some 10 km north of Mytilene town on the south-east coast. British excavations in 1929–33 under Winifred Lamb uncovered an Early Bronze Age coastal settlement similar to Troy that passed through five stages before its abandonment, resettlement a thousand years later and final destruction by fire c....

Site on the west coast of Turkey, near the mouth of the River Meander (now Bügük Menderes). The city flourished under the Greeks and the Romans from the 5th century bc to the 3rd century ad. A large Byzantine church was built there in the 6th century. Miletos was once a port but is now 9 km from the sea. German archaeologists have been excavating there since the late 19th century. Milesian architecture played a significant role in the development of ancient Greek architecture in general. It comprised three phases of varying importance.

Little is known of the first settlement, established near the Theatre Bay in the late 16th century bc, except that it consisted of largish but fairly simple dwellings. Towards the end of the 13th century bc it was fortified with a strong wall, mud-brick on stone foundations, 4.3 m high and reinforced by bastions; it enclosed an oval area measuring ...

[Diocaesarea; anc. Gk. Diokaisareia; now Uğura]

Site of the city of the priestly kings of Cilicia Tracheia (Rough Cilicia), Turkey, in mountainous country 22 km north-east of Seleucia. It is now a village with impressive Hellenistic and Roman remains. The local tribes became hellenized under the Seleucids and were ruled by a dynasty of potentates, the high priests of the sanctuary of Olban Zeus; according to Strabo, the priests traced their line back to Ajax (son of Teucer, the brother of the Homeric Ajax, who had settled in Rough Cilicia after founding Salamis in Cyprus). The Temple of Zeus is among the most interesting and conspicuous buildings of the Hellenistic period at Olba. It is of the Corinthian order, peripteral and hexastyle with 12 columns (h. 13 m) on its flanks. It was built in the first years of the 3rd century bc with funds donated by Seleukos Nikator (c. 358–281 bc) and is the earliest known ...

[Turk. Bergama]

Site of an ancient Greek city in Asia Minor (now Turkey), later part of the Roman Empire. Pergamon (Gr.: ‘fort’ or ‘stronghold’) occupies a steep-sided hill (h. 355 m) 110 km north of Smyrna and c. 15 km from the Aegean. It is flanked by two tributaries of the River Kaikos, the Selinos to the west and the Ketios to the east. Pergamon flourished especially under Attalid rule (282–133 bc).

Iain Browning

When Pergamon was visited by Xenophon in the early 4th century, it was merely the stronghold of a local dynast, and it continued as such during early Hellenistic times. In the partition of Alexander the Great’s empire by his ‘Successors’ (Diadochi), Lysimachos, one of Alexander’s bodyguard, received Pergamon as part of a province comprising Thrace and north-west Asia Minor. There he established a military stronghold in which he deposited his treasury, his portion of Alexander’s wealth. Before the battle of Ipsos (...

Site in Pamphylia, now southern Turkey. It was celebrated in Greek and Roman times for its worship of Artemis, in whose honour annual festivals were held. The deity was of Anatolian origin, but the city was a Greek foundation, according to legend dating back to the wave of Greek settlers led by Kalchas and Mopsos after the fall of Troy. An inscription found in the older gate of the city bears the names of these two mythical heroes. Perge spread and flourished at the foot of the acropolis on which the first settlement had been established but where only some Byzantine remains survive. No traces of the Temple of Artemis have been found, but the cult of the goddess brought about an accumulation of valuable offerings from the whole region; they were plundered by Verres in 79 bc. Practically nothing is known of the history of Perge until Alexander the Great, to whom it peacefully surrendered (...

[Arab. Tolmeita; Tolmeta; Tulmaythah]

Hellenistic and Roman city in Cyrenaica, Libya, the only natural harbour between Eusperides-Berenice (now Benghazi) and Apollonia (now Susa). It was probably founded in the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221 bc), although the site had been used as the port of nearby Barca since the 6th century bc. Ptolemais came under Roman control in 96 bc and under Diocletian (reg ad 284–305) became the capital of Libya Pentapolis. Its buildings extend the whole width of a fertile, 2 km-wide coastal plain, bounded to the south by the foothills of the Jabal al-Akhdar (the Green Mountain).

There are traces of the Hellenistic grid plan with at least five transverse streets (decumani) intersected by two main longitudinal ones (cardines), enclosing blocks measuring 180×36 m. Most of the major streets are 8.8 m wide, but the principal thoroughfare, the Street of the Monuments, is 14.8 m wide including the colonnades either side. The city walls, as is so often the case, are unrelated to the street-plan. They are punctuated by square towers and extend from the sea to the Jabal, where they enclose a commanding triangle of high ground. There were probably seven gates in the circuit, of which the best preserved is the Taucheira gate, flanked by two massive square towers with finely drafted masonry....

[Aǧlasun]

Site in Pisidia, south-west Turkey, which flourished c. the 4th century bc–c. the 4th century ad; it occupies a naturally defensible position some 1650 m above sea-level. It was the leading city of Pisidia at the time of Alexander the Great, who attempted to capture it, and throughout the Imperial period, when it was an ally of Rome and part of the province of Galatia, with territory extending some 45 km west. Its civic titles and abundant coinage proclaim its prosperity during the Imperial period.

The city axis is directed south–north, being almost level in the south yet rising steeply to the upper agora in the north. During the Hellenistic period the civic centre was situated on the upper ridge, where a Doric temple and bouleuterion (council chamber) are located (both 2nd century bc). A well-preserved frieze of dancing maidens came from a heroon (before 150 bc). The upper agora was laid out with porticos in the ...

Greek island in the eastern Aegean near the coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey). It was inhabited in the 3rd millennium bc or earlier, and from the Archaic period onwards it was a major centre for the ancient Greek cult of Hera. Samos flourished during the 6th century bc under the tyrant Polykrates (reg c. 540–c. 522 bc), who initiated a series of ambitious building projects, including the Tunnel of Eupalinos and the fourth Temple of Hera. As part of the Roman Empire the island’s fortunes were varied, but during Byzantine times it suffered steep decline, and after the Turkish invasion of 1453 it was depopulated for two centuries. After several changes of sovereignty, Samos again became part of Greece in 1912. Though there are later buildings of interest, most of the important remains on Samos are of ancient Greek or Roman date (see fig.)....

Site on the Pamphylian coast of southern Turkey. The city was Greek and Roman; when Captain Francis Beaufort discovered it in 1811 the ruins were overgrown with vegetation, but remarkable remains have come to light as the result of clearing and excavation. Side was founded in the 7th century bc, according to Strabo (Geography XIV.iii.2) and Arrian (Campaigns of Alexander I.xxvi), by colonists from the Aeolian city of Kyme who forgot their own Greek language, presumably as a result of being absorbed by the local Anatolian people. After Alexander the Great’s conquest (c. 333 bc) the inhabitants of Side became entirely hellenized. Early in the 1st century bc they grew rich as the result of the slave trade, the city being the main harbour used by the Cilician pirates. When their power was crushed by Pompey in 67 bc, the prosperity of Side declined. The city flourished again, however, under the Roman peace, particularly in the 2nd century ...