THREE THEAEOLIAN COAST

CHAPTER THREE
THEAEOLIAN COAST
We now continue south along highway E87/550 tovvards İzmir. The fırst part of our drive takes us along the valley of the Caicus River, which flows into the Aegean at the head of the Çandarh Körfezi, known in antiquity as the Elaitic Gulf. As we drive along, we pass from Mysia into the region known in antiquity as Aeoüs, which was bounded on the north by the Caicus and the Elaitic Gulf, and on the south by the Hermus River and the Gulf of Smyrna, Turkish İzmir.
Aeolis took its name from the fact that the fırst Greeks who settled here were Aeolians, from Thessaly, Phocis, Locris and Boeotia. The Aeolians had been forced out of their homes by the Dorians, a vvarlike Hellenic people vvho came to power in Greece at the end of the second millennium B.C. The Dorians also displaced the Ionians, another Hellenic people vvhose homeland was princi-pally in Attica. The Aeolians settled first in Lesbos and Tenedos and then moved on to the Aegean coast of Asia Minör. Soon after-wards the Ionians migrated to the islands of the central Aegean and the Anatolian coast south of Aeolis. The third stage of this great migration came vvhen the Dorians Üıemselves migrated from the Greek mainland to the islands of the southern Aegean and then to the southwestem coast of Anatolia, completing the population move-ment that would eventually Hellenize westem Asia Minör.
According to Herodotus, the Aeolians founded a dozen cities on the Aegean coast between üıe Elaitic Gulf and Üıe Gulf of Smyrna, üıe most notable being Smyrna. But they later lost Smyrna to the Ionians, who founded twelve cities of their own on Üıe Aegean cöast and offshore islands south of Aeolis. The Aeolians and Ionians organized Üıemselves into two separate confederations, each of vvhich had twelve members before Smyrna changed sides. Besides

Smyrna, Herodotus lists the Aeolian cities as: Cyme, Larisa, Neonteichos, Temnus, Cila, Notium, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegae, Myrina and Gryneum. The Ionian cities won great renown, but tiıose of the Aeolians did not, and now üıe names of most of their settlements are known only to specialists in the history and archae-ology of üıe northern Aegean coast of Asia Minör. The obscurity of the Aeolian cities, as compared with Üıose of the Ionians, prob-ably stems from üıe very different vvays of life of the tvvo Greek peoples vvho founded them. The Aeolians were mostly farmers and herdsmen, vvhile the Ionians were seafarers and merchants vvho came into contact vviüı a much broader vvorld. While the Ionians made their indelible mark in history, sailing to üıe far ends of the knovvn vvorld and sometimes beyond, the Aeolians stayed home and simply settled for the good life on their fertile farms. As Athenaeus notes in his Doctors at Dinner, vvritten in the late sec­ond century A.D., the Aeolians vvere much "given to vvine, vvomen and luxurious living," vvhich is probably why they have left so few monuments on the Aeolian coast of Asia Minör.
We novv turn off highvvay E87/550 to the right on a road ignposted for Çandarh, a drive of eleven kilometers. Çandarh is a icturesque seaside village situated at the neck of a tongue-like wninsula that projects into the Elaitic Gulf. The village is domi-nated by a handsome and remarkably vvell-preserved Genoese castle of the late thirteenth century, vviüı fıve main tovvers connected by curtain vvalls. The peninsula is the site of the ancıent Aeolian city of Pitane, of vvhich virtually nothing survives other than the for-tress.
Pitane vvas the norüıernmost city in the Aeolian League. The original settlement in Pitane appears to have been far earlier than Üıe Aeolian migration, for sherds have been found in its necropolis dating back to the third millennium B.C. The Aeolians believed that the city had been founded by one of Üıe vvomen vvarriors vvho held command under üıe legendary Amazon queen, Myrina, men-tioned by Homer in The lliad. At Üıe time of Üıe Aeolian migration Üıe site of Pitane vvas already inhabited by üıe people knovvn to the

63
Greeks as the Pelasgians. The Pelasgians evidently tried to regain the city after the Greeks settled there, for the Aeolians in Pitane were forced to seek help from the Ionians in Erythrae to drive out the natives. After the rise of Pergamum, Pitane and the other cities in the Aeolian League vvere absorbed into the Attalid kingdom, sharing in its prosperity and brilliant culture. The most renovvned son of Pitane during the Hellenistic period was Arcesilaus, head of the Platonic Academy in Athens in the mid-third century B.C. He is credited with being the first philosopher to argue both sides of a question. (But because of his open-mindedness Arcesilaus could never bring himself to write a book, or so it was said of him in his time.) The most notevvorthy incident in the history of Pitane during the Roman era occurred here in 85 B.C., the last year of the First Mithridatic War. King Mithridates himself took refuge here when the city vvas besieged by the rebel Roman commander Fimbria. Mithridates escaped from Pitane to Lesbos, vvhile Fimbria, terrified of the wrath of Rome after his abortive rebellion, retired to the Asclepieum in Pergamum and committed suicide there.
Returning to highvvay E87/550, we tum right and resume our drive toward İzmir. As we do so we come almost immediately to vvithin sight of the Elaitic Gulf again at the village of Kazıkbağları, whose center is only about 500 meters from the shore. This is the site of the ancient city of Elaea, which gave its name to the Elaitic Gulf. Elaea had the distinetion of being the oldest Greek city on the Aeolian coast, with local legend aseribing its founding to Menestheus, leader of the Athenian contingent in Agamemnon's army at the siege of Troy. Homer mentions Menestheus in the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of The lliad, where he vvrites: "Never on earth had there been a man like him/for the arrangement of horses and shielded fighters." According to the legend, Menestheus did not return to Athens after the Trojan War, but led part of his contingent here to form an lordan colony.
Here too the earlier settlers appear to have been Pelasgians, who, according to Herodotus, were a non-Hellenic people living in Greece and northvvestern Asia Minör, where they were displaced


by the Greeks. Strabo refers to a lost history by Menecrates of Elaea in his effort to trace the origin and movements of the Pelasgians:
That the Pelasgians were a great tribe is said also to be the testimony of history in general: Menecrates of Elaea, at any rate, in his work. On the Founding of Cities, says that the vvhole of what is now the Ionian Coast, beginning at Mycale, as also the neighbouring islands, were in earlier times inhabited by Pelasgians. But the Lesbians say that their people were placed under the command of Pylaeus, the man whom the poet [Homer] calls the ruler of the Pelasgians, and it is from him that the mountain in their counrry is called Pylaeus. The Chians, also, say that the Pelasgians from Thessaly were their founders. But the Pelasgian race, ever wandering and quick to migrate, greatly increased and then rapidly disappeared, particularly at the time of the migration of the Aeolians and Ionians to Asia.
Elaea never became a member of the Aeolian League, probably because it had been an Ionian foundation and retained its ties with Athens. During its early history Elaea was of little significance, but it achieved some importance during the Hellenistic period as the port and naval station of Pergamum, since it was situated at the mouth of the Caicus River- The ancient port has long since silted up and is now a waste of mud flats, within which part of the quay and the harbor mole are stili visible. The acropolis of Elaea was on the summit of the low hill some 500 meters due west of the center of Kazıkbağlan, and in the fields betvveen this eminence and the village there are fragments of the city vvalls, including the remains of a gatevvay. This is ali that is left of ancient Elaea, where in 190 B.C. the allied fleets of Rome and Pergamum anchored in the last months of the war that led to the final defeat of Antiochus III early in the following year.
We continue along the highway as it takes us around the head of the Elaitic Gulf, which is divided into two bays by a broad headland. At the beginning of the second bay we come to the
village of Yenişakran, where we turn left on to a secondary road signposted for Köseler, a drive of 15 kilometers. From the end of the road at Köseler it is a 45-minute walk to the site of ancient Aegae, on an acropolis hill of the Yund Dağı, the mountainous region betvveen the Caicus and Hermus valleys. There are no signs to point the way; it might be best to hire the bekçi (Vatchman) of the site, to guide one out from Köseler, where he is stationed.

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Aegae is mentioned by both Herodotus and Strabo as being a member of the Aeolian League. Strabo notes that Aegae and Ternnos, another city of the Aeolian League, "are situated in the mountain­ous country that lies above the territory of Cyme and that of the Phocaeans and that of the Smyrnaeans, along which flows the Hermus." Aegae was absorbed into the Pergamene kingdom in the early days of the Attalids, who endowed the city with several temples and rebuilt its defense vvalls in the mid-second century B.C, after it had been sacked by the Bithynians. The remote location of Aegae has preserved it to a far greater degree than the other cities along the coast of Aeolis, and thus its remains, although in ruins, are



much more impressive than those of any other member of the Aeolian League.
The summit of the acropolis hill is 365 meters above sea level, surrounded by a defense wa)l some 1.5 kilometers in length. The path leading up to the acropolis takes one through the necropolis, vvhere a number of sarcophagi lay scattered about. it then goes around the northem side of the steep acropolis hill to the main gateway of the ancient city, a well preserved portal known locally as Demir Kapı, the Iron Gate. The most prominent structure on the acropolis is a three-storied market building on the southeast side of the plateau. it is 82 meters in length and stili stands to a height of
Enırance lo Theaıer al Aegae
~*even meters. This dates from the Hellenistic period, though it was built in the imperial Roman era. Adjoining the market building e the ruins of the bouleuterion. At the northvvest corner of the ropolis there are the remains of an Ionic temple of the second century B.C., with six columns at its ends and twelve along its sides. it is believed that the temple was originally dedicated to Apollo Chresterius, the second name of the god being a local ap-pellation found only at Aegae. The temenos of the temple is de-fined by the northvvestern comer of the citadel vvall and on its two straight sides by two-storied stoas, the lower story Doric and the upper one Ionic. The architectural style of their structure is similar to that of the Stoa of Attalus in Athens, which has led scholars to attribute these stoas to Attalus II. Below this temenos is the theater, its cavea hollovved out of the precipitous slope of the acropolis rock, with its vaulted entrance stili standing above the northeastern comer of the auditorium. About 50 meters to the north of the or-chestra there are the remains of a small Doric templum-in-anüs, with an inscription of the second century B.C. recording its dedica-


tion to Demeter and Kore. South of the theater a large level area was created by cutting away the fiili on the east and building a large retaining wall on the west. This area was then bordered with stoas on the east, south and west sides to create a gymnasium, with a stadium to its north. The site has never been excavated; the ruins of ali these structures lie tumbled ali över the hillside, with only the market building remaining relatively intact. The ruins of Aegae are seldom visited, so one can contemplate its splendid ruins without the distraction of other travelers or indeed any other intrusion from the modern world. it stands isolated from time and space here on its remote hilltop in the Yund Dağı.
After this detour we return to highvvay E87/550 at Yenişakran, where we tum left and continue driving towards İzmir.
About a kilometer beyond Yenişakran we stop to walk down tovvard the shore to a litfle promontory called Temaşalık Burnu. This is the site of ancient Gryneum, another city of the Aeolian League. Little remains here other than a few fragmentary columns and capitals along with numerous pottery shards.
Here too the original settlement probably predated the Greek migration, for the site of Gryneum seems to have been inhabited by the Pelasgians before the Aeolians established their city. Local leg-end attributed the founding of the city to an Amazon named Gryne, one of Queen Myrina's lieutenants. According to the legend, Gryne was violated at this place by Apoflo, who was \vorshipped here at a famous shrine. Strabo describes Gryneum as having "an altar of Apollo, an ancient oracle, and a cosdy shrine of white marble." Pausanias writes of "Gryneum, vvhere Apollo has a most beautiful grove of fruit trees and other wild trees which are pleasant to smell and look upon." The oracular shrine here is mentioned by Virgil in Book IV of The Aeneid, where Aeneas telis Queen Dido of Carthage how "the oracle of Apollo at Gryneum, vvhere he gives his divina-tions by lot, has insistently commanded me to make my vvay to Italy's noble lands." The shrine is also mentioned by Aelius Aristides, who stopped here on one of his visits to the Pergamene Asclepieum; as he writes: "On reaching Gryneum, I made my sac-
rifice and occupied myself in my customary vvay; then proceeding to Elaea, I put up there for the night, and on the follovving day arrived in Pergamum."
We now drive for a short way around the second bay of the laitic Gulf tovvard the promontory at its southern end, stopping here the highvvay crosses a little river cafied Güzelhisar Çayı, the tream of the Beautiful Castle. This is the mouth of the river thicus, which in its upper course flows past the ancient city of Aegae. The river flows out to the sea around the southern side of the promontory, which is the site of ancient Myrina, another city of the Aeolian League.
Like Pitane, Elaea and Gryneum, Myrina was first settled long before the Aeolian migration, undoubtedly inhabited by the Pelasgians. According to local legend, the city took its name from its founder, the Amazon queen Myrina. Homer mentions the Ama­zon queen in Book II of The Iliad, vvhere he vvrites of her mythical tomb outside the vvalls of Troy: "This men cali the Hill of the Thicket, but the immortal/gods have named it the burial ground of dancing Myrina." Here and elsevvhere in northvvestern Asia Minör, the myth of the Amazons may be due to two prominent reliefs, both mentioned by Herodotus, that the first Greek setüers saw in the hinterland of Smyrna. in each of them a Hittite vvarrior is shown vvearing a kilt, leading the Hellenes to imagine that these earlier people were a race of vvomen \varriors.
Virtually nothing novv remains of Myrina except fragments of the vvalls of its citadel, vvhich vvas on the low hill knovvn as Birki Tepe, and some stones from the quay of its harbor on the northern side of üıe promontory. The necropolis vvas in the vailey betvveen Birki Tepe and the next hill to its north. On the top of the second hill to the north there is a rock-cut chamber tomb knovvn as Intas, vvhich is in a curious outcrop near the summit. Numerous other ock-hevvn tombs are knovvn to the local shepherds. Archaeological xcavations of the necropolis and the rock tombs have unearthed a large number of interesting funerary offerings, ranging from the time of Alexander the Great to the reign of Tiberius (r. 14-37), vvho
rebuilt Myrina after it had been destroyed in an earthquake in the year A.D. 17. The most important of these funerary objects are terracotta figurines—more than a thousand in ali—similar to the famous Tanagra statuettes, including: representations of deities, hu-mans and animals, as well as theatrical masks, grotesque and comic figures, and caricatures. There are also numerous bronze coins to be used to pay for the fare of the deceased on Charon's ferry across the river Styx into the Undenvorld; plates for food and clay bottles for wine to be consumed in the next world; and for vvomen—lamps, mirrors, needles, perfume containers, jev/elry and other objects of daily life, as if that would be continued in the same fashion beyond the grave. These finds are now preserved in the istanbul Archaeo-logical Museum and in the Louvre.
Aelius Aristides also stopped at the town of Myrina on his way to Pergamum. His lively account of his stay gives us some idea of the difficulties of travel along the Aegean coast in the imperial Roman era:
About cock crovv we reached Myrina, and there we found our men outside one of the inns, stili not unpacked because, as they said, they too had found nothing öpen. in the porch of the inn was a pallet-bed; we spent some time carrying this up and down, but could find no comfortable place to put it. Knocking at the door was useless, as no one answered it. At long last we managed to get into the house of an acquaintance; but by bad luck the porter's fire was out, so that I entered in complete darkness, led by the hand, seeing nothing and myself invisible. By the time a fire had been procured and I was preparing to enjoy a drink in front of it, the morning star was rising and dawn had begun to break. Pride rebelled against going to bed by daylight, so I decided to make a further effort and go on to the temple of Apollo at Gryneum, where it was my habit to offer sacrifîce on my journeys up and down the road.
The highvvay now goes along the shofe of a bay that forms the southern cusp of the Elaitic Gulf, passing the small industrial town

Aliağa at the far end. After driving across the neck of the prom-ntory that forms the southern arm of the gulf, we turn right off the ghway onto a secondary road that brings us out to the sea at Namurt Köyü, a hamlet on the bay called Namurt Limanı, the Harbor of Nimrod. At the end of tiıe road we come to the site of ancient Cyme, which Strabo called "the largest and best of the Aeolian cities."
The story of Cyme's foundation is much the same as that of the other cities to its north in the Aeolian League, in that its original settlement was probably by the Pelasgians long before the great Hellenic migration. Local legend had it that the city was named for its eponymous founder, the Amazon Cyme, presumably another of Qucen Myrina's lieutenants. Aeolian Cyme, along with Chalcis and Eretria, joined together in 757 B.C. to found the city öf Cumae, the fırst Greek colony on the Italian mainland. The Cymeans on their own later founded the city of Side on the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minör. Cyme was forced to contribute ships to the Persian fleet in 512 B.C, when Darius crossed the Bosphorus in his cam-paign against the Scythians, and again in 480 B.C. when Xerxes invaded Greece, the only Aeolian city to participate in these two wars. After the Greek victory at the battle of Salamis the Persian fleet retumed to Asia, laying at anchor in the harbor of Cyme through the winter of 480-479 B.C.
Despite the fact that Cyme was the most active of the Aeolian cities in seafaring, the Cymaeans were mocked by the other eastern Greeks for their supposed failure to exploit their potential as a naval power. Strabo telis several stories ridiculing the stupidity of the Cymaeans, although he does note that Cyme was the birthplace of Ephorus, an orator, philosopher and inventor who flourished in the fourth century B.C. Strabo also telis us that Cyme may have been the birthplace of both Homer and Hesiod, although this is in both cases unlikely. Hesiod, in his V/orks and Days, telis us that his father was from Aeolian Cyme, and that he emigrated from there to Böeotia. One vvonders why Dius left the fertile lânds and pleasant \veather of the Aeolian coast for the harsh elime of the Boeotian
mountains, where, as Hesiod writes of his father's life: "He dwelt near Helicon in Ascre, a village wretched in winter, in summer oppressive, and not pleasant in any season."
There is little of ancient Cyme to be seen, other than the exigu-ous remains of the theater, an Ionic temple, the foundations of a large building of unknown identity, and the mole of its harbor.
After returning to the highvvay we drive on for only a short way before turning off to the right on the road that leads to the seaside tovvns of Yeni (New) Foça and Eski (Old) Foça, their last name a a corruption of the Greek Phocaea. Both of these towns are situated on the huge peninsula that forms the northern arm of the Gulf of İzmir. Yeni Foça is about halfvvay out along the north shore of the peninsula, vvhile Eski Foça is on its northvvestern coast. The road brings us fırst to Yeni Foça, which is set on a beautiful bay with a superb beach that is now occupied by the Club Mediterranee.
Yeni Foça is said to stand on the site of ancient Cyllene, an obscure Aeolian city about vvhich virtually nothing is known, but this identifıcation is doubtful. in any event, the present town of Yeni Foça is a direct descendant not of an ancient Greek city but of the late medieval Genoese colony of Foglia Nuova (New Phocaea). The history of this colony begins in 1275, when Michael VIII Palaeologus granted an imperial fief to two Genoese merchant ad-venturers, the brothers Benedetto and Manuele Zaccaria. They were to develop the peninsula's lucrative mines of alum, the processed salts of vvhich vvere in great demand for the dyeing of cloth and also as an emetic and astringent. This fief centered on the town of Phocaea, the present Eski Foça, vvhich in antiquity had been one of the cities of the Ionian League. When they received this fief the Zaccarias built a fortified port on the northern side of the peninsula to protect their alum mines there, and this soon developed into the tovvn of Foglia Nuova, vvhile the ancient city came to be called Foglia Vecchia (Old Phocaea). The Zaccaria brothers also built a fleet to protect their merchantmen from pirates. Foglia Nuova de­veloped into one of the richest tovvns in the Levant, remaining a Genoese possession until 1455, vvhen both it and Foglia Vecchia

fell to the Ottoman Turks. Today there is nothing vvhatsoever to be seen of the Genoese tovvn of Foglia Nuova, vvhich has vanished under tiıe Turkish houses of Yeni Foça.
I. We novv continue on to Eski Foça, a pleasant tovvn clustered around a little peninsula at the inner end of an almost landlocked harbor, nearly cut off from the Aegean by a succession of promon-tories and offshore islets. This is the site of ancient Phocaea, vvhich Strabo considered to mark "the beginning of Ionia and the end of Aeolis" for mariners sailing south along the coast of Asia Minör.
Although Phocaea is on the Aeolian coast, it vvas Ionian in foundation and a member of the Ionian League. Phocaea appears to have been founded some tvvo hundred years after the original Hel-lenic migration to Asia Minör, it vvas settled by colonists from the Ionian cities of Erythrae and Teos, probably in the eighth century B.C. The site vvas obviously chosen for its excellent harbor, the finest by far on the Aeolian coast. The Phocaeans took full advan-tage of their superb location, and early in their history their city emerged as one of the most active and venturesome markime cities in the Greek vvorld. Phocaea vvas one of the first Greek cities to send colonizing expeditions overseas, joining Miletus in the mid-eighth century B.C. to establish a colony on the southem shore of the Pontus (Black Sea) at Amisus (Turkish Samsun), in 654 the Phocaeans on their ovvn founded Lampsacus on the Hellespont (Dardanelles). Around 600 B.C. they established Massalia, the present Marseilles, vvith colonists going on from there to found the daughter colonies of Nicaea and Antipolis, novv knovvn as Nice and Antibes. Then in 560 B.C. the Phocaeans founded Alalia on Corsica, and at the same time they established a short-lived colony on Sardinia. They even sailed out into the Atlantic and up the Iberian coast as far as Tartassus, near present-day Cadiz. Herodotus de-scribes these voyages in Book I of his Histories, vvhere he vvrites of
Phocaeans and their city:
Phocaeans vvere the fırst Greeks to roake long sea-voyages; it vvas -y vvho shovved the vvay to the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia, and
Tartassus. They used to sail not in deep, broad-beamed merchant ves-sels but in fifty-oared galleys. When they vvent to Tartassus they made themselves agreeable to Arganthonius, the King. who had ruled the place for eighty years, and lived to be a hundred and twenty. Indeed, this person took such a fancy to them that he asked them to quit Ionia permanently and settle wherever they liked on his own land; the Phocaeans, however, refused the offer, whereupon the king, hearing that Median power was on the increase in their part of the world, gave them money to build a vval! around their town. And he must have given them a good deal, for the wall at Phocaea is of pretty consider-able exient, and constructed of large stone blocks vvell fitted together.
After the Persian king Cyrus captured Sardis in 546 B.C., he sent his general Harpagus the Mede to subdue the Greek cities on the Aegean coast, ali of which surrendered immediately except Phocaea. Herodotus continues his account of the history of the Phocaeans by telling the story of the Persian siege of Phocaea and its aftermath:
Harpagus, then, brought his troops to Phocaea, whose defenses were built in the way I have described, and began a siege, proclaiming to the Phocaeans that he would be satisfıed if they consented to pull down a single tower in the fortifîcations and sacrifice one house. The Phocaeans, however, indignant at the thought of slavery, asked for one day in vvhich to consider the proposal before answering; stipulat-ing at the same time that he should withdraw his forces during their deliberations. This Harpagus consented to do, though he vvas perfectly aware of their intentions. So the troops were withdrawn, and the Phocaeans at önce launched their galleys, put aboard their vvomen and children and moveable property, including the statues and other sacred objects from their temples—everything in fact, except for paintings and images made of bronze or marble—and sailed for Chios. So the Persians on their return took possession of an empty tovvn.
Herodotus then goes on to teli of how the Persians decided to

on to establish a new city in Corsica, but only after taking their revenge on the Persians:
But before starting on their voyage, they returned to Phocaea and killed the Persian garrison left there by Harpagus. Then they tried to secure unity for their expedition by laying fearful curses upon any man who should fail to accompany it. They also dropped a lump of iron into the sea and swore never to return to Phocaea until it floated up again. But at the very beginning of the voyage to Corsica more than halt' of them were seized with such passionatc longing to see their city and their old homes önce more. that they broke their oaths and sailed back to Phocaea.
The Phocaeans who continued to Corsica soon aftenvards moved to southern Italy to establish the colony of Rhegium, known today as Reggio Calabria. From there some of them sailed up the west coast of Italy to found the city of Elea, which soon became the inteliectual center of Magna Graecia, the Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily, giving rise to the Eleatic school of philosophy.
Phocaea itself revived after the return of those who did not go on to Corsica, joining the other Ionian cities in their revolt against Persian rule in 499-494 B.C. The Phocaeans defended their city against besieging Roman armies in 190 B.C. and again in 130 B.C. On the second occasion the Phocaean resistance so provoked the besiegers that the Roman Senate ordered the city to be destroyed and its people dispersed. The citizens of Massalia, Phocaea's former colony, appealed against this harsh sentence and persuaded the Senate to spare their mother city and grant clemency to its people. The heroism of the Phocaeans thus became legendary in antiquity. leading Diogenes Laertius to remark that "Phocaea is a city of moderate size, skilled in nothing but to rear brave men."
Phocaea took on a new lease of life in 1275 under the Genoese, who called it Foglia Vecchia. The city remained in the hands of the Genoese until 1455, when it fell to the Ottomans, who called it Eski Foça. Throughout most of the Ottoman period Eski Foça con-
tinued to be a seaport of some importance. But this ended with the invention of the steamboat. Today Eski Foça is Iittle nıore than a fishing port and a stopping place for yachts sailing along the Aeolian coast. One must read the accounts of earlier travelers to evoke a picture of what life was like here when Eski Foça was stili a port of cali for ships sailing from izmir to Athens or istanbul. The most interest of these accounts is that of William J. Hamilton in Volume I of his Researches in Asia Minör, Pontus and Armenia, published in 1842. He describes his voyage from fever-stricken izmir to Eski Foça, which he calls Fouges:
At the end of December [1835] the kindness of Captain Mundy of-fered me a cnıise on board the Favourite, and as I trusted that a month or six weeks at sea would remove ali remains of fever, I accepted the proposal. We were bound in the fırst place for Athens; but contrary winds compelled us to put into the small harbor of Fouges, the ancient Phocaea. This place, conveniently situated near the southern entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, was one of the most celebrated on the coast of Asia Minör, in the early days of Greek navigation, and tül the fortunes of war drove its Lnhabitants to become the founders of Marseilles. The harbor is very snug, and protected from ali winds except the west. The modern town is situated on a narrow tongue of land, extending into the Iittle bay from the east, and corresponding with the description of it, and the two harbor Naustatamon and Lamptera, given by Livy in his account of the war with Antiochus.
it now contains 1,000 houses, of which 600 are Turkish, and the remainder Greek. it is built on the peninsula and surrounded by walls, which appear to be Genoese. Some blocks of stone and marble have been let into the vvalls on the land side, but in general few remains of antiquity were to be seen. Within the town I saw fragments of col-umns, and outside the gate a large marble sarcophagus, which ap-peared never to have been fınished....
Virtually nothing remains of ancient Phocaea except for the foundations and some architectural fragments of an Ionic temple of

Athena, discovered in 1953 by Professor Ekrem Akurgal in the garden of the local schoolhouse. The temple, whose architectural fragments are preserved in the İzmir Archaeological Museum, is dated to the second quarter of the sbcth century B.C. it appears to have been rebuilt later in that same century after its destruction by the Persians. A single monument remains from the Genoese town of Foglia Vecchia—a late thirteenth century fortress on the prom-ontory that forms the western horn of the harbor. Outside the town on a hillside to the southwest there is an ancient rock-hewn tomb known as Şeytan Hamamı, the Devil's Bath.
We leave Eski Foça on highway 250, vvhich takes us eastvvard through the peninsula to link up with highvvay E87/550. About seven kilometers along we pass on our left an impressive rock-hewn tomb knovvn as Taş Kule, the Stone Tower. The structure, which is 4.5 meters high, is carved out of rock in the form of a two-storied building composed of two superimposed blocks. The lower one measures 8.5 by 5.8 meters in plan, with a false door of three panels in its east face. The upper story is above the eastern part of the lower one, a rectangular block raised on a stepped platform. The tomb proper is below this in the lower block, where the real door gives entrance to an antechamber. Another door at the rear of this room on the right leads into the burial chamber itself, where the deceased was buried in a simple rectangular trough. The tomb is believed to have been built in the early fourth century B.C. for a local tyrant who ruled under the Persians.
After reaching highway E87/550 we turn right to head south for İzmir önce again. After about five kilometers we see on the left a turnoff for the village of Yanık, a drive of some three kilometers. Directly above the village we see a conical hill surmounted by a great circular rock. This was the site of the citadel of Neonteichos, one of the cities of the Aeolian League. The approach to the sum-mit from the village follows the course of the ancient road to the citadel, its surface stili paved with large stone blocks. The slopes and summit of the hill are littered with an abundance of pottery shards, ranging in date from the sixth century B.C. to Byzantine


times, wîth the majority from the fourth and third centuries B.C. Proceeding upwards, we see a number of pieces of handsome po-lygoıial masorıry, mostly in the retaining walls of terraces, as well as in a long stretch of the city's defense vvalls. Ali that remains of the citadel are a rock-hewn stainvay and the stone blocks of an observation post on the summit. We can see here that Neonteichos, which means "New Fort," was primarily a fortress town. Strabo telis us it was built by the first Aeolian settlers as a base to attack the Pelasgians who were dwelling in nearby Larisa.
We return önce again to highvvay E87/550 and continue driving towards İzmir. Some two kilometers farther along we come to Buruncuk, a village at the foot of a steep hill about 100 meters high. The summit of the hill is the site of ancient Larisa, another city of the Aeolian League.
We approach the site via the ancient road, which leads up to the summit of the hill in a long hairpin turn to bring us to the main gate of ancient Larisa on the north side of the acropolis. The acropolis was apparently fırst fortified ca. 500 B.C, although pottery shards have been found on the summit dating back to the seventh century B.C. Early in the fourth century B.C. the fortifications vvere rebuilt and extended to enclose a considerably larger area eastward along the crest of the hill, with the ruins of five of its towers stili to be seen. At the vvesternmost corner of the acropolis excavatrons have unearthed the remains of a complex of peristyle chambers, identi-fied as a palace dated ca. 330 B.C. The excavations also unearthed the foundations and some architectural fragments of two small temples, the oldest of which is an Aeolic edifice dated to the sixth century B.C. An Aeolic capital of this archaic temple is now on exhibit in the istanbul Archaeological Museum, along with a capi­tal of the same type from Neandria.
Larisa is the only Aeolian city mentioned in The lliad. Homer refers to it in the Catalogue of the Trojans, listing the contingent from Larisa directly after those from the Hellespontine cities of the Troad:
Hippothoös led the tribes of spear-fighting Pelasgians, they who dwelt where the soil is rich around Larisa; Hippothoös and Pylaios, scion of Ares, led these, sons alike of Pelasgian Lethos, son of Teutamos.
This and the reference by Strabo indicate that here too the site of the city was occupied by the Pelasgians long before the Aeolian migration. Legend has it that Larisa was named for a daughter of one of these Pelasgian kings, of whom Strabo has this bizarre tale to teli:
Piasus...was ruler of the Pelasgians and fell in love with his daughter Larisa, and having violated her, paid the penalty for his outrage; for having observed him leaning över a cask of wine, she seized him by the legs, raised him, and plunged him into the cask. Such were the ancient accounts.
A short way beyond Buruncuk the highvvay crosses the Gediz

Çayı, the River Hermus of the Greeks. The Hermus was in antiq-uity the boundary betvveen Aeolis and Ionia, fiovving into the Aegean near Phocaea. But in the medieval era the Hermus changed its course and fiowed south into the Gulf of Smyrna, where över the centuries it formed an alluvial delta that by late Ottoman times threatened to block izmir's harbor. The Hermus was diverted back into its original channel in 1886, by which time its şilt had caused the coastline to advance a considerable distance, most notably at Menemen, a former coastal town now some 20 kilometers inland.
We pass Menemen as the highvvay curves inland through the alluvial plain of the Hermus, and soon aftenvards izmir comes into view, its tiered houses stretching for miles along the hills around the inner end of the gulf that bears its name.