Map of all Lycia [154K]
It goes without saying that the history of peoples in Lycia cannot be appreciated without studying the location and articulation of their settlements, and that the settlements cannot be understood without knowledge of the natural environment in which they were built. This document will consider the enivronmental conditions for human habitation in Lycia, and also the demographic, ethnographic, and topographic patterns of that habitation over time, with a focus on the Roman period.
Comprising the rounded Teke peninsula on the southwest corner of Asia Minor (long-range space photo [187K]; labelled regional photo [79K]; labelled photo [46K]), Lycia was varied in its terrain and its peoples.
Lycia has a long, dangerous rocky coast (ca.300 km long) , but it is blessed by several good ports (Telmessos, Patara, Antiphellos, Andriake, Phoinikousa, Phaselis). It was located on strategic trade routes between Cyprus and the Levant in the east; the Greek islands, Greek mainland and the Anatolian coast in the west; and Egypt to the south (see Keen 1998: 31-33). The principal cities (Telmessos, Xanthos, Myra, Limyra) arose near well-watered fertile soils: in a few lower river valleys (the Xanthos, Myros, Arykandos, Alakir Çay), and adjacent coastal plains.
These were the core Lycian lands, separated from the peninsular center by the pendulous arc of the Akdagylar and Beydagylari mountain ranges, spurs of the great Tauros mountain chain that defines the southern edge of Mediterranean Turkey (space photo [99K], mountain ranges picked out in clouds and snow). The peaks of those ranges both exceed 3000 m. (ca. 10,000 ft.). About 200 million years ago the greater Teke Peninsula, then underwater and composed of sedimentary deposits, began to detach from the coast of northern Africa (for this section, see Platt 1994). It drifted north over the next 150 million years, building up rock from encounters with sea-floor rock and further marine deposition until it slammed into Anatolia and emerged above water ca. 50 million years ago. Deformation of the crust has continued, causing several series of catastrophic earthquakes in the historical age, even as the mountains themselves have since begun to erode. The soft sedimentary rocks were cut through by the rivers that partially drain the interior down to the coast, forming some spectacular gorges; drainage was also effected in uplands like the Elmali plain by means of sinkholes that cut underground through the mountains for uncharted miles. The 19th-c. traveller Charles Fellows described such a channel that still drains the plain just south of Elmali (1840: 231):
Coastal and alluvial Lycia was connected to the wide valleys and basins of the elevated interior via narrow mountain passes. Pastoralists may have herded animals across the steep terrain between the uplands and lowlands, as they still do today (see Coulton 1993: 82-83). These mountainous regions had distinct names in antiquity: Solymos in the east, Milyas in the north-central and north-east, and the Kibyratis in the north-west (maps: Northern Lycia; Eastern Lycia). How and when these lands were eventually incorporated into 'Lycian' territory is still imperfectly understood. Solymos belonged to the oldest inhabitants of the peninsula, according to Strabo and his source, Herodotus; the name may originally have been interchangeable with Milyas, but later on 'Solymos' became attached to the easternmost range of mountains in Lycia that blocked it off from Pamphylia (Herodotus 1.173.1-3; Strabo 12.8.5; Keen 1998: 22-24; Syme 1995: 185-186). Milyas was probably added by the Persian administration (Arrian, Anabasis 1.24.5; Keen 1998: 20), and it may have been the object of Xanthian expansion in the 360s (Keen 1998: 111; Coulton 1993: 82), but it was certainly connected to the coast by the time Pericles of Limyra joined the Satrap's Revolt, ca. 370 BC (Keen 1998: 161-170; Coulton 1993: 82, esp. n.30). The Kibyratis was added to Lycia only in 89 BC, by the Roman general Murena (Coulton 1993: 79).
sources:
Brinkmann, R. 1976. Geology of Turkey (New York, transl. by I. Woodall).
Campbell, A.S. (ed.). 1971. Geology and history of Turkey (Petroleum Exploration Society of Libya, Tripoli).
Coulton, J.J. 1993. "North Lycia before the Romans," in J. Borchhardt and G. Dobesch (edd.) Akten des II. Internationalen Lykien-Symposions, 6-12 Mai 1990 (Wien).
Fellows, C. 1841. An account of discoveries in Lycia (London).
Keen, A.G. 1998. Dynastic Lycia (Mnemosyne suppl. 178, Leiden).
Magie, D. 1950. Roman rule in Asia Minor (Princeton) 516-522.
Platt, L.B. 1994. "Geological formation of the Karatash Region," in J.L. Warner, Elmali-Karatash II (Bryn Mawr) 11-12.
Poisson, A. 1977. Recherches géologiques dans les Taurides occidentales (Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris, 2 vols.).
Syme, R. 1995. Anatolica. Studies in Strabo (A. Birley, ed., Oxford).
* this section will be most subject to future changes and additions, including plans, images and descriptions from autopsy.
The arable land in Lycia was rich but its limited extent contrained population size; Bean thought the population of the peninsula in antiquity did not exceed 200,000 people (Bean 1978: 1). The geographic distribution of that population has fluctuated greatly, however, according to political, economic, and perhaps climatic conditions. In classical antiquity, the largest towns were along the coast, but these areas lost population during the unsettled Middle Byzantine Period. By the mid-19th c., Fellows estimated that Elmali, in the central plateau, was the largest city in the region, with a population of 25,000, approximately twice its current size (Fellows 1840: 227-228). However, in the last 20 years, holiday development along the sea-shore has again brought a new population explosion to the coast, though it remains in great part seasonal. Visitors from foreign lands and other parts of Turkey flock to the beach in the summer months, but many local residents go the opposite way, moving upland to ancestral villages to escape the heat and crowds.
Each region of Lycia (Western, Central, Eastern, Northern) will receive a short introduction, followed by brief discussions of the evidence available for the major settlements and monuments in that zone. Lesser-known or smaller sites will be added to this list in future updates. The cities will be listed under their ancient names (if known), followed by the modern names of the present settlement or nearest town (according to Götter 1990: 231-232).
it is a hazardous thing to draw a series of neat, consecutive maps for Lycian peoples or territory; the historical sources are too few and too contradictory. The comments of Homer, Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Claudius Ptolemy and Stephanus Byzantinus spanned at least 1200 years, during which time the borders of Lycia or Lycian peoples changed significantly, though the general identity of the Teke peninsula as Lycian was never disputed. Several territorial definitions could be constructed, based on local language use, religious traditions, artistic or architectural evidence, or the administrative divisions of empires, but none would exactly agree with each other, and none were immune to change. The lands and populations of Lycia were fluid, especially around the edges of the peninsula. That being said, the primary point of this essay is to discuss the Roman period, and it is the Roman topography which shall guide this gazetteer, and be drawn on the series of historical maps. But first it is worth noting a recent discovery concerning the shape of the Roman province.
The 'Stadiasmus Provinciae Lyciae'
An intriguing new piece of evidence for Lycian topography in the Roman period came to light in 1993, from an inscription found built into a 6th-c. AD Byzantine wall near the port of Patara (this description comes from Bulut and Coshkun 1995). Though badly damaged by the fire that revealed it, the inscription can be identified as a 'Stadiasmus Provinciae Lyciae', erected by the first governor of Lycia, Quintus Veranius (in office, AD 43/44-47/48), by order of the Emperor Claudius. It is a running list of Lycian cities, with the distances between them measured in stadia. Forty-one pieces of inscribed blocks have been found so far; they are currently undergoing conservation.
One such block lists Patara-Phellos-Kyneai on three of its faces, indicating that it was a corner block for an elongated monument with one short side and two long, flanking sides. The base for the monument has not yet been located, but the find-spot of the blocks along a street that connected to the baths suggests that the monument had a prominent urban location. The excavators posit that a statue of Claudius may have crowned the monument, facing the harbour. Those travellers moving from the port to parts of Lycia west and north of Patara would have passed and seen the left (west) side of the inscription, and those moving east of Patara would have seen the right (east) side of the monument. In other words, the monument would have acted as a prominent sign-post, directing travellers to the lists of cities and distances relevant for their respective itineraries west or east of Patara.
On the narrow side of the monument, facing all who approached, was a dedication from the Lycians to Claudius through the offices of governor Veranius. At the top of the long left (west) side Claudius, again via Veranius, was credited for building the roads mentioned in the inscription. The cities north and west of Patara, and the distances between them, were then listed. Of particular interest is a passage that described a route from Tlos to Oionoanda to Balboura to Kibyra, which passed through Trimili. 'Trmmili' is what the Lycians called themselves in their own inscriptions (Melchert 1993: 78-79); since this road passes by the modern place-name of 'Dirmil', the excavators suggest that the Dirmil highlands, located at the upper end of the Xanthos river valley, were the ancestral homeland of the Lycians. On the lowest line on this left side was mentioned a road from Podalia to Idebessos. On the long right-hand side of the monument, the list of cities and distances continued (at the level below the imperial dedication on the left side) with Idebessos, mentioning roads and distances running south and east. In the middle of this side, roads were listed from Patara leading east, to Phellos, Kyeneai, Myra, Limyra etc. This summarizes the available published information; we will have to await full publication of the inscription for details of all the itineraries listed, which likely shall clarify many points about Lycian topography at the advent of Roman administration.
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(map: Western Lycia [81K]; space photo: Western and Northern Lycia [295K])
sources:
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Wörrle, M. and W.W. Wurster. 1997. "Dereköy: Eine befestige Siedlung im nordwestlichen Lykien und die Reform ihres dörflichen Zeuskultes" Chiron (27) 393-469.
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(map: Central Lycia [98K]; space photos: Central-East-North Lycia [55K]; Central Lycia close-up [131K])
sources:
Borchhardt, J. 1975. Myra. Eine Lykische Metropole (Berlin).
Kolb, F. 1993. Lykische Studien 1-3: die Siedlungskammer von Kyaneai... (Bonn).
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(map: Eastern Lycia [71K]; space photos: Central-East-North Lycia [55K]; Eastern Lycia [198K]; Eastern Lycia close-up [171K])
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Borchhardt, J. 1993. Die Steine von Zemuri (Wien).
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(map: Northern Lycia [114K]; space photos: Central-East-North Lycia [55K]; Western and Northern Lycia [295K])
sources:
Coulton, J.J. 1990a. "North Lycia before the Romans," in Borchhardt, J. and G. Dobesch (edd.) 1993. Akten des II. Internationalen Lykien-Symposions, 6-12 Mai 1990 (Wien), vol. 1, 79-85.
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