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[now Sart]

City at the foot of Mt Tmolus (now Boz Dağ) in western Turkey; it was the capital of the Lydian kingdom (7th and 6th centuries bc) and subsequently flourished in Greek and Roman times.

Fikret K. Yegül

The Lydian city under King Croesus (reg c. 560–546 bc) fell to Cyrus of Persia in 547 bc. Its most notable architectural remains are the royal tombs of Bin Tepe, enormous earthen mounds covering chambers of finely tooled and precisely fitted limestone or marble blocks (Hipponax: frag. 42; Herodotus: Histories I.xciii), while remains of terraces on the north and north-east slopes of the acropolis display masonry of comparable quality (see Lydia). The city itself, however, which extended into the valley of the gold-bearing Paktolos River, was an agglomeration of mud-brick houses (Herodotus: V.ci.1; Pliny: Natural History V.xxx.110). A 6th-century bc monumental mud-brick structure on a 20-m-thick stone socle may belong to its defences, since it resembles the contemporary walls of Babylon....

Name given to the Macedonian kings of Syria and their territories between 311 and 64 bc, whose empire dominated the Ancient Near East from the end of the 4th century bc until the 2nd. Seleukos I Nikator (reg 305–281 bc), one of Alexander the Great’s generals, founded the empire in Babylon in 311 bc; in 300 bc he moved its capital to Antioch, and by his death he controlled most of the region now occupied by Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey (about two-thirds of Alexander’s conquests). Continuous warfare on all fronts considerably eroded this vast territory during the 3rd century bc. Antiochos III (reg 223–187 bc) succeeded in reversing the situation by the 190s bc and even added Israel to the empire, but his unsuccessful invasion of Greece in 191 bc and subsequent defeat by Pergamon and Rome in 188 bc deprived him of most of Asia Minor and saddled the empire with a huge indemnity. A single Roman envoy prevented the ablest of his successors, the eccentric ...

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 ...

[Arab. Saida]

City on the coast of Lebanon, 40 km south of Beirut. Sidon has been a rich source of stone anthropoid sarcophagi and elaborately sculptured marble sarcophagi manufactured between the 6th and 4th centuries bc. The anthropoid sarcophagi were inspired by the Egyptian mummy case but the features and hair of the deceased were sculpted in the Greek style. They appear to be a Phoenician invention. Sidon was first recorded in the royal Egyptian archives at Amarna, (Tell) el-. Homer and Strabo praise the skill of its artisans and it occurs frequently in the Old and New Testaments. The city came under Assyrian and Babylonian domination (900–550 bc) and was incorporated in the Fifth Persian satrapy between c. 550 bc and 330 bc. Sidon welcomed Alexander the Great and was rapidly Hellenized. At his death the city became a possession of the Ptolemies and the Seleucid kings; it came under Roman rule in ...

[now Izmir]

Greek and Roman site at the head of the Gulf of Smyrna in Ionia, now western Turkey. The earlier site, c. 4 km to the north, has significant Archaic architectural remains; when it became too small it was refounded, reputedly in 334 bc by Alexander the Great.

J. M. Cook

Old Smyrna (now Bayraklı Tepe) occupied what originally seems to have been a peninsula. It was inhabited in prehistoric times, but Greek settlers may not have arrived before 1000 bc. Foundations of houses have been excavated (1948–51 by E. Akurgal (Ankara U.) and J. M. Cook (Brit. Sch., Athens); 1966– by E. Akurgal), the earliest dating from c. 900 bc, followed by levels of densely packed small houses, mainly with curved walls, of the 8th century bc. In the earlier 7th century bc the city began to take on a regular plan with streets on a north–south axis, and, since this seems to have coincided with a spread of population on to the mainland, some form of deliberate urban planning may be assumed. The larger, well-built houses, some at least two-storey, had mud-brick walls on stone socles of up to 1 m high and flat roofs. By the later ...

(fl c. 200 bc).

Ancient Greek mosaicist active in Egypt. His work is known from a signed floor at Tell Timai in the Nile Delta (now Alexandria, Gr.–Rom. Mus.), in which sophilos epoiei (Gk: ‘Sophilos made’) is set in two lines in black tesserae on a white floor. It appears to date to c. 200 bc or possibly a little before. At the edge of the rectangular floor is a frame of black crenellations; in the centre is an emblema in opus vermiculatum framed in isometric meander, with the inscription and a bust of a woman wearing a headdress in the form of a ship’s prow (see Alexandria §2, (iii)). This representation also appears in a circular emblema of coarser execution and apparently later date from the same site (now Alexandria, Gr.–Rom. Mus.). The figure has usually been interpreted as a personification of Alexandria, but Daszewski pointed out that figures that certainly represent the city are quite differently conceived and suggested that these are portraits of a Ptolemaic queen, probably Berenike II (...

(fl Pergamon [now in Turkey], some time between c. 250–c. 150 bc).

Ancient Greek mosaicist. Pliny (Natural History XXXVI. lx. 184) named Sosos as the most celebrated Greek mosaicist (see also Overbeck). He said that Sosos laid a floor at Pergamon that became known as the Unswept Room, because he showed all the scraps from the feast that are usually swept away. Some Roman mosaic floors illustrate the same idea (see fig.), but none can be claimed as a copy of Sosos’ work. According to Pliny, Sosos made another floor, also at Pergamon, depicting a dove drinking and casting the shadow of its head on the water while other doves preen themselves in the sun on the lip of a vessel. Again, there are Roman mosaics of this subject. The earliest example from a dated context is a fine fragmentary emblema of c. 100 bc, from House B in the Quarter of the Inopos (now Delos, Archaeol. Mus.). A famous example from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (Tibur; Rome, Mus. Capitolino; see Pfuhl, fig.) has been claimed by Donderer as the original, with particular reference to the character of the frame....

Site on the west coast of Turkey, on the isthmus of a small peninsula c. 48 km south-west of Smyrna (now Izmir). It was founded by Athenians and Ionians led by Nauklos, a son of King Kodros, though its legendary origin went back to Minyan settlers from Boiotia. The city flourished in the 7th and 6th centuries bc, before falling to Persian invaders (546 bc). Many of its citizens departed and founded the city of Abdera in Thrace, though several later returned after the Persians had been evicted. In the 5th century bc Teos regained its prosperity and, through seaborne trade, became one of the richest Ionian Greek cities. It continued to prosper throughout the Hellenistic period in spite of the conflicts that broke out under Alexander’s successors and with the coming of the Romans in the 2nd century bc. Under the Romans Teos gradually declined. The remains of the city lie scattered among olive trees, and the most conspicuous ruins are those of the Temple of Dionysos, the principal deity of Teos, built early in the ...

Site of a Pisidian city that flourished c. 150 bc–ad 300, now in the Termessos National Park, near Antalya, Turkey. According to tradition, it was founded by a Central Anatolian tribe, the Solymoi, who were noted warriors. Early record of them is shrouded in legend (e.g. Homer: Iliad VI. 184), though Herodotus (I.clxxiii.2) mentioned their conflicts with settling Greeks. Termessos, like all Pisidia, was overrun by the Persians (mid-6th century bc), but due to the city’s remote, mountainous location, its citizens were able to retain much of their independence. It submitted to Alexander the Great in 333 bc, though it was not actually captured by him (Arrian: Anabasis of Alexander I.xxvii.5–xxviii.2). After Alexander’s death in 323 bc, Termessos became involved in the conflicts between his ‘Successors’. Siding first with Alketas and then with Antigonos, it surrendered to the Seleukids (301 bc), who eventually ceded it to Rome by the Peace of Apameia in ...

Dedication of the remains of a defeated enemy, usually on or near the battlefield. This custom was practised by the Egyptians and the Sumerians as well as other peoples of the Mediterranean region and the Ancient Near East. Except in the case of some Egyptian and Mesopotamian monuments celebrating important victories, however, it was never accompanied by any special artistic production in these areas. In Greece and Rome, however, the artistic commemoration of a victorious battle became very popular.

The first trophy documented with certainty is Greek: the trophy of the Aiginetans in the Temple of Aphaia, celebrating their victory over Samos (520 bc). Trophies were mentioned with increasing frequency throughout the 5th century bc, but they became less popular in the 4th century bc and the Hellenistic age (323–31 bc). Among some of the Greeks, however, including the Spartans and the Macedonians, the custom of dedicating everything that remained on the battlefield to the gods remained for some time. For the rest of the Greeks the trophy was at once a symbol of victory, an ex-voto and a warning to the enemy. Two types of trophies are known. In the first and more common type the enemy’s arms were suspended from a post or cross, arranged as they had been worn by the soldier. This ‘anthropomorphic trophy’ was commonly connected with the figure of Victory. The second type, the ‘cumulus trophy’, was a stack of arms often placed on a pile of stones; the earliest form of trophy appears to have been a simple cone of stones. The array of enemy arms displayed in the two types symbolized the dedication of the defeated who had worn them to the gods who had given the victory. The first example of Victories connected with trophies was possibly the one on the balustrade of the ...

Site in south-west Turkey, once the principal city of ancient Lycia. Xanthos flourished from the 7th century bc to Byzantine times, and its ruins occupy an impressive situation on a steep cliff above the River Xanthos near the modern village of Kınık. Inside the ancient city walls the two main areas are the Lycian acropolis and above this the later, Roman acropolis. Exploration of the site began in the mid-19th century after its rediscovery by the English traveller and archaeologist Sir Charles Fellows (1799–1860). Many of the important remains are in the British Museum, London.

Until the Macedonian conquest in 334 bc the architecture of Xanthos and the nearby Sanctuary of Leto (Letoön) demonstrated three main influences: Lycian or Anatolian, Persian and Greek. Though the first generally appeared before the others, they do not represent distinct chronological phases. From the end of the 4th century bc, however, the architecture of Xanthos and the Letoön conformed to the general evolution of the Hellenistic, Roman, then Byzantine Near East....