Listed 5 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "HERAKLIA ON LATMOS Ancient city TURKEY".
Though a Carian town, it was on the Ionian coast. It is some 25 km
W of Miletos and about 10 km N of the village of Bafa. Now at the W end of Lake
Bafa it was on a gulf of the Aegean at least until Early Imperial times (Strab.
14.1.8). The town lay on a fairly steep lower slope of Mt. Latmos (Bes Parmak,
ca. 1400 m) where it met the gulf. First called Latmos, and a member of the Delian
League, it fell to Mausolos in the 4th c. B.C. and his philhellene policy accounts
for its change of name. In time Miletos overshadowed it, and the gulf on which
it stood was gradually converted into a lake by the action of the Maeander. Herakleia
was celebrated as the locale of Endymion (Paus. 5.1.5). There are several Early
Christian monuments in and near the site, including a Byzantine fortress at the
S end of the town.
Either Mausolos or, less probably, Lysimachos in the 280s B.C. built
the 6.5 km of walls which still stand in great part (later the enclosed area was
reduced by about a third). There were 65 towers, and the maximum dimension of
the city, N-S, was slightly more than 2 km. The walls, one of the major monuments
of Classical fortification, were carefully built. Cuttings in bedrock were often
made for the foundation courses and can be seen where the wall has fallen. All
of the detail of such a system can be observed: access stairs, parapets, windows,
and roofs. Several of the gates and posterns are preserved, particularly in the
S portions. At the N the walls follow the terrain to a height of some 500 m above
the level of the lake, marching up the stony site in a manner reminiscent of the
Byzantine-Venetian walls of Kotor.
The port lay on the SW side of the town. Within the walls, at least
in the S half of the city, the plan was orthogonal on the Hippodamian model rather
like the plan of Miletos. The streets were oriented to the cardinal compass points,
and the resulting rectangular blocks determined the orientation and alignment
of most of the public buildings. An exception to this is the Temple of Athena
(an inscription identifying it survives), which stood in a commanding position
on a hill above and behind the harbor area. It was a carefully built structure
of simple plan: a cella with a pronaos, the two of approximately equal dimensions
(the walls of the cella stand nearly intact). To the NW of the Temple of Athena,
beyond the agora, are the remains of the bouleutenon, which was similar in plan
to that at Priene--a rectangle with the seats, on three sides, parallel to the
enclosing walls. Apparently the upper part of these walls featured engaged Doric
columns; fragments of a more or less canonical Doric entablature have also been
found.
The agora, of Hellenistic date, measures about 60 x 130 m. Its S retaining
wall is well preserved, and one can see there two levels of shops, the lower entered
from the outside below the agora. Details of windows, doors, and structural niceties
are all visible. Farther to the NW are a nymphaeum and a theater, neither well
preserved; the latter is of Roman date. There are also the remains of a Roman
bath building, between the bouleuterion and the theater, and there are at least
three temples in addition to that of Athena; none of these has so far been identified.
In the S part of the site, about 200 m on a line from the Byzantine
fort to the Athena temple, is an unusual building which has been identified as
a Sanctuary of Endymion. Over-all the building measures about 14 x 21 m. It consists
of pronaos of six unfluted columns set between two square piers at the ends of
the facade; behind this porch there was an almost horseshoe-shaped cella intruded
into by the natural rock and featuring two widely but irregularly spaced internal
columns. The building faces the SW and thus is oblique to the orthogonal grid;
its design reminds one of certain later sanctuaries and temples in Roman North
Africa.
At the very S end of the site, where the walls nearly reach the water,
is a cemetery of tombs cut from the living rock along the steep slopes. These
tombs had separate lids in the Carian fashion; some are now submerged, as the
level of the lake has risen since ancient times.
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.
Pages Turkish of the Ministry of Culture
A city of Caria, on the seacoast, near the mouth of the river Latmus, between Miletus and Priene. It was called, for distinction's sake from other places of the same name, Heraclea Latmi.
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