THE TROAD ÇANAKKALE TO AYVALIK

The first part of our fırst itinerary will lead us south from Çanakkale to Assos on highway E87/550, which takes us through the vvestern part of the Troad, the ancient land of Troy. This great peninsula forms the northwesternmost extension of Asia Minör, bounded on the north by the Dardanelles, on the west by the Aegean, and on the south by the Gulf of Edremit, known in antiquity as the Adramyttene Gulf. The second part of our itinerary will take us around the Gulf of Edremit from Assos to Ayvalık on the next peninsula to the south, the southern part of the region known in antiquity as Mysia. The countryside through which we pass is for the most part stili unspoiled by modern development, and one can see why it so impressed the Romans when their legions first passed this way after the organization of the province of Asia in 129 B.C. As Cicero wrote of this bountiful region in one of his Orations: "in the richness of its soil, in the variety of its produce, in the extent of its pastures, and in the number of its products it surpasses ali other lands."After passing the turnoff for Troy, our route takes us up into the heavily wooded hills east of the Trojan Plain, flanked by stands of pine and valonia oak. At Taştepe we make a short detour on a road [Photo]to the right. The road crosses the Scamander and then passes through Pınarbaşı, a village on the northern slope of Ballı Dağ, the hill that some Homeric scholars believed to be the site of Homeric Troy before Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlık. Beyond Pınarbaşı the road comes to a T at the village of Üvecik, wifh the left fork leading south to Geyikli and the right heading north to Kumkale. A [Photo]short drive along the right fork brings us to Hasan Kulesi, a small castle built ca. 1780 by Cezayirli (the Algerian) Hasan Paşa, grand vizier under Selim IH (r. 1789-1807). This is one of the very fewextant examples in Anatolia of a pyrgos, the fortifıed dvvelling of a local warlord like Hasan Paşa.
After our detour we retum to highway E87/550, which we follow south as far as Ezine, the main town of the central Troad. Ezine stands astride the Akçın Çayı, Üıe principal tributary of the Scamander, whose sources are on the northern and vvestern slopes of Mt. Ida. Here we are in the heart of Homeric Dardania, the region listed in the Catalogue of Trojans as being ruled by Aeneas, a descendant of Dardanus who in Virgil's Aeneid became the founder of Rome. At Ezine we leave the highway and turn right on a road signposted for Geyikli and Odunluk İskelesi. After a few kilome-ters we turn off on to a rough track signposted for ancient Neandria, one of the oldest cities in the Troad. The site of Neandria is on the bare summit of Cığn Dağı, a granite mountain forming a conspicuous ridge five kilometers long. The ancient city occupies the high crest of the ridge at an altitude of 520 meters. The impressive defense walls of Neandria, which date from the late fıfth or early fourfh century B.C., are three meters thick and enclose an area measuring some 1,400 meters from east to west and vvith a maximum north-south width of 450 meters. The well-preserved main gate is in the middle of the south side of the defense circuit. The site was tentatively identifıed as Neandria by Frank Calvert, the man who led Heinrich Schüemann to discover Homeric Troy, and this was confirmed by the German archaeolo-gist Robert Koldevvey when he excavated the site in 1889. Pottery finds on the site indicate that Neandria was founded in the late eighth century B.C., probably by Aeolian settlers from Tenedos. Neandria lasted until the final decade of the fourth century B.C., when its inhabitants were transferred to the nevv city of Alexandria Troas, which had been founded on the nearby coast by Antigonus I Monopthalmus, the One-Eyed, who succeeded Alexander the Great as King of Macedonia. The site has been abandoned since then, used by herders of the surrounding villagers to graze their cattle. (it is interesting to note that the coins of Neandria have on their re-verse the figüre of a grazing horse.) The acropolis of the city was on a hilltop near the eastern corner of the defense walls. This eminence was surrounded by a polygonal wall of the sixth century B.C., a stretch of which has been pre-served on the south slope of the hill. The only extant monument of Neandria is marked by a solitary wind-blown tree some 200 meters to the northvvest of the main gate. Koldewey unearthed here the remains of an Aeoüc temple of Apollo dating from the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century B.C. This is one of two Aeolic temples of this type that have survived in Asia Minör, the other being at Larisa north of izmir. The stylobate, or temple platform, measures 12.87 by 25.71 meters. Its cella, or sanctuary building, is 8.04 by 19.82 meters in its interior dimensions. The roof of the temple was supported internally along its central axis by a row of seven wooden columns, the stone bases of \vhich are stili in place. The columns were surmounted by handsome Aeolic capi-tals, now on exhibit in the istanbul Archaeological Museum. We now return to the road leading westward from Ezine to Geyikli and Odunluk iskelesi. As we do so we pass through the extensive ruins of Alexandria Troas, which are estimated to cover a thousand acres. But the site has been used for centuries as a quarry, so there is little defınite to be seen other than the scattered ruins of unidentified buildings and a number of sarcophagi along the road-side. The only structure of any size stili standing is the enormous ruined edifice known locally as Bal Saray, the Honey Palace. This is a Roman gymnasium and baths erected iri A.D. 135 by Herodes Atticus, who Uved in Alexandria Troas while he was chief adminis-trator of the province of Asia under his close friend, the Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-38). A quarter of a century later, under the Athe-nian acropolis, he would build the magnificent odeion, or concert :11, that stili bears his name. According to Strabo, the original settlement on this site was an cient Greek colony named Sigeia. A new and far larger city was founded on the site ca. 310 B.C. by Antigonus I, who named it Antigonia in his own honor. Antigonus was defeated and killed at the battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. by Lysimachus, who succeeded him as king of Macedonia. Soon aftenvards Lysimachus changed the name of Antigonia to Alexandria, one of fifteen cities named for Alexander by the generals who succeeded to his empire. But travel-ers, even in antiquity, were led by the proximity of Troy to cali the city Alexandria Troas. During the Hellenistic era Alexandria Troas became the wealthi-est and most populous city in the Troad, for its strategic position near the entrance to the Hellespont made it a convenient place for the ıransshipment of goods passing betvveen the Aegean and Asia Minör. During the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) a Roman colony was established here, reaching the height of its prosperity in the time of Hadrian, as evidenced by the huge gymnasium and baths erected by Herodes Atticus. By the middle of the first century A.D. a small group of Chris-tians had begun to gather in Alexandria Troas, one of at least a score of such communities that formed in Asia Minör at that time. These early Christian communities are mentioned in the Epistles of St. Paul and Acts of the Apostles, from which it is knovvn that Bath of Herodes Atticus at Alexandria Troas Aeolic Capital from Neandria, istanbul Archaeological Museum Bath of Herodes Atticus. Prim from Chandler Paul visited Alexandria Troas twice during his missionary jour-neys, probably in the years A.D. 48 and 53. Acls 20:7-12 records a dramatic episode that occurred during Paul's second visit to Al-exandria Troas: On the fırst day of the week we met to break bread. Paul was due to leave the next day, and he preached a sermon that went on till the middle of the night. A number of lamps were lit in the upstairs room where we were assembled, and as Paul vvent on and on, a young man named Euthchus who was sitting on the window sili grew drowsy and was overcome by sleep and fell to the ground three floors below. He was picked up dead. Paul went down and stooped to clasp the boy to him. "There is no need to worry," he said, "there is stili life in him." Then he went upstairs and carried on talking until he left at daybreak. They took the boy avvay alive, and were greatly encouraged. Alexandria Troas was stili an important town at the beginning of the Byzantine era. Coins have been found from the reign of Constantine the Great (324-37), who had considered shifting the capital of his empire here, before changing his mind in favor of Byzantium. Latef in the Byzantine era Alexandria Troas is recorded as hav-ing the status of a bishopric, but othervvise it disappears from the pages of history, along vvith most of the other cities in the Troad. During the first half of the fourteenth century the Troad fell under the control of the Karası Türkmen tribe, who established a beylik, or emirate, one of a number that emerged in Anatolia vvith the decline of the Selçuks. Then in 1336 the Karası beylik vvas con-quered by the Osmanlı Turks under Orhan Gazi (r. 1324-59), after which the Troad became part of the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire. Thenceforth Alexandria Troas vvas known to the Turks as Eski Stambul, the "Old City," the name by which it is stili knovvn locally today. European travelers to the Ottoman Empire write that Alexandria Troas was abandoned and in ruins. The most complete description of the site is that of Richard Chandler, who writes of it in his Travels in Asia Minör, 1764-65: Alexandria Troas was seated on a hill, sloping loward the sea, and divided from Mt. Ida by a deep valley....The port of Troas, by which we landed. has a hill rising behind it in a semicircle, and covered with "bbish. Many small granite pillars are standing, half buried, and much ded by the spray....The city wall is standing, except tovvard the vineyard, and the battlements ruined. it vvas thick and solid, had square vers at regular distances, and vvas several miles in circumference. sides houses, it enclosed many magnificent stnıctures: but novv appears as the boundary of a forest or neglected park....Above the shore is a hollovv, overgrovvn vvith trees, near vvhich Pococke [in 1740] savv remains of a stadium, or place for races, sunk in the ground; and higher up is the vaulted substructure or basement of a large temple. We vvere told that this had lately been a lurking place for bandetti; vvho often lay concealed here....Near it is a souterrain [cistern]; and at some distance vestiges of a theater and an odeum, or music theater.... Chandler goes on to describe the gymnasium and baths of Herodes Atticus, vvhich then as novv vvas the principal extant monu-ment of Alexandria Troas, along vvith the remains of the aqueduct that brought vvater to it: The principal ruin, vvhich is that seen from afar by mariners, com-mands a view of the islands Tenedos and Lemnos; and, on one side, of the plain of the Hellespont, and of the mountains in Europe. Before it is a gentle ascent, vvoody, vvith inequalities, to the sea, distant by computation about three miles. it is a very ample building, and, as vve supposed, önce the gymnasium, where the youths vvere instructed in learning and in the exercises. it consists of three öpen massive arches, tovvering amid vvalls, and a vast heap of huge materials....The history of this noble and önce useful structure affords an illustrious instance of imperial and private munifence. An Arhenian, Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, presided över the free cities of Asia. Seeing Troas destitute of commodious baths, and of water, except as it was pro-cured from muddy vvells or reservoirs made to receive rain, he wrote to the emperor Hadrian not to suffer an ancient and maritime city to be destroyed by drought, but to bestow on it three hundred myriads of dracms for vvater, especially as he had given far greater sums even to villages. Hadrian readily complied, and appointed him overseer of the building. The expense exceeded seven hundred myriads [över 226,000 pounds sterling in 1764], and it was represented to the emperor as a grievance, that the tribute from fi ve hundred cities should be lavished on one in an aqueduct. Herodes, in reply, begged him not to be dis-pleased, that having göne beyond his estimate, he had presented the overplus to his son, and he to the city.... The road brings us down to the sea at Odunluk İskelesi, the Wood Pier, a tiny hamlet vvhere there is a ferry service out to Tenedos, Turkish Bozcaada. Odunluk İskelesi is on or near the site of ancient Achaeium, a place name found only in Strabo, who mentions it in his description of the coast south of Cape Sigeum: After the Sigeian Promontory [Cape Sigeum] and the Achilleium one comes to the Achaeium, the part of the mainland that belongs to the Tenedians; and to Tenedos itself, which is not more than forty stadia distant from the mainland. it is about eighty stadia in circumference, and has an Aeoüan city and a temple of Sminthian Apollo, as the poet [Homer, in Book I of The Iliad] testifies: "And dost rule mightily över Tenedos, O Sminthian!" The region subject to Tenedos along the coast south of the present Odunluk İskelesi was more generally knovvn as the Tenedian Peraea. The Tenedian Peraea comprised the territory of a number of cities founded along this coast in the archaic period (ca.700-479 B.C.) by Aeoüan Greeks from Lesbos, who also controlled Tenedos itself. The patron deity of Tenedos and the Tenedian Peraea was Sminthian Apollo, Apollo the "Mouse God." The origin of this strange name is explained by Strabo in his description of Chryse, ich he calls Chrysa, one of the cities of the Tenedian Peraea, whose foundation was traditionally attributed to the Teucrians, a people from Crete whom the Greeks believed to have been the first Hellenic settlers in the Troad: I in this Chrysa is also the temple of Sminthian Apllo; and the symbol which preserves the etymology of the name, I mean the mouse, lies be-neath the foot of his image. These are the works of Scopas of Paros; and also the history, or myth, about the mice is associated with the place: When the Teucrians arrived from Crete.-.they had an oracle which bade them to "stay on the spot where the earth-bom should attack them;" and he [ŞŞays, the attack took place around Hamaxitus, for by night a great multi-tude of field mice svvarmed out of the ground and ate up ali the leather in ıeir arms and equipment; and the Teucrians remained there; and it was ey who gave its name to Mt. Ida, naming it after the mountain in Crete. eracleides of Pontus says that the mice which swarmed around the temple were regarded as sacred, and for this reason the image was designed with its foot upon the mouse. We now head southwards from Odunluk İskelesi along a sec-ondary road, which takes us down the coast along what was önce the Tenedian Peraea. A short way along we pass Dalyan, a seaside village on the site of the ancient harbor of Alexandria Troas, which is now silted up. Along the sandy shore we see a number of ancient column drums önce intended for shipment to istanbul as building material for one of the imperial Ottoman mosques, but abandoned here when they cracked vvhile being loaded. The road takes us southward as far as Gülpınar, a village just above Baba Burnu, the southemmost promontory of the Troad. A signpost points the way to the temple of Apollo Smintheus, whose site on the outskirts of the village was excavated in the 1980s by Turkish archaeologists. The temple is a pseudo-dipteral edifice of the Ionic order dated to the second half of the third century B.C. it had a peripteral colonnade of eight by fourteen columns standing on a stylobate measuring 24 by 43 meters. This was the principle temple of ancient Chryse, whose site has been identified at the nearby seagirt promontory of Göztepe. The original Smintheum figures prominently in The Iliad, for it was here that the Achaians captured the beautiful Chryseis, daugh ter of Chryses, Apollo's priest at trıis sanctuary. After Chryseis was presented to Agamemnon, Chryses went to the Achaian camp and asked for the retum of his daughter. When Agamemnon refused Chryses prayed to Apollo to avenge his dishonor, whereupon the god unleashed a terrible piague upon the Achaians. The Achaians appealed to Agamemnon to retum Chryseis to her father, but he said that he would only agree if his mistress was replaced by "fair cheeked" Bryseis, the beautiful slave girl vvhom Achilles had cap tured. The enraged Achilles stormed out of the Achaian camp, beginning the fateful quarrel that is the opening meme of The Iliad. Meansvhile, Agamemnon sent Chryseis back to her father in a flo-tilla commanded by Odysseus, who has brought along a hecatomb of bulls and goats to be sacnfıced at the Smintheum as an act of atonement to Apollo. The landing of the Achaians at Chryse is described in one of the most lyrical passages of The Iliad, as "Chryseis herself stepped from the seagoing vessel," after which "Odysseus of the many designs led her to the altar" vvhere her father Chryses was waiting to embrace her. Chryses then appealed to Apollo to lift the piague from Agamemnon's army, after which he and the Achaians slaughtered the sacrificial animals and began a joyous feast of thanksgiving. AH day long they propitiated the god with singing, chanting a special hymn to Apollo, these young Achaians, singing to the one who works from afar, who listened in gladness. Aftenvards when the sun went down and the darkness came onwards they lay down and slept beside the ship's stem cables. But vvhen the dawn came again with her rosy fingers, they put fonvard to sea tovvard the wide camp of the Achaians. Fragments of the Temple of Apollo Smimheus, Chryse. Just beyond Gülpınar a turnoff on the right leads out to the southwesternmost point of the Troad at Baba Burnu. The village of Baba Burnu clusters around the periphery of a large and well-preserved Ottoman fortress, dated by an inscription to 1726. The village and the cape take their name from a sainted dervish whose tomb is out on the headland. Mariners sailing around the cape in former times would throw ashore sacks of food as offerings to the saint, thus supplying fhe succession of hermit dervishes who cared for his tomb. The headland was known to Genoese and Venetian navigators as Santa Maria, but the Greeks always referred to it by its ancient name, Cape Lekton. According to Strabo, Agamemnon erected an altar to the Twelve Gods on Cape Lekton, but no trace of this has ever been found. The cape is mentioned in Book IV of The Iliad, where Hera stops here briefly vvith Hypnos, god of sleep, while on her way to meet Zeus on the summit of Mt. Ida (Turkish Kazdağı)- They paused for only a moment on "Lekton, where they first left the water and went/on över dry land, and vvith their feet the top of the forest was shaken." We now drive eastvvard from Baba Kale on a secondary road that ends at Bademli, where we rejoin the main road from Gülpınar to Behramkale, a village on the shore of the Gulf of Edremit oppo-site the Greek island of Lesbos. A road leads uphill from the port of Behramkale to the upper village, which clusters around a great spire of rock surmounted by the acropolis of ancient Assos, the principal archaeological site in the southern Troad. The ruins of Assos were first studied in 1881-83 by an Amercan expedition sponsored by the Antiquarian Society of Boston, vvith J. T. Clarke and F. H. Bacon directing the excavations. Most of the vvorks of art and sculptural fragments found by the American expe-dition have been on exhibit for more than a century at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as vvell as a fevv in the Louvre and the istanbul Archaeological Museum. As a result, Assos was vvell-knovvn in the West, though seldom visited. The development of Behramkale as a seaside resort in the 1980s has attracted more visitors to the site. The site of ancient Assos has been reexcavated : years, vvith a Turkish team vvorking on the acropolis and h archaeologists digging in the lovver city, vvhich is on the ,ı,l slopc belovv the sheer north face of the great rock on h ıhe city was first founded. I he American excavators uıiearthed objects on the acropolis -ating that the site was first occupied in the Early Bronze Age. ıı ke identified this Bronze Age settlement vvith the city of Pedasos lioned by bolh Homer and Strabo. Homer menüons this city in k VI of The Iliad, where he vvrites that "...the lord of men, ıııemnon. brought death to Elatos/vvhose home had been on the - of Satnoeis' lovely vvaters./sheer Pedasos...." Homer refers lo the city again in Book XXI of The Iliad, vvhere he vvrites of les, lord of the Leleges whose delight is in battle,/and holds hcadlong Pedasos on the river Satnioeis." This has led scholars to Idcntify the Satnioeis vvith the Tuzla Çayı, the stream that flovvs past the north side of Assos. Strabo confuses the issue by saying Ihat in his time (64 B.C.^a. A.D. 25) Pedasos vvas deserted, Ottoman Fortress at Cape Lekton, Prim from Ximinix w hereas Assos was then a flourishing city. This has led the archae- ologist John M. Cook, an authority on the Troad, to reject the identifıcation of Pedasos with Assos, although there is no other knovvn site that fits the Homeric description. in any event, archaeological evidence indicates that the city of Assos whose ruins we see today was founded in the seventh cen tury B.C. According to Strabo, who quotes earlier Greek historians, Assos was founded by Aeolians from Methymna, a city on the northern tip of Lesbos just across the strait, on the site of the present town of Molivos. During the first half of the sixth century B.C, Assos came under the control of the Lydian kings, vvho ruled from their capital in Sardis. After the fail of Sardis to Cyrus the Great in 546 B.C, Assos and the other Greek cities of northwestern Asia Minör became part of the Persian province of Hellespontine Phrygia. After the defeat of Persia by the Greeks at the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C, Assos became a member of the Delian confed-eracy under Athens, and for the next century its history was much Üıe same as the other Greek cities in western Anatolia. The most illustrious period in the history of the city came in the second quarter of the fourth century B.C, when a \vealthy banker named Euboulos ruled from Assos över a principality that extended around the shores of the Adramyttene Gulf as far as Atarnaeus. Euboulos was succeeded by the eunuch Hermeıas, a benevolent despot known as the Tyrant of Atarnaeus, who had studied in Ath ens under both Plato and Aristotle. When Hermeias came to power in his principality he decided to establish a Platonic state in Assos. He thereupon invited a number of scholars in Athens to join him, most notably Aristotle, vvho headed a school of philosophy in Assos during the years 347-344 B.C. Aristotle married Hermeias' niece and ward, Pythias, vvho bore him a daughter vvhile they lived in Assos. This idyl came to an end in 344 B.C, when Hermeias vvas captured by the Persians, after which he was tortured and then executed- Before he died, Hermeias sent a secret message back to Aristotle, saying that despite the torture he had endured "he had done nothing to dishonor philosophy." This moved Aristotle to write his only knovvn poem, a paean of praise in honor of Hermeias. /\ AEGEAN Aristotle then fled with his family and his student Theophrastus to Lesbos, where they remained for a year. During that year Aristotle and Theophrastus began their pioneering researches in zoology, botany and biology, laying the foundations for these branches of the life sciences. Another notable from ancient Assos is the philosopher Cleanthes. Cleanthes was born in Assos in 331 B.C. and went to Athens to study vvith Zeno, founder of the Stoic school of philosophy. When he first came to Athens Cleanthes aroused suspicion in the Areopagus, the Supreme Court, because he had no visible means of support. VVhen they learned that he vvorked at night as a drawer of water so that during the day he could study vvith Zeno, the court awarded a small pension to Cleanthes. Zeno would not allovv him to accept it. After the death of Zeno in 264 B.C. Cleanthes became head of the Stoic school. His most enduring contribution to knovvl-edge was his belief that the sun was the center of the cosmos, a concept that was revived eighteen centuries later by Copernicus in his heliocentric theory of astronomy. The steep main street of the village leads up to the acropolis of Assos, from where we can survey the ancient city and its surround-ings. There, from an altitude of 238 meters, we command a pan-oramic view that on one side ranges across the soufhern Troad to Mt. Ida and on the other looks across the Gulf of Edremit to the Mysian coast, vvith Lesbos rising out of the Aegean across the strait to the south. The defense vvalls of Assos are among the most impressive remains of the ancient city. The outer vvalls date mostly from the mid-fourth century B.C, probably from the time of Hermeias. These vvalls vvere originally about three miles in circumference, but novv only about half of the circuit remains standing, the best-preserved sections being to the vvest and northvvest of the acropolis. The inner vvalls, vvhich formed a citadel around the summit of the acropolis, date from the sixth century A.D., probably from the reign of Justinian (527-65). At the peak of the acropolis is the temple of Athena, the most rtant monument in the upper city. Clarke and Bacon excavated the stylobate of the temple, vvhich measures 14.03 by 30.31 meters, r.nd carried avvay to Boston the surviving fragments of its frieze and superstructure, leaving only the bare platform and some scat-u-ıvd column drums and capitals, along vvith a fevv sculptural frag-ıııenis. The American and Turkish studies have revealed that it was a Doric temple made of andesite, a reddish local stone. it had a peripheral colonnade vvith six columns at the ends and thirteen along the sides, vvith a pair of columns in antis in its pronaos, or İroni porch. Three of the columns in the peripteral colonnade have novv been reerected, along vvith their Doric capitals. Completed ca. 530 B.C, this is the only Doric temple knovvn to have been erected in Asia Minör during the archaic period. But it is a very odd Doric temple indeed. vvith a number of features shovving a strong Ionic infkıence, as might be expected here on the Aegean coast not far north of Ionia. The most unusual of these features vvas its sculptural decoration. in addition to the reliefs on its metopes, its architrave too vvas sculptured, treated as if it vvere an Ionic frieze. On the northern side of the acropolis, above the uppermost tier of ıhe village, vve see an early Ottoman mosque built of the same andesite stone as the temple of Athena. The founder of the mosque, ıs identifıed by an inscription as the Hüdavendigâr [an imperial Ottoman title meaning "Creator of the Universe"] Sultan Murat I (r. 1359-89). He conquered this region in the third quarter of the four-teenth century. Although of the simplest single-unit type, it is an impressive structure, with a dome seven meters in diameter. Över Ihe door there is an inscribed cross and a Chi-Rho symbol in relief. The emblem of Christ and the dedicatory inscription in Greek indi-cate that the mosque vvas constructed from the stones of a Byzan-tine church, believed to be of the sixth century. We novv vvalk dovvn through the village, noticing that ali of the older houses are made from the same andesite as the temple of Athena and the mosque of the Hüdavendigâr. We then pass through an opening in the fence that surrounds the excavations belovv the acropolis, after vvhich vve vvalk around the northvvestern are of the defense walls to approach the lovver city of Assos. This brings us along an ancient road that passes through the necropolis of Assos, vvhere a large number of huge sarcophagi are to be seen, some of them with their massive lids stili in place. These sarcophagi were made from a porous İocal stone, much sought after for that purpose because it hastened the decomposition of the flesh of the deceased that in earlier times had been burned off in a funeral pyre. According to Pliny the Elder, the word sarcophagus, vvhich in Greek literally means "body-eater," comes from this İocal Assos stone. He also claimed it was used in curing the gout, al-though he did not say how it vvas used. Doric Colonnade ofTemple ofAıhena, Assos After passing the necropolis the ancient road brings us into the lovver city of Assos through the vvestern gate in the defense walls, which here date from the fourth century B.C. A short distance in from the gate we come to the gymnasium, a structure in andesite stone dating from the second century B.C. This huge edifice stili preserves its paved central courtyard, measuring 32 by 40 meters, originally bordered on ali four sides by Doric colonnades. The Walls of Assos northeast sector of the courtyard contains the remains of a church erected in the early Byzantine era, and in the southvvest comer Ihere is a cistern. Continuing in the same direction, we come to the vvestern gate of the agora, or market square, the center of the lovver city, vvhich together vvith ali of its surrounding structures vvas built in the third or second century B.C. Here too the buildings are ali of andesite stone, designed in the Doric order vvith lonic elements. Just inside the gate to the right is the agora temple, its cella opening eastvvard into a pronaos fronted by four columns. The agora is bounded on its northern side by a stoa measuring some 110 meters in length, vvith a cistern in front of it. On the south side of the square, at a small angle tapering to the east, there is another stoa, this one about 70 meters long, vvith the remains of a Roman bath behind it. At the vvestern end of this stoa there is a small heroon, or shrine of a deified hero. At the northeast corner of the agora vve see the bouleuterion, or council chamber. it is a square structure 20 meters on a side, its roof supported internally by four columns. We now make our way down to the theater, which is below the agora to the south. The theater was built in the third century B.C. and altered in Roman times, though it stili retains its original Greek form, with its horseshoe-shaped orchestra. We now return to the village of Behramkale, where most visi-tors to Assos spend Üıe night in one of the hotels along the vvater-front. Some stones from the mole of the harbor of ancient Assos can stili be seen in the little fishing port of Behramkale. According to Acts of the Apostles, during his second missionary journey Paul joined Luke and the other members of his party here after travel-ling overland from Alexandria Troas. As soon as he arrived they set sail for Mitylene. As we read in Acts 20: 3-14: We were now to go ahead by sea, so we set sail for Assos, vvhere we were going to take Paul on board; this was what he had arranged, for he wanted to go by road. When he rejoined us at Assos we took him aboard and went on to Mitylene. The next day we sailed from there and arrived opposite Chios. The second day we touched at Samos, and after stopping at Trogyllium, made Miletus the next day. Paul had decided to pass wide of Ephesus, so as to avoid spending time in Asia, since he was anxious to be in Jerusalem, if possible, for the day of Pentecost. We leave Behramkale on the road to Ayvacık, which just below the town crosses the Tuzla Çay, the Satnioeis of The Iliad. Beside the highvvay the old road crosses the river on a hog-backed bridge with pointed arches, built by the Ottomans in the mid-fourteenth century. At Ayvacık we return to highway E87/550, where we turn right to head towards İzmir. Beyond Ayvacık the highway approaches the Gulf of Edremit, and the stands of pine and valonia oak give way to shimmering groves of olive trees. Then the highway passes över the coastal ridge and winds down through a wild gorge, where we are suddenly confronted with a magnifıcent panorama of the Gulf of Edremit and the rolling hills on its southem shore, with the blue-green mountains of Lesbos rising out of the turquoise Aegean to the west. The scenery along the north coast of the gulf is surpassingly beautiful, as the highvvay runs along the shore past olive groves, vvhite sand beaches and pine-clad promontories. Above us to the left loom the majestic peaks of Mt. Ida, vvhich rises 1,724 meters above sea level. The vvhite villages perched on its flanks look like those one sees on the Aegean isles. At Küçükkuyu a tumoff on the left is signposted for the so-called Altar of Zeus. This takes us up to the village of Adatepe, near vvhich there is a huge rock that both Schliemann and the German archaeologist Judeich called the Altar of Idaean Zeus. There is virtually no archaeological evidence to support this identifica-tion. Hovvever, Schliemann vvas convinced that this vvâs the place on the peak of Mt. Ida knovvn as Gargaros, from vvhich Zeus vvatched the ebb and flovv of the fighting on the Trojan Plain far to the north. This is vvhere Hera alighted after her flight from Cape Lekton vvith Hypnos, the god of sleep, having come to beguile Zeus so that her ally Poseidon could aid the beleaguered Trojans in their battle vvith the Achaians. Homer describes Üıe scene in Book XIV of The lliad: But Hera light footed made her way to the peak of Gargaros on tovvering Ida. And Zeus who gathers clouds saw her, and vvhen he saw her desire vvas a mist about his close heart as much as on that time they first went to bed together and lay in love, and their dear parents knew nothing of it... underneath them the divine earth broke into young, t'resh grass, and into devvy clover, crocus and hyacinth so thick and soft it held the hard ground deep away from them. There they lay dovvn together and drew about them a golden wonderful cloud, and from it the glimmering devv descended. Returning to the main highvvay, vve continue driving eastvvard along the northern shore of the gulf. Near the head of the gulf vve pass the village of Devren, which is on the shore almost directly under the main peak of Mt. Ida. Devren has been identifıed as the site of Antandros, one of the ancient cities of the southern Troad, of which nothing now remains except scattered architectural fragments built into the terrace vvalls of an olive grove. Both Herodotus and the poet Alcaeus write that Antandros was inhabited before the Aeolian Greeks fırst settled on the northern Aegean coast of Anatolia, at the beginning of the fırst millennium B.C. Stephanos Byzantios, the Byzantine chronicler, vvrites that Antandros was for a time inhabited by the Cimmerians, the vvarlike people from the Crimea who in the mid-seventh century B.C. over-ran vvestern Anatolia. By the fifth century B.C. the city was inhab ited by Aeolian Greeks from Lesbos, for the name Antandros ap-pears at that time in tribute lists as a colony of Mytilene. Herodotus writes that Xerxes passed through Antandros on his way from Sardis to the Hellespont in 480 B.C. Strabo notes that the Idaean peak directly above Antandros was called Alexandreia, after Alexander, better known as Paris, son of King Priam and Hecuba. According to mythology, Paris spent his youth tending sheep on the slopes of Mt. Ida above Antandros, and it was here that he judged the contest of beauty between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Paris avvarded the prize to Aphrodite, and the jealousy that this aroused was one of the factors that eventually led to the Trojan War. Mt. Ida was also the setting for the love affair betvveen Aphrodite and Anchises, a descendant of Dardanus who was a second cousin of King Priam. The love child of this romance, as Homer vvrites in Book II of The Iliad, was Aeneas, "vvhom divine Aphrodite bore to Anchises/in the folds of Ida, a goddess lying in love with a mortal." According to Virgil, Aeneas embarked on his voyage of exile from Antandros after the fail of Troy, as the hero telis the tale in Book H of The Aeneid: Lordly Ilium had fallen and ali of Neptune's Troy lay a smoking ruin on the ground. We the exiled survivors were forced by divine com-mand to search the world for a home in some uninhabited land. So we started to build ships below Antandrus, the city by the foothills of Phrygian 1da, vvith no idea where destiny would take us or vvhere we vvould be allowed to setüe....In tears 1 left my homeland's coast, its havens and the place vvhere Troy had stood. I fared out alone on the high seas, an exile vvith my comrades and my son, vvith the little Gods of our home and the Great Gods of our race. The highvvay novv brings us to the head of the gulf, vvhere a turnoff on the right leads to the coastal village of Akçay. This has been tentatively identifıed as the site of ancient Astyra, vvhich Strabo describes as "a village vvith a precinct sacred to the Astyrene Artemis." The highvvay continues inland until it reaches Edremit the larg-est tovvn in me southern Troad. The tovvn's name varies only slightly from that of the Greek city of Adramyttium, vvhich the geographer aron of Lampsacus considered to mark me southeastem limit of e Troad. The present tovvn of Edremit undoubtedly lies some stance inland from the site of ancient Adramyttium, or so it vvould eem according to Strabo's description of the region around the nd of the gulf: "And quite near Astyra is Adramyttium, a city olonized by the Athenians, vvhich has both a harbor and a naval tion." Even in early Ottoman times Edremit vvas on the shore of the gulf, or at least had a port there. At me beginning of the four-teenth century, vvhen the region vvas part of the Karası beylik. Yahşi Bey of Saruhan built a fleet of several hundred barques in Edremit, using vvood cut on Mt. Ida. One of the earliest references to Adramyttium is in Xenophon's The Anabasis, or The March Up Country, vvhich chronicles the adventures of the Greek mercenaries knovvn as the Ten Thousand on their long homevvard journey from Persia in 401-399 B.C. This reference occurs in the last chapter of The Anabasis, vvhen Xenophon describes the route taken by the remnants of the Ten Thousand on their vvay south from the Hellespont to southern Mysia; as he vvrites: Then they marched through the Troad, and after crossing Mount Ida, came first to Antandros, and ıhen went along the coast 10 the plain ot' Thebe. They travelled from there by way of Adramyttium and Certanon to the plain of Caicus, and so reached Pergamum and Mysia. The site of ancient Thebe has never been identifıed, but it is believed to be a short distance to the northeast of the present town of Edremit. This was the birthplace of Andromache, the wife of Hector. in Book VI of The Iliad Andromache telis Hector of how Achilles killed her father and her seven brothers when he sacked "Thebe of the towering gates." The city is mentioned by Sappho in one of her poems, "Andromache's Wedding". She vvrites of how Hector came there to take home his bride, "her eyes gleaming/from Thebe the holy...." The only historic monument in Edremit is Kurşunlu Cami, a Selçuk mosque which, along with a small türbe, was founded in 1231 by Yusuf Bey. There is also a small museum in the town library, with a number of antiquities from archaeological sites in the region, along vvith a large collection of arms from the Ottoman period. The town gardens of Edremit are among the prettiest in Turkey. We continue along highway E87/550, which after Edremit heads southwestward along the southem shore of the gulf. We now see Mt. Ida dominating the view to the north across the widening gulf, as we pass from the Troad into southern Mysia. After a drive of 45 kilometers from Edremit we come to Ayvalık, a pretty port town on the southvvesternmost promontory of the gulf. The suburbs of the town spread out on to Alibey Adası, a hydra-headed island connected by a bridge to the mainland. Alibey Adası and the smaller islets scattered around it in the strait between the mainland and Lesbos, seven nautical miles distant, were known to the Greeks as Hecatonnesi. Strabo vvrites that these isles were sa-cred to Apollo, "for along the whole of this coast as far as Tenedos Apollo is highly honoured." Strabo then goes on to mention a city and an island, both called Pordoselene, which from his description could be identified with the present Ayvalık and Alibey Adası. Near these islands [the Hecatonnesi] is Pordoselene, which contains a city of the same name, and also, in front of this city, another island, larger and of the same name, which is also inhabited and has a temple sacred to Apollo. W The history of Ayvalık is obscure up until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when a stroke of good luck suddenly brought it into prominence. At that time the population of Ayvalık was almost entirely Greek, as vvas the case in most of the communities along the Aegean coast of Anatolia. The historic incident that changed the fortunes of Ayvalık occurred on 6/7 July 1770, when the Rus-sians virtually annihilated the Ottoman fleet in a battle off Çeşme, at the end of the peninsula west of İzmir. The only Turkish captain who escaped was Cezayirli Hasan Paşa, who managed to sail his badly damaged ship as far as Ayvalık, where he ran it aground. The Greeks of Ayvalık rescued Hasan Paşa and his crew and escorted them to Çanakkale, from where a ship brought them safely back to istanbul. Four years later Hasan Paşa vvas made grand admiral of the Ottoman navy and then in 1789 he became grand vezier. Hasan Paşa never forgot the Greeks of Ayvalık for saving his life, and vvhen he became grand vezier he obtained from Selim ÜI an impe-rial decree granting the tovvn privileges that were enjoyed by few other places in the Ottoman Empire. According to the decree, ali Muslims in Ayvalık were to be relocated in the surrounding vil-lages; no Turkish soldiers were allovved in the tovvn or even to pass through it; the tovvnspeople vvere spared ali arbitrary taxes and paid only a specified amount each year; and they had the right to ap-point their own governor, vvho vvould be a Türk, and vvhom they had the right to dismiss if they felt it necessary. This privileged status attracted Greeks from ali över the Ottoman Empire to Ayvalık. it soon became the most prosperous and progressive tovvn in the region, vvith an academy in vvhich 600 students received a classical education in the liberal arts, science and mathematics, using books published by their ovvn press. Ayvalık retained its privileges until 1919, vvhen the Greek army invaded Asia Minör and captured the town in the fırst battle of the Graeco-Turkish war. This was the beginning of the end for Hellenic Ayvalı, as it was known to the Greeks. At the conclusion of the war ali of the Greeks of Ayvalık were deported to Greece in the population exchange that was agreed upon in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, to be replaced by Turkish refugees from Greece. Up until 1923 there were a score of Greek Orthodox churches in Ayvalık. Most of them were converted to mosques after the population exchange, the largest being Ayios Ioannis, which is now Saatli Cami (the Mosque with a Clock); and Ayios Yiorgios, now Çınarlı Cami (the Mosque with the Plane Tree). The two most notable exceptions are the church of the Taxiarchoi (Archangels), which has been restored as a museum of icons; and Ayios Nicho-las, the former cathedral, which is also being restored as a museum. in recent years many Greeks have been crossing from Lesbos to Ayvalık for their holidays, and in the summer months they fiil the cafes and restaurants along the seafront and on Ali Bey Adası. And among the songs that they sing is a lament from the diaspora of 1923, remembering vvith painful nostalgia the lost world of Hel­lenic Ayvalı: My eyes have never seen a village like Ayvali Ask me about it, for I have been there. it has silver doors, golden keys. And beautiful girls as fresh as cool water..