Listed 5 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "IERAPOLIS Ancient city TURKEY".
Town in Phrygia, 18 km N-NE of Denizli. Founded during the Hellenistic
period, probably by the Pergamene kings, and most likely by Eumenes II; the earliest
inscription found there is a decree in honor of his mother Apollonis. The earliest
coins, down to the time of Augustus, give the city's name as Hieropolis, which
suggests that the site was previously occupied by a temple village. Stephanos
Byzantios, although he quotes the name as Hierapolis, explains it by the many
temples in the city. A derivation from Hiera or Hiero, wife of Telephos, has been
suggested, but this idea was evidently not current in antiquity.
Hierapolis has virtually no history, apart from a series of earthquakes
and visits from the emperors. The worst earthquake occurred under Nero in A.D.
60, and seems to have necessitated extensive rebuilding. Christianity was introduced
early, and the apostle Philip ended his life at Hierapolis, where his martyrium
has recently been rediscovered. Coinage extends from the 2d c. B.C. to the emperor
Philip, though alliance coins continue a little later.
The white cliffs of Pamukkale (Cotton castle), like petrified cascades,
have long been famous. They were and are being formed by heavily lime-charged
streamlets issuing from a hot pool fed from the hill above. The city lies on the
plateau above the cliffs, and stood in large part not on soil but on the calcareous
mass deposited by the streams. Its cardinal feature is a straight street over
a mile long, running N-S through the center. At either end stood a monumental
three-arched gateway flanked by round towers; that on the N is still well preserved,
and is dated by its dedication to Domitian in A.D. 84-85. These gates stood some
150 m outside the city wall, in which was a second, simpler gate. The wall itself
surrounds the city except on the side of the cliffs; it is low and of indifferent
masonry, no earlier than the Christian era. The original city was apparently protected
only by its sanctity.
The great baths, close to the edge of the cliffs, stand almost to
their original height. In front is an open courtyard flanked on each side by a
chamber entered through a row of six pilasters; behind this is a complex of a
dozen rooms, with arches up to 16 m in span, and an even larger central arch.
Identification of the individual rooms is hindered by the stonelike floor deposited
since antiquity. In many places the walls show the holes for fixing the marble
veneer, and traces of stucco are visible on the arches. The hot pool, commonly
called the sacred pool, has a temperature somewhat under blood heat. In it lie
numerous ancient blocks and column drums. The streamlets issuing from it deposit
their lime as they go, forming self-built channels 0.3 m or more wide which change
their position from time to time. Along the N part of the main street they have
formed walls up to 2 m high.
Up the slope E of the pool is the Temple of Apollo, newly excavated.
In its present form it is no earlier than the 3d c. A.D., but it appears to have
replaced an earlier building. The SW front, approached by a flight of steps, stands
on a podium about 2 m high; the back part rests on a shelf of rock. It contains
a pronaos and cella, and had a row of columns, probably six, on the front only.
Adjoining the temple on the SE is the Plutoneion, which constituted
the city's chief claim to fame. It was described by Strabo (629-30) as an orifice
in a ridge of the hillside, in front of which was a fenced enclosure filled with
thick mist immediately fatal to any who entered except the eunuchs of Kybele.
The Plutoneion was mentioned and described later by numerous ancient writers,
in particular Dio Cassius (68.27), who observed that an auditorium had been erected
around it, and Damascius ap. Photius (Bibl. 344f), who recorded a visit by a certain
doctor Asclepiodotus about A.D. 500; he mentioned the hot stream inside the cavern
and located it under the Temple of Apollo. There is, in fact, immediately below
the sidewall of the temple in a shelf of the hillside, a roofed chamber 3 m square,
at the back of which is a deep cleft in the rock filled with a fast-flowing stream
of hot water heavily charged with a sharp-smelling gas. In front is a paved court,
from which the gas emerges in several places through cracks in the floor. The
mist mentioned by Strabo is not observable now. The gas was kept out of the temple
itself by allowing it to escape through gaps left between the blocks of the sidewalls.
Just N of the temple is a large nymphaion, of familiar form, with
a back wall and two wings enclosing a water basin, and a flight of steps in front.
Five semicircular recesses in the walls are surmounted by rectangular niches;
in the central niche is a pipe-hole. The walls were decorated with moldings, statues,
and reliefs.
Higher up the slope to the E is the theater. This is large for the
size of the city, reflecting the large numbers of visitors to the warm baths and
the Plutoneion. The cavea, ca. 100 m wide, is well preserved, with some 50 rows
of seats, one diazoma, a semicircular Royal Box, and a vomitorium on either side.
The stage building is also standing in large part; it had three rows of columns
one above another, and was adomed with statues and a Dionysiac frieze, but most
of the decoration has fallen. The stage itself was rather less than 4 m high.
The orchestra, some 20 m in diameter and surrounded by a wall ca. 2 m high, is
being cleared of the mass of fallen masonry. The building as a whole is of Graeco-Roman
type, dating from the Roman period; some vestiges of an earlier Hellenistic theater
may be observed in a hollow of the hill N of the city.
Farther up the hill to the NE is a rectangular walled reservoir, and
beyond this again is the newly excavated and elaborate martyrium of St. Philip.
This is a square building, approached from the SE by a broad flight of steps;
it has an octagonal central chamber containing the semicircular synthronos; from
this six other chambers open off, and round the exterior are rows of smaller chambers
entered from the outside. The apostle's tomb has not been discovered. The building
is supposed to have been used for commemorative services on the saint's feast
day; it dates from the early 5th c. A.D.
The necropolis, containing well over 1000 tombs, has two main groups,
one on the hillside beyond the city wall on the E, the other lining the street
outside the city on the N. The earliest are of tumulus type, with a circular wall
at the base, a cone of earth above surmounted by a phallos stone, and the burial
chamber in the interior with its own door; some also have a door in the semicircular
wall. There are some house tombs, but most of the tombs are simply sarcophagi,
set in many cases on a solid substructure; there are also a few large built tombs.
The tomb of Flavius Zeuxis stands W of the N monumental gate; the inscription
records that Zeuxis had made 72 voyages round Cape Malea to Italy.
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.
Hierapolis (Ierapolis: Eth. Ierapolites). A considerable town in Phrygia, situated upon a height between the rivers Lycus and Maeander, about five miles north of Laodiceia, and on the road from Apameia to Sardis. It was probably founded by the Greeks, though we have no record of the time or circumstances of its foundation. It was celebrated for its warm springs and its Plutonium, to which two circumstances it appears to have owed its sanctity. The warm springs formed stalactites and incrustations. (Strab. xiii. p. 629; Vitruv. viii. 3.) The Plutonium was a deep cave with a hollow opening, from which a mephitic vapour arose, which poisoned any one who inhaled it, with the exception of the Galli, who are said to have received no injury from it; but it appears to have lost its poisoning influence in the time of Ammianus. (Strab. l. c.; Plin. ii. 93. s. 95; Dion Cass. lxviii. 27; Amm.Marc. xxiii. 6.) The waters of Hierapolis were much used for dyeing. (Strab. xiii. p. 630.) Among the deities worshipped in Hierapolis the Great Mother of the Gods is especially named. (Plin. ii. 93. s. 95.) There was a Christian church in this town as early as the time of St. Paul. (Coloss. iv. 13.) At a later time it claimed the title of metropolis of Phrygia. (Hierocles, p. 665, with Wesseling's notes.) It was the birth place of the philosopher Epictetus. The ruins of Hierapolis are situated at an uninhabited place called Pambuk-kalessi. They are of considerable extent, and have been visited and described by several modern travellers,who have also noticed the stalactites and incrustations mentioned by Strabo. Chandler speaks of a cliff as one entire incrustation, and describes it as an immense frozen cascade, the surface wavy, as of water at once fixed, or in its headlong course suddenly petrified. (See the Travels of Pococke, Chandler, Arundell, Leake Hamilton, and Fellowes.)
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
Hierapolis. A titular see of Phrygia Salutaris, suffragan of Synnada. It is usually called by its inhabitants Hieropolis, no doubt because of its hieron (which was an important religious centre), is mentioned by Ptolemy (v, 2, 27), and by Hierocles (Synecd., 676, 9). It appears as a see in the "Notiti? Episcopatuum" from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries. It has been identified as the modern village of Kotchhissar in the vilayet of Smyrna, near which are the ruins of a temple and the hot springs of Ilidja. Hierapolis once had the privilege of striking its own coins. We know three of its bishops: Flaccus, present at the Council of Nic?a in 325 and at that of Philippopolis in 347; Avircius, who took part in the Council of Chalcedon, 451; Michael, who assisted at the second Council of Nic?a in 787. St. Abercius, whose feast is kept by the Greek Church on 22 October, is celebrated in tradition as the first Bishop of Hierapolis. He was probably only a priest, and may be identical with Abercius Marcellus, author of a treatise against the Montanists (Eusebius, H.E., V, xvi) about the end of the second century. On the epitaph of Abercius and its imitation by Alexander, another citizen of Hierapolis, see ABERCIUS, INSCRIPTION OF. The town in question must not be confounded with another Hierapolis or Hieropolis, more important still, a see of Phrygia Pacatiana. Lequien in his "Oriens Christianus" makes this error (I, 831 sqq.). There is also another Hierapolis, a see of Isauria, suffragan of Seleucia (Lequien, II, 1025).
S. Petrides, ed.
Transcribed by: Douglas J. Potter
This text is cited Jan 2006 from The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent online edition URL below.
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