Location information

Aphrodisias

  Aphrodisias (Aphrodisias: Eth. Aphrodisieus, Aphrodisiensis). An ancient town of Caria, situated at Ghera or Geyra, south of Antiocheia on the Maeander, as is proved by inscriptions which have been copied by several travellers. Drawings of the remains of Aphrodisias have been made by the order of the Dilettanti Society. There are the remains of an Ionic temple of Aphrodite, the goddess from whom the place took the name of Aphrodisias; fifteen of the white marble columns are still standing. A Greek inscription on a tablet records the donation of one of the columns to Aphrodite and the demus. Fellows (Lycia, p. 32) has described the remains of Aphrodisias, and given a view of the temple. The route of Fellows was from Antiocheia on the Maeander up the valley of the Mosynus, which appears to be the ancient name of the stream that joins the Maeander at Antiocheia; and Aphrodisias lies to the east of the head of the valley in which the Mosynus rises, and at a considerable elevation.
  Stephanus (s. v. Megalopolis), says that it was first a city of the Leleges, and, on account of its magnitude, was called Megalopolis; and it was also called Ninoe, from Ninus (see also s. v. Ninoe),--a confused bit of history, and useful for nothing except to show that it was probably a city of old foundation. Strabo assigns it to the division of Phrygia; but in Pliny (v. 29) it is a Carian city, and a free city (Aphrodisienses liberi) in the Roman sense of that period. In the time of Tiberius, when there was an inquiry about the right of asyla, which was claimed and exercised by many Greek cities, the Aphrodisienses relied on a decree of the dictator Caesar for their services to his party, and on a recent decree of Augustus. (Tac. Ann. iii. 62.) Sherard, in 1705 or 1716, copied an inscription at Aphrodisias, which he communicated to Chishull, who published it in his Antiquitates Asiaticae. This Greek inscription is a Consultum of the Roman senate, which confirms the privileges granted by the Dictator and the Triumviri to the Aphrodisienses. The Consultum is also printed in Oberlin‘s Tacituss, and elsewhere. This Consultum gives freedom to the demus of the Plaraseis and the Aphrodisieis. It also declares the temenos of the goddess Aphrodite in the city of the Plaraseis and the Aphrodisieis to have the same rights as the temple of the Ephesia at Ephesus; and the temenos was declared to be an asylum. Plarasa then, also a city of Caria, and Aphrodisias were in some kind of alliance and intimate relation. There are coins of Plarasa; and coins with a legend of both names are also not very uncommon. (Leake)

This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD)
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Per...