Listed 8 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "XANTHOS Ancient city TURKEY" .
Xanthus (Xanthos: Eth. Xanthios), the greatest and most celebrated
city of Lycia, was situated according to Strabo (xiv. p. 666) at a distance of
70 stadia from the mouth of the river Xanthus, and according to the Stadiasmus
( § 247) only 60 stadia. Pliny (v. 28) states the distance at 15 Roman miles,
which is much too great. (Comp. Steph. B. s. r.; Ptol. v. 3. § 5; Mela, i. 15;
Polyb. xxvi. 7.) This famous city was twice destroyed, on each of which occasions
its inhabitants defended themselves with undaunted valour. The first catastrophe
befell the city in the reign of Cyrus, when Harpagus besieged it with a Persian
army. On that occasion the Xanthians buried themselves,, with all they possessed,
under the ruins of their city. (Herod. i. 176.) After this event the city must
have been rebuilt; for during the Roman civil wars consequent upon the murder
of Caesar, Xanthus was invested by the army of Brutus, as its inhabitants refused
to open their gates to him. Brutus, after a desperate struggle, took the city
by assault. The Xanthians continued the fight in the streets, and perished with
their wives and children in the flames, rather than submit to the Romans. (Dion
Cass. xlvii. 34; Appian, B.C. iv. 18, foll.) After this catastrophe, the city
never recovered. The chief buildings at Xanthus were temples of Sarpedon (Appian,
l. c.), and of the Lycian Apollo. (Diod. v. 77.) At a distance of 60 stadia down
the river and 10 stadia from its mouth, there was a sanctuary of Leto on the bank
of the Xanthus. (Strab. l. c.) The site of Xanthus and its magnificent ruins were
first discovered and described by Sir C. Fellows in his Excursion in Asia Minor,
p. 225, foll. (comp. his Lycia, p. 164, foll.) These ruins stand near the village
of Koonik, and consist of temples, tombs, triumphal arches, walls, and a theatre.
The site, says Sir Charles, is extremely romantic, upon beautiful hills, some
crowned with rocks, others rising perpendicularly from the river. The city does
not appear to have been very large, but its remains show that it was highly ornamented,
particularly the tombs. The architecture and sculptures of the place, of which
many specimens are in an excellent state of preservation, and the inscriptions
in a peculiar alphabet, have opened up a page in the history of Asia Minor previously
quite unknown. The engravings in Fellows' works furnish a clear idea of the high
perfection which the arts must have attained at Xanthus. (See also Spratt and
Forbes, Travels in Lycia, i. p. 5, and ii., which contains an excellent plan of
the site and remains of Xanthus; E. Braun, Die Marmorwerke von Xanthos in Lykia,
Rhein. Mus. Neue Folge, vol. iii. p. 481, foll.)
A large collection of marbles, chiefly sepulchral, discovered at Xanthus
by Sir C. Fellows, and brought to England in 1842 and 1843, has been arranged
in the British Museum. Of these a full account is given in the Supplement to the
Penny Cyclopaedia, vol. ii. p. 713, foil.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited September 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Now Gunik; the most famous city of Lycia, standing on the west bank of the river of the same name, sixty stadia from its mouth. Twice in the course of its history it sustained sieges, which terminated in the self-destruction of the inhabitants with their property, first against the Persians under Harpagus, and long afterwards against the Romans under Brutus. The city was never restored after its destruction on the latter occasion. Xanthus was rich in temples and tombs, and other monuments of a most interesting character, and several important remains of its works of art are now exhibited in the British Museum.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The chief city of Lycia (Strab. 14.3.6), on the left bank of the river
of the same name (now Koca Cayi) ca. 12 km from the port town of Patara (see below)
near the river mouth. Xanthians appear in the Iliad, and Herodotos' story (1.176)
of the siege of Xanthos by the Persian commander Harpagos in 545 B.C. is famous.
The city submitted to Alexander, became the seat of a Lycian religious federation,
sided with Rome in her struggle with Mithridates, and was besieged and taken by
Brutus in 43 B.C. during the round of civil wars that followed Caesar's murder.
In the succeeding centuries the history of Xanthos parallels that of many E cities
of Greek tradition: it was prosperous and relatively quiescent. On the site there
are the ruins of Early Christian and Byzantine churches and of a large Byzantine
monastery. In the 7th c. Arab attacks brought Xanthos to an end.
The defensive walls describe an irregular parallelogram in plan over
the hilly site, with the longer (N-S) diagonal a little less than a kilometer
in length. The walls enclose two summits, on one of which, at the W edge of the
site just above the river, was the Lycian acropolis; on the other, towards the
N angle of the walls, was the Hellenistic-Roman acropolis. Important sculpture
was removed to the British Museum in the 1840s; since 1950 the site has been under
excavation and study.
One of the most striking features of Xanthos was the prevalence of
monumental tombs and heroa, some of which took the form of massive square pillars,
surmounted by sarcophagi or funerary chambers, ranging up to 11 m in overall height.
Dating from the 6th c. B.C. through the 1st c. A.D., a few of these structures
still stand, the pillared ones in distant consanguinity with the later tower tombs
of Palmyra and other sites. Only the foundations of the famous Monument of the
Nereids, near the S entrance to the city, survive. This was a heroon of about
400 B.C., the funerary building of which took the form of an Ionic temple of reduced
scale; the sculptures are in the British Museum. By the NE corner of the Lycian
acropolis are the remains of a Lycian pillar tomb of perhaps the late 4th c. B.C.
which was probably moved to its present site when the theater was constructed
in Roman times. North of the Lycian acropolis and beside the theater are the ruins
of a Roman pillar tomb of early Imperial date. Beside it is one of the most spectacular
of Xanthian monuments, a Lycian pillar tomb preserved nearly intact, its typically
Lycian sarcophagus, with a lid of ogival section, still perched atop its robust,
square-sectioned shaft. It dates from the 4th c. B.C. and is 8.6 m high overall.
An archaic relief (ca. 545 B.C.), now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, was
found inside.
Just to the N is the celebrated Tomb of the Harpies (more correctly,
Sirens), dating from the early 5th c. B.C. and nearly 9 m high. The funerary monument,
atop its monolithic shaft, was decorated with dynastic reliefs that are now in
the British Museum (they have been replaced on the monument itself by casts).
The Sirens carry small-scale female figures representing dead souls. Still farther
to the NE, beyond the Roman agora, is another remarkable dynastic pillar tomb,
probably of the last quarter of the 5th c. B.C. It is almost completely preserved
except for the dynast's statue, which, with its lion base, once surmounted the
whole 11 m ensemble. The funeral chamber, below the projecting roof atop which
the statue was placed, was decorated with reliefs (now in the Istanbul Archaeological
Museum) showing the ruler's victories. The monolithic pillar proper is inscribed
in both Lycian (as yet undeciphered) and Greek. Across the site to the NE, some
550 m distant, are the sites or remains of three more tombs: the Pavaya Tomb (4th
c. B.C., all in the British Museum); the Lion Tomb, the Earliest Lycian pillar
tomb so far known, dating from about 545 B.C. (the reliefs are also in the British
Museum); and a well-preserved pillar tomb of the 4th c. B.C. with a monolithic
shaft supporting a marble burial chamber that is surmounted by a sharply defined,
projecting horizontal roof.
Of public monuments there are a number of identifiable remains. Rebuilding
was frequent over the centuries, and the usual palimpsests of Classical, Hellenistic,
Roman, and Byzantine construction appear. There is a Hellenistic gate at the S
entrance to the city of the 190s B.C.; just behind it is a Roman arch dedicated
to the emperor Vespasian (A.D. 69-79). Immediately S of the Lycian acropolis are
polygonal walls of the 4th c. B.C.; nearby are Hellenistic walls. The theater
is of Roman date and type and is fairly well preserved; the stage building's essential
form is readable. Beyond the theater to the N lies the Roman agora, about 50 m
square and perhaps dating from the end of the 2d c. A.D. or the beginning of the
3d. It was surrounded by porticos and dedicated to the twelve Lycian gods.
W. L. Macdonald, 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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