Listed 11 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "IZMIR Town TURKEY" .
LEUKAI (Ancient city) TURKEY
Leucae or Leuce (Leukai, Leuke) a small town of Ionia, in the neighbourhood
of Phocaea, was situated, according to Pliny (v. 31), in promontorio quod insula
fuit. From Scylax (p. 37) we learn that it was a place with harbours. According
to Diodorus (xv. 18) the Persian admiral Tachos founded this town on an eminence
on the sea coast, in B.C. 352; but shortly after, when Tachos had died, the Clazomenians
and Cymaeans quarrelled about its possession, and the former succeeded by a stratagem
in making themselves masters of it. At a later time Leucae became remarkable for
the battle fought in its neighbourhood between the consul Licinius Crassus and
Aristonicus, B.C. 131. (Strab. xiv. p. 646; Justin, xxxvi. 4.) Some have supposed
this place to be identical with the Leuconium mentioned by Thucydides (viii. 24);
but this is impossible, as this latter place must be looked for in Chios. The
site of the ancient Leucae cannot be a matter of doubt, as a village of the name
of Levke, close upon the sea, at the foot of a hill, is evidently the modern representative
of its ancient namesake. (Arundell, Seven Churches, p. 295.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
SMYRNI (Ancient city) TURKEY
Smurna: Eth. Smurnaios, Smyrnaeus: Smyrna or Izmir. One of the most
celebrated and most flourishing cities in Asia Minor, was situated on the east
of the mouth of the Hernus, and on the bay which received from the city the name
of the Smyrnaeus Sinus. It is said to have been a very ancient town founded by
an Amazon of the name of Smyrna, who had previously, conquered Ephesus. In consequence
of this Smyrna was regarded as a colony. of Ephesus. The Ephesian colonists are
said afterwards to have been expelled by Aeolians, who then occupied the place,
until, aided by the Colophonians, the Ephesian colonists were enabled to re-establish,
themselves at Smyrna. (Strab. xiv. p. 633; Steph. B. s. v.; Plin. v. 31.) Herodotus,
on the other hand (i. 1.50), states that Smyrna originally, belonged to the Aeolians,
who admitted into their city some Colophonian exiles,; and that these Colophonians
afterwards, during a festival which was celebrated outside the town, made themselves
masters of the place. From that time Smyrna ceased to be an Aeolian city, and
was received into the Ionian confederacy (Comp. Paus. vii. 5. § 1.) So far, then
as we are guided by authentic history, Smyrna belonged to the Aeolian confederacy
until the year B.C. 688, when by an act of treachery on the part of the Colophonians
it fell into the hands of the Ionians, and became the 13th city in the Ionian
League. (Herod. l. c.; Paus. l. c.) The city was attacked by the Lydian king Gyges,
but successfully resisted the aggressor (Herod. i. 14; Paus. ix. 29. § 2.) Alyattes,
however, about B.C. 627, was more successful; he took and destroyed the city,
and henceforth, for a period of 400 years, it was deserted and in ruins (Herod.
i. 16; Strab. xiv. p. 646), though some inhabitants lingered in the place, living
komedon, as is stated by Strabo, and as we must infer from the fact that Scylax
speaks of Smyrna as still existing. Alexander the Great is said to have formed
the design of rebuilding the city (Paus. vii. 5. § 1); but he did not live to
carry this plan into effect; it was, however, undertaken by Antigonus, and finally
completed by Lysimachus. The new city was not built on the site of the ancient
one, but at a distance of 20 stadia to the south of it, on the southern coast
of the bay, and partly on the side of a hill which Pliny calls Mastusia, but principally
in the plain at the foot of it extending to the sea. After its extension and embellishment
by Lysimachus, new Smyrna became one of the most magnificent cities, and certainly
the finest in all Asia Minor. The streets were handsome, well paved, and drawn
at right angles, and the city contained several squares, porticoes, a public library,
and numerous temples and other public buildings; but one great drawback was that
it had no drains. (Strab. l. c.; Marm. Oxon. n. 5.) It also possessed an excellent
harbour which could be closed, and continued to be one of the wealthiest and most
flourishing commercial cities of Asia; it afterwards became the seat of a conventus
juridicus which embraced the greater part of Aeolis as far as Magnesia, at the
foot of Mount Sipylus. (Cic. p. Flacc. 30; Plin. v. 31.) During the war, between,
the Romans and Mithridates, Smyrna remained faithful to the former, for which
it was rewarded. with various grants and privileges. (Liv. xxxv. 42, xxxvii. 16,
54, xxxviii. 39.) But it afterwards suffered much, when Trebonius, one of Caesar's
murderers, was besieged there by Dolabella, who in the end took the city, and
put Trebonius to death. (Strab. l. c.; Cic. Phil. xi. 2; Liv. Epit. 119; Dion
Cass. xlvii. 29.) In the reign of Tiberius, Smyrna had conferred upon it the equivocal
honour of being allowed, in preference to several other Asiatic cities, to erect
a temple to the emperor (Tac. Ann. iii. 63, iv. 56). During the years A.D. 178
and 180 Smyrna suffered much from earthquakes, but the, emperor M. Aurelius did
much to alleviate its sufferings (Dion Cass. lxxi. 32.) It is well known that
Smyrna was one of the places claiming to be the birthplace of Homer, and the Smyrnaeans
themselves were so strongly convinced of their right to claim this honour, that
they erected a temple to the great bard, or a Homereion, a splendid edifice containing
a statue of Homer (Strab. l. c.; Cic. p. Arch. 8): they even showed a cave in
the neighbourhood of their city, on the little river Meles, where the poet was
said to have composed his works. Smyrna was at all times not only a great commercial
place, but its schools of rhetoric and philosophy also were in great repute. The
Christian Church also flourished through the zeal and care of its first bishop
Polycarp, who is said to have been put to death in the stadium of Smyrna in A.D.
166 (Iren. iii. p. 176). Under the Byzantine emperors the city experienced great
vicissitudes: having been occupied by Tzachas, a Turkish chief, about the close
of the 11th century, it was nearly destroyed by a Greek fleet, commanded by John
Ducas. It was restored, however, by the emperor Comnenus, but again subjected
to severe sufferings during the siege of Tamerlane. Not long after it fell into
the hands of the Turks, who have retained possession of it ever since. It is now
the great mart of the Levant trade. Of Old Smyrna only a few remains now exist
on the north-eastern side of the bay of Smyrna; the walls of the acropolis are
in the ancient Cyclopean style. The ancient remains of New Smyrna are more numerous,
especially of its walls which are of a solid and massive construction; of the
stadium between the western gate and the sea, which, however, is stripped of its
marble seats and decorations; and of the theatre on the side of a hill fronting
the bay. These and other remains of ancient buildings have been destroyed by the
Turks in order to obtain the materials for other buildings; but numerous remains
of ancient art have been dug out of the ground at Smyrna.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited June 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
LEUKAI (Ancient city) TURKEY
(Leukai) and Leuca (Leuke). A small town on the coast of Ionia in Asia Minor, near Phocaea, built by the Persian general Tachos in B.C. 352. Here was fought a battle between the Roman consul Licinius Crassus and Aristonicus in B.C. 131.
SMYRNI (Ancient city) TURKEY
Smurna, and in some manuscripts Zmyrna. Now Smyrna (Turkish,
Izmir); an ancient city of Asia Minor, the only one of the great cities on the
coast that still remains of importance as a commercial port. It lay on the river
Meles at the eastern end of the Sinus Smyrnaeus, whose depth allowed the largest
ships to anchor at the very walls of the city. From it stretched back the great
valley of the Hermus, in which lay the rich city of Sardis, of which Smyrna served
as the principal seaport. It was probably Aeolian in its origin, founded by colonists
from Cyme, but became a possession of the Ionians of Colophon, and from that time
was politically classed with the Ionian cities. As to the time when it became
a member of the Panionic Confederacy, we have only a very untrustworthy account,
which refers its admission to the reign of Attalus, king of Pergamum. Its early
history is also very obscure. There is an account in Strabo that it was destroyed
by the Lydian king Sadyattes, and that its inhabitants were compelled to live
in scattered villages until after the Macedonian conquest, when the city was rebuilt,
twenty stadia from its former site, by Antigonus; but this is inconsistent with
Pindar's mention of Smyrna as a beautiful city. Thus much is clear, however, that
at some period the old city of Smyrna, which stood on the northeastern side of
the Hermaean Gulf, was abandoned, and that it was succeeded by a new city on the
southeastern side of the same gulf (the present site), which is said to have been
built by Antigonus, and which was enlarged and beautified by Lysimachus. This
new city stood partly on the sea-shore and partly on a hill called Mastusia. The
streets were paved with stone, and crossed one another at right angles. The city
soon became one of the greatest and most prosperous in the world. It was especially
favoured by the Romans on account of the aid it rendered them in the Syrian and
Mithridatic Wars. It was the seat of a conventus iuridicus. In the Civil Wars
it was taken and partly destroyed by Dolabella, but it soon recovered. It occupies
a distinguished place in the early history of Christianity, as one of the only
two among the Seven Churches of Asia which St. John addresses in the Apocalypse
without any admixture of rebuke, and as the scene of the labours and martyrdom
of Polycarp. In the years A.D. 178- 180 a succession of earthquakes, to which
the city has always been much exposed, reduced it almost to ruins; but it was
restored by the emperor M. Antoninus. In the successive wars under the Eastern
Empire it was frequently much injured, but always recovered; and, under the Turks,
who took it in A.D. 1424, it has survived repeated attacks of earthquake, fire,
and plague, and still remains the great commercial city of the Levant. There are
but few ruins of the ancient city. In addition to her other sources of renown,
Smyrna stood at the head of the seven cities which claimed the birth of Homer.
The poet was worshipped as a hero in a magnificent building called the Homereum
(Homereion). Near the sea-shore there stood a magnificent temple of Cybele, whose
head decorated the coins of the city.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
LEUKAI (Ancient city) TURKEY
Ionian city 30 km NW of Smyrna. Founded, according to Diodoros (15.18;
cf. 92), by the Persian Tachos. After his death it passed into the possession
of the Klazomenians, who obtained it by a trick against the Kymaians. Laukai supported
the pretender Aristonikos after 133 B.C. and was used by him as a base (Strab.
646). The coins, with the normal type of a swan (as at Klazomenai), are exclusively
of the 4th c. B.C.
Uc Tepeler lies in a prohibited zone and cannot normally be visited.
The site, formerly on a headland, is now some distance from the sea. Available
reports suggest that little is now to be seen apart from some remains of a circuit
wall of Classical date.
G. E. Bean, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
SMYRNI (Ancient city) TURKEY
The early Hellenic settlement lay on a small peninsula, inhabited
since the beginning of the 3d millennium B.C., on the NE coast of the gulf of
Smyrna. This site is now a hill E of the town of Bayrakli, 4 km N of Izmir. Strabo
(14.646) reported that it lay 20 stadia from the city of his time, on a bay beyond
it, and gave the exact location.
The earliest Protogeometric pottery found in abundance at Bayrakli
reveals that the first Hellenic settlement was founded in the 10th or even the
11th c. B.C., confirming the traditions (Eusebios, Eratosthenes, pseudo-Herodoteian
Life of Homeros), which place the Aiolian and Ionian migration relatively soon
after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. The Protogeometric pottery of
Bayrakli is closely related to that of Athens, but it is also individual and probably
of local manufacture. Geometric pottery (ca. 825-675 B.C.), in each of its three
phases, also shows some Attic influence and relationship with neighboring E Greek
centers, but is likewise of local origin.
The oldest building of the Hellenic settlement is an oval house consisting
of a single room built ca. 900 B.C.; its wonderfully preserved courses of mudbrick
and intact ground plan present the best available example of early Greek building,
and in fact is the oldest one in existence. In the 9th c. rectangular houses appear:
these likewise consist of a single large room but have stone foundations. Three
well-preserved examples have been uncovered. In the next level, from before the
middle of the 8th c. to the mid 7th, the oval house is dominant and rectangular
ones rarely appear.
The earliest Greek defensive system dates back at least to the 9th
c. Originally a deep core with thicknesses of mudbrick and stone packing in some
places, and a facing of stout, irregular masonry, it was restored or enlarged
more than once down to the late 7th c.
The early Hellenic stratum (1050-650 B.C.) reveals a simple existence
based mainly on agriculture. There are no cultural artifacts except pottery, no
sign of imports from the E, and of course no evidence of writing. The settlers,
however, kept alive the custom of singing tales of their ancestors' achievements;
they must have preserved as an oral tradition the song of the deeds of Achilles
and Agamemnon, and the tales of the Achaean heroes who preceded them in colonization.
Thus emerged the Homeric epos, composed in both Aiolian and Ionian dialects. Smyrna,
on the border of Aiolis and Ionia, was probably the actual birthplace of Homer
and the Iliad, in the second half of the 8th c. B.C.
The city enjoyed its greatest prosperity between 650 and 545 B.C.
The houses of this period are of the megaron type, consisting of a porch and two
rooms; in one example two megara were coupled to form a relatively elaborate house
type, composed of a porch, three rooms, and one courtyard, and some houses had
terracotta bathtubs. The houses were always oriented N-S or W-E, indicating some
axial planning as early as the 7th c.
The well-preserved temenos terrace of the temple, with walls of carefully
fitted polygonal and rectagonal masonry, is now entirely uncovered. The first
monumental structure of the sanctuary dates from the third quarter of the 7th
c.; it was destroyed by Alyattes (Hdt. 1.16; 14.646) about 600 B.C., rebuilt and
its temenos enlarged about 580, and completely ruined by the Persians about 545
B.C. The temple in its last phase, with its carved Proto-Aiolic capitals, was
the earliest monumental sanctuary of the E Greek world; it was dedicated to Athena,
according to the inscription on a small bronze bar recently excavated.
The houses have yielded bird bowls, charming examples of vases in
the wild goat style, and statuettes in bronze, ivory, and terracotta. Fragments
of delicately carved stone statues date from about 600 B.C. The abundance of Cypriote
and Syrian statuettes and of Lydian pottery demonstrates the international trade
developed by the Ionians after the middle of the 7th c. After 580 Attic imports
provided models for the new style of E Greek black-figured vase painting.
The city was insignificant during the 5th-4th c.; the houses were
of the long type and still arranged on an axial plan. In the time of Alexander
the Great, however, the population outgrew the peninsula, and a new, larger city
was founded on the slope of Mt. Pagos. Coins of Marcus Aurelius, Gordianus, and
Philippus Arabus, show Alexander sleeping under the plane tree, on Mt. Pagos,
and the two Nemeses who directed him in a dream to build a city here.
Strabo (14.646) described Smyrna as the finest Ionian city of his
time, the turn of the 1st c. B.C. The city was centered around the harbor, on
flat land where the Temple of the Mother Goddess and the gymnasium also stood.
The streets were straight and paved with large stones. The orator Aelius Aristeides,
who came from Smyrna, also mentions the straightness and the paving, and states
that the two main thoroughfares, the Sacred Way and the Golden Road, ran E-W,
so that the wind from the sea cooled the city. Some years ago an ancient road
was unearthed, running E-W. It was well paved, 10 m wide, and had a roofed-over
pavement for pedestrians along the side near the mountain; possibly it is part
of the Sacred Way. Strabo also mentioned a stoa called the Homereion (probably
in the shape of a peristyle house).
Nothing remains of the theater on the NW slope of Mt. Pagos, or of
the stadium on the W. A silo built by Hadrian once stood near the harbor, indicating
that the commercial agora lay close to the docks, but it has not been located.
On the other hand, the state agora is well preserved: a courtyard 120 by at least
80 m, with stoas on the E and W sides (excavated for 35 and 72 m respectively).
These stoas were 17.5 m wide and had two stories, each of which was divided into
three, longitudinally, by two rows of columns. On the N side a similar two-storied
colonnade consisted of a nave and two aisles, 28 m wide. The main stoa of the
agora was called a basilica. There is also a magnificent vaulted basement beneath
the N colonnade, still in splendid condition. The N aisle in the basement was
composed of shops, which must have opened onto a street in Roman times. Court
cases were heard in an exedra in the W part of the N colonnade. The stoa on the
S side, not yet excavated, must also have had two stories with a nave and two
aisles.
After an earthquake in A.D. 178 the city was reconstructed with help
from Marcus Aurelius. This is confirmed by a portrait of his wife, Faustina II,
still visible over an arch of the W colonnade, which must have been restored shortly
after the earthquake. Stylistic considerations probably date construction of the
N stoa to the end of the 2d c. A.D.
Aelius Aristeides relates that ca. 150 B.C. an altar to Zeus occupied
a central position in the agora. Two high reliefs depicting a large group of gods,
possibly connected with the altar, have been uncovered, on which Demeter is shown
standing next to Poseidon. It may well be that placing these deities side by side
was intended to demonstrate that Smyrna at that time dominated commerce by both
land and sea.
E. Akurgal, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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