DYNASTS of LYCIA Kherei 410BC Athena RARE Obol Ancient Silver Greek Coin i52270

Item: i52270

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Silver Twelfth Stater
– Obol 9mm (0.56 grams) Uncertain mint, struck circa 410-390 B.C.
Head of Athena right, wearing crested
Attic helmet
Bearded head right, wearing kyrbasia; monogram before; all within circular
incuse.
RARE
References: Mørkholm & Zahle II –; Falghera –; Reuter 84 (same dies); SNG
Copenhagen Supp. –; SNG von Aulock 4177–8 var. (no monogram); Sunrise 82

 You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

Lycia
was a geopolitical region in
Anatolia
in what are now the
provinces
of
Antalya
and
Muğla
on the southern
coast
of
Turkey
, and
Burdur
Province inland. Known to history since
the records of
ancient Egypt
and the
Hittite Empire
in the
Late Bronze Age
, it was populated by speakers
of the
Luwian language
group. Written records began to
be inscribed in stone in the
Lycian language
(a later form of Luwian) after
Lycia’s involuntary incorporation into the
Achaemenid Empire
in the Iron Age. At that time
(546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of
Persian speakers.

Lycia fought for the Persians in the
Persian Wars
, but on the defeat of the
Achaemenid Empire
by the Greeks, it became
intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the
Athenian Empire
, it seceded and became
independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause),
was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by
Mausolus
of
Caria
, returned to the Persians, and went under
Macedonian hegemony at the defeat of the Persians by
Alexander the Great
. Due to the influx of Greek
speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was totally
Hellenized under the Macedonians. The Lycian language disappeared from
inscriptions and coinage.

On defeating
Antiochus III
in 188 the Romans gave Lycia to
Rhodes
for 20 years, taking it back in 168 BC.
In these latter stages of the
Roman republic
Lycia came to enjoy freedom as
part of the Roman protectorate. The Romans validated home rule officially under
the Lycian League in 168 BC. This native government was an early federation with
republican principles; these later came to the attention of the framers of the
United States Constitution
, influencing their
thoughts.

Despite home rule under republican principles Lycia was not a sovereign state
and had not been since its defeat by the
Carians
. In 43 AD the Roman emperor
Claudius
dissolved the league. Lycia was
incorporated into the
Roman Empire
with a provincial status. It
became an eparchy
of the Eastern, or
Byzantine Empire
, continuing to speak Greek
even after being joined by communities of
Turkish language
speakers in the early 2nd
millennium. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, Lycia
was under the
Ottoman Empire
, and was inherited by the
Turkish Republic
on the fall of that empire.
The Greeks were withdrawn when the border between Greece and Turkey was
negotiated in 1923.

Geography

The borders of Lycia varied over time but at its centre was the Teke
peninsula of southwestern Turkey, which juts into the
Mediterranean Sea
in a north-south direction,
is bounded on the west by the
Gulf of Fethiye
, and on the east by the
Gulf of Antalya
. Lycia comprised what is now
the westernmost portion of
Antalya
Province, the easternmost portion of
Muğla Province
, and the southernmost portion of
Burdur
Province. In ancient times the
surrounding districts were, from west to east,
Caria
,
Pisidia
, and
Pamphylia
, all equally as ancient, and each
speaking its own
Anatolian language
.

The name of the Teke Peninsula comes from the former name of Antalya
Province, which was
Teke Province
, named from the Turkish tribe
that settled in the region.

Physical geography

The region is mainly mountainous, with steep slopes often plunging into the
sea. Four ridges extend from northeast to southwest, roughly, forming the
western extremity of the
Taurus Mountains
. Furthest west of the four are
Boncuk Dağlari, or “the Boncuk Mountains,” extending from about
Altinyayla, Burdur
, southwest to about Oren
north of Fethiye
. This is a fairly low range peaking at
about 2,340 m (7,680 ft). To the west of it the steep gorges of Dalaman Çayi
(“the Dalaman River”), the ancient Indus, formed the traditional border between
Caria and Lycia. The stream, 229 km (142 mi) long, enters the Mediterranean to
the west of modern-day
Dalaman
. Upstream it is dammed in four places,
after an origin in the vicinity of Sarikavak in
Denizli
Province.

The next ridge to the east is Akdağlari, “the White Mountains,” about 150 km
(93 mi) long, with a high point at Uyluktepe, “Uyluk Peak,” of 3,024 m
(9,921 ft). This massif may have been ancient Mount Cragus. Along its western
side flows Eşen Çayi, “the Esen River,” anciently the Xanthus, Lycian Arñna,
originating in the Boncuk Mountains, flowing south, and transecting the
several-mile-long beach at
Patara
. The Xanthus Valley was the country
called Tŗmmis in dynastic Lycia, from which the people were the Termilae or
Tremilae, or Kragos in the coin inscriptions of Greek Lycia: Kr or Ksan Kr. The
name of western Lycia was given by
Charles Fellows
to it and points of Lycia west
of it.

The next ridge to the east, Beydağlari, “the Bey Mountains,” peaks at
Kizlarsevrisi, 3,086 m (10,125 ft), the highest point of the Teke Peninsula. It
is most likely the ancient Masicytus range. Between Beydağlari and Akdağlari is
an upland plateau, Elmali, where ancient Milyas was located. The elevation of
the town of Elmali, which means “Apple Town,” from the density of fruit-bearing
groves in the region, is 1,100 m (3,600 ft), which is the highest part of the
valley below it. Fellows considered the valley to be central Lycia.

The Akçay, or “White River,” the ancient Aedesa, brought water from the
slopes to the plain, where it pooled in two lakes below the town, Karagöl and
Avlangöl. Currently the two lakes are dry, the waters being captured on an
ongoing basis by irrigation systems for the trees. The Aedesa once drained the
plain through a chasm to the east, but now flows entirely through pipelines
covering the same route, but emptying into the water supplies of Arycanda and
Arif. An effort has been made to restore some of the cedar forests cleared in
antiquity.

The easternmost ridge extends along the east coast of the Teke Peninsula, and
is called, generally, Tahtali Dağlari, “The Tahtali Mountains.” The high point
within them is Tahtali Dağ, elevation 2,366 m (7,762 ft), dubbed “Mount Olympus”
in antiquity by the Greeks, remembering
Mount Olympus
in Greece. These mountains create
a rugged coastline called by Fellows eastern Lycia. Much of it has been reserved
as Olimpos Beydağlari Parki. Within the park on the slopes of Mt. Olympus is a
U-shaped outcrop,
Yanartaş
, above
Cirali
, from which
methane
gas, naturally perpetually escaping
from below through the rocks, feeds eternal flames. This is the location of
ancient
Mount Chimaera
.

Through the
cul-de-sac
between Baydağlari and
Tahtalidağlari, the Alakir Çay (“Alakir River”), the ancient Limyra, flows to
the south trickling from the broad valley under superhighway D400 near downtown
Kumluca
across a barrier beach into the
Mediterranean. This configuration is entirely modern. Upstream the river is
impounded behind Alakir Dam to form an urban-size reservoir. Below the reservoir
a braided stream alternates with a single, small channel flowing through
irrigated land. The wide bed gives an indication of the former size of the
river. Upstream from the reservoir the stream lies in an unaltered gorge,
flowing from the slopes of Baydağlari. The ancient route to Antalya goes up the
valley and over the cul-de-sac, as the coast itself is impassible except by
boat. The valley was the seat of ancient Solymus, home of the Solymi.

Demography

The ancient sources mention about 70 settlements of Lycia. These are situated
either along the coastal strip in the protecting coves or on the slopes and
hills of the mountain ranges. They are often difficult to access, which in
ancient times was a defensive feature. The rugged coastline favored
well-defended ports from which, in troubled times, Lycian pirate fleets sallied
forth.

The principal cities of ancient Lycia were
Xanthos
,
Patara
,

Myra, Pinara
,

Tlos and
Olympos
(each entitled to three votes in the
Lycian League) and
Phaselis
. Cities such as
Telmessos
and
Krya
were sometimes listed by Classical authors
as Carian and sometimes as Lycian.

Features and
sights of interest

 

Although the 2nd-century AD dialogue
Erōtes
found the cities of Lycia
“interesting more for their history than for their monuments, since they have
retained none of their former splendor,” many relics of the
Lycians
remain visible today. These relics
include the distinctive
rock-cut tombs
in the sides of cliffs. The
British Museum
in
London
has one of the best collections of
Lycian artifacts. Letoon
, an important center in Hellenic times
of worship for the goddess

Leto and her twin children,
Apollo
and
Artemis
, and nearby Xanthos, ancient capital of
Lycia, constitute a
UNESCO World Heritage site
.

Turkey’s first
waymarked
long-distance footpath, the
Lycian Way
, follows part of the coast of the
region. The establishment of the path was a private initiative by a
British/Turkish woman called Kate Clow. It is intended to support sustainable
tourism in smaller mountain villages which are in the process of depopulation.
Since it is mainly walked in March – June and Sept-Nov, it also has lengthened
the tourism season. The Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry promotes the Lycian
coast as part of the
Turkish Riviera
or the Turquoise Coast, but the
most important part of this is further west near Bodrum. This coast features
rocky or sandy beaches at the bases of cliffs and settlements in protected coves
that cater to the yachting industry.

Ancient language

 

The eponymous inhabitants of Lycia, the
Lycians
, spoke Lycian, a member of the
Luwian
branch of the
Anatolian languages
, a subfamily of the
Indo-European
family. Lycian has been attested
only between about 500 BC and no later than 300 BC, in a
unique alphabet
devised for the purpose from
the Greek alphabet of Rhodes. However, the Luwian languages originated in
Anatolia during the 2nd millennium BC. The country was known by the name of
Lukka then, and was under Hittite rule. The gap must be a gap in the use of
writing.

At about 535 BC, before the first appearance of attested Lycian, the
Achaemenid Empire
overran Lycia. Despite its
resistance, because of which the population of Xanthus was decimated, Lycia
became part of the Persian Empire. The first coins with Lycian letters on them
appeared not long before 500. Lycia prospered under a monarchy set up by the
Persians. Subsequently the Lycians were verbose in stone, carving memorial,
historical and governmental inscriptions. Not all of these can yet be entirely
understood, due to remaining ignorance of the language. The term “dynastic
period” is used. If the government was any sort of federal democracy, there is
no evidence of it, as the term “dynastic” suggests.

Lycia already had been hosting a small enclave of the Dorian Greeks as Doris
for some centuries.
Rhodes
also was Dorian. After the defeat of the
Persians by the Greeks, Lycia became open to further Greek settlement.
Inscriptions in Lycian diminished, while those in Greek multiplied. Complete
assimilation to Greek occurred in the 4th century, after Lycia had come under
Alexander the Great and his fellow Macedonians. There is no agreement yet on
which Lycian inscription is the very last. No date is later than 300 at the very
latest.

Subsequently the Macedonians were defeated by the
Roman Republic
, which for most of its final
tenure allowed home rule to the Lycians, including their own language, then
Greek. Lycia continued under the single empire, and fell naturally into the
eastern empire when the division occurred. It was still speaking the Greek of
the times when the eastern empire became the
Byzantine Empire
. In the 2nd millennium
Anatolia was infiltrated by Turkish speaking settlers, but they never were very
numerous in Lycia. After the fall of the Byzantines in the 15th century, Lycia
was under the Ottoman Empire. Turkish and Greek settlements existed
side-by-side, each speaking their own language.

All Greek-speaking enclaves in Anatolia were exchanged for Turkish speakers
in Greece during the final settlement of the border with Greece at the beginning
of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The Turks had won wars with Greece and Armenia
in the preceding few years, settling the issue of whether the coast of Anatolia
was going to be Greek or Turkish. The intent of the
Treaty of Lausanne
was to define borders that
would not leave substantial populations of one country in another. Some
population transfers were enforced. Former Greek villages still stand as ghost
towns in Lycia.

History

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Proto-history

Lycia has a
proto-history
little suspected by the
historians of the 19th century before the decipherment of Hittite and ancient
Egyptian, and the discovery of government records pertaining the Lycia and the
Lycians. The records for the most part do not offer positive reports of them. In
reports of official transactions with Lycians in the late Bronze Age, the
Hittite and Egyptian empires described them as rebels, pirates, and raiders. The
Lycians have left no written records of themselves at all from this period,
which suggests that they probably were illiterate.

Ancient Egyptian
records describe the Lycians
as allies of the
Hittites
. Lycia may have been a member state of
the
Assuwa
league of c. 1250 BC, appearing as
Lukka
or Luqqa. After the collapse of the
Hittite Empire, Lycia emerged as an independent “Neo-Hittite”
kingdom. The latter term was assigned to remnant states that continued after the
fall of the Hittite Empire. It is entirely conventional; these states were not
Hittite in any way. For the most part they spoke languages of the Luwian family.

Age of legend

This section possibly contains original research . Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations . Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (December 2013)

 

Civilization in the Mediterranean
collapsed
into a period of decentralization,
migrations and civil and international warfare after about 1200 BC. Lycian
proto-history came to an end. There is nothing except legend to fill the gap
until history begins with the classical Greek historian,
Herodotus
, who mentions them extensively. The
stories of the early Lycians were told by Greek authors of the classical period.
Sufficient gaps in their knowledge exist to cast doubt on the historicity of
everything they had to say. They knew nothing of the Hittite Empire or the state
of Lycia within it. All memory of the Bronze Age Greek script,
Linear B
, had been lost. They did not know that
Anatolia once spoke languages of the
Anatolian language group
, or that Lycian was
such a language. Except for a few basic generalities, such as that the Lycians
probably fought in the
Trojan War
, nothing mentioned by the works
produced under the name of Homer or the other poets, or anything said by
Herodotus about Lycians prior to his own time, is generally granted any
historical validity.

In the absence of knowledge, the historians of the past often wrote of Lycian
legends as though they had a historical basis. However, all the legends are at
odds with archaeological and proto-historic realities. It is unlikely, for
example, that the Lycians came from Crete. They are known to have been a Luwian-speaking
people, and there is not a trace of evidence that Luwians lived on Crete.

According to
Herodotus
,
Europa
had (at least) two sons,
Sarpedon
and
Minos
. When they contended for the kingship of
Crete
, their native land, Minos drove Sarpedon
and his people, the Termilae, into exile. They landed in Milyas, bearing the
ancient name of the country known later as Lycia, which was tenanted by the
Solymi. Subsequently Lycus, the son of
Pandion II
of
Athens
, driven into exile by his brother, King
Aegeus
, settled among the Termilae. They named
it Lycia after him. Herodotus ends his tale with the observation that the
Lycians were
matrilineal
.

Lycia appears elsewhere in Greek myth, such as in the story of
Bellerophon
, who eventually succeeded to the
throne of the Lycian king
Iobates
(or Amphianax). Lycia was frequently
mentioned by Homer
as an ally of

Troy. In Homer’s
Iliad
, the Lycian contingent was said to have
been led by two esteemed warriors:
Sarpedon
(son of

Zeus and
Laodamia
) and
Glaucus
(son of
Hippolochus
).

Dynastic period

Acquisition by
Cyrus the Great

Herodotus writes more credibly of contemporaneous events, especially where
they concerned his native land. Asia Minor had been partly conquered by the
Iranians, starting with the
Scythians
, then the
Medes
. The latter were defeated by the
Persians
, who incorporated them and their lands
into the new
Persian Empire
.
Cyrus the Great
, founder of the
Achaemenid
dynasty, resolved to complete the
conquest of Anatolia as a prelude to operations further west, to be carried out
by his successors. He assigned the task to
Harpagus
, a Median general, who proceeded to
subdue the various states of Anatolia, one by one, some by convincing them to
submit, others through military action.

Arriving at the southern coast of Anatolia in 546 BC, the army of Harpagus
encountered no problem with the Carians and their immediate Greek neighbors and
alien populations, who submitted peacefully. In the Xanthus Valley an army of
Xanthians sallied out to meet them, fighting determinedly, although vastly
outnumbered. Driven into the citadel, they collected all their property,
dependents and slaves into a central building, and burned them up. Then, after
taking an oath not to surrender, they died to a man fighting the Persians,
foreshadowing and perhaps setting an example for Spartan conduct at the
Battle of Thermopylae
a few generations later.
Coincidentally archaeology has turned up a major fire on the acropolis of
Xanthus in the mid-6th century BC, but as Antony Keen points out, there is no
way to connect that fire with the event presented by Herodotus. It might have
been another fire. The Caunians, says Herodotus, followed a similar example
immediately after. If there was an attempt by any of the states of Lycia to join
forces, as happened in Greece 50 years later, there is no record of it,
suggesting that no central government existed. Each state awaited its own fate
alone.

Herodotus also says or implies that 80 Xanthian families were away at the
time, perhaps with the herd animals in alpine summer pastures (pure
speculation), but helped repopulate the place. However, he reports, the
Xanthians of his time were mainly descended from non-Xanthians. Looking for any
nuance that might shed light on the repopulation of Xanthus, Keen interprets
Herodotus’ “those Lycians who now say that they are Xanthians” to mean that
Xanthus was repopulated by other Lycians (and not by Iranians or other
foreigners). Herodotus says nothing of the remainder of Lycia; presumably, that
is true because they submitted without further incident. Lycia was well
populated and flourished as a Persian satrapy; moreover, they spoke mainly
Lycian.

The Harpagid theory

The Harpagid Theory was initiated by
Charles Fellows
, discoverer of the
Xanthian Obelisk
, and person responsible for
the transportation of the Xanthian Marbles from Lycia to the
British Museum
. Fellows could not read the
Lycian inscription, except for one line identifying a person of illegible name,
to whom the monument was erected, termed the son of Arppakhu in Lycian,
equivalent to Greek
Harpagos
. Concluding that this person was the
conqueror of Lycia in 546, Fellows conjectured that Harpagos had been made
permanent satrap of Lycia for his services; moreover, the position was
hereditary, creating a Harpagid Dynasty. This theory prevailed nearly without
question for several generations.

To the inscriptions of the Xanthian Obelisk were added those of the
Letoon trilingual
, which gave a sequel, as it
were, to the names on the obelisk. Studies of coin legends, initiated by
Fellows, went on. Currently most, but not all, of the Harpagid Theory, has been
rejected. The Achaemenids utilized no permanent satrapies; the political
circumstances changed too often. The conqueror of new lands was seldom made
their satrap; he went on to other conquests. It was not the Persian custom to
grant hereditary satrapies; satrap was only a step in the
cursus honorum
. And finally, a destitute
mountain country would have been a poor reward for Cyrus’ best general. The main
evidence against the Harpagid Theory (as Keen calls it) is the reconstruction of
the name of the Xanthian Obelisk’s deceased as Lycian Kheriga, Greek Gergis (Nereid
Monument), a king reigning approximately 440-410 BC, over a century
later than the conqueror of Lycia.

The next logical possibility is that Kheriga’s father, Arppakhu, was a
descendant of the conqueror. In opposition, Keen reconstructs the dynastic
sequence from coin inscriptions as follows. Kheriga had two grandfathers,
Kuprlli and Kheriga. The younger Kheriga was the successor of Kuprlli. The
latter’s son, therefore, Kheziga, who was Kheriga’s uncle, must have predeceased
Kuprlli. Arppakhu is listed as regnant on two other inscriptions, but he did not
succeed Kuprlli. He must therefore have married a daughter of Kuprlli, and have
also predeceased the long-lived Kuprlli. The latter then was too old to reign de
facto. On the contemporaneous deaths of both him and his son-in-law, Kheriga,
named after his paternal grandfather, acquired the throne.

Kuprlli was the first king recorded for certain (there was an earlier
possible) in the coin legends. He reigned approximately 480-440. Harpagos was
not related by blood. The conqueror, therefore, was not the founder of the line,
which was not Harpagid. An Iranian family, however, producing some other
Harpagids, did live in Lycia and was of sufficient rank to marry the king’s
daughter. As to whether the Iranian family were related to any satrap, probably
not. Herodotus says that Satrapy 1 (the satrapies were numbered) consisted of
Ionia, Magnesia, Aeolia, Caria, Lycia, Milya, and Pamphylia, who together paid a
tax of 400 silver talents. This satrapy was later broken up and recombined. Keen
hypothesizes that since Caria had responsibility for the King’s Highway through
Lycia, Lycia and Caria were a satrapy.

The Lycian monarchy

The
Achaemenid
policy toward Lycia was hands-off.
There was not even a satrap stationed in the country. The reason for this
tolerance after such a determined initial resistance is that the Iranians were
utilizing another method of control: the placement of aristocratic Persian
families in a region to exercise putative home rule. There is some evidence that
the Lycian population was not as docile as the Persian hand-off policy would
suggest. A section of the
Persepolis Administrative Archives
called the
Persepolis Fortification Tablets, regarding the redistribution of goods and
services in the Persepolis
palace economy
, mentions some redistributed
prisoners of war, among whom were the Turmirla or Turmirliya, Lycian Trm̃mili, “Lycians.”
They lived during the reign of
Darius I
(522-486), the tablets dating from
509.

For closer attention to their conquered, the Persian government preferred to
establish a
client state
, setting up a monarchy under their
control. The term “dynast”
has come into use among English-speaking scholars, but that is not a native
term. The Lycian inscriptions indicate the monarch was titled xñtawati, more
phonetically khñtawati. The holders of this title can be traced in coin legends,
having been given the right to coin. Lycia had a single monarch, who ruled the
entire country from a palace at Xanthos. The monarchy was hereditary, hence the
term “dynast.” It was utilized by Persia as a means of transmitting Persian
policy. It must have been they who put down local resistance and transported the
prisoners to Persepolis, or ordered them transported. Some members of the
dynasty were Iranian, but mainly it was native Lycian. If the survivors of 546
were in fact herdsmen (speculation), then all the Xanthian nobility had
perished, and the Persians must have designated some other Lycian noble, whom
they could trust.

The first dynast is believed to be the person mentioned in the last line of
the Greek epigram inscribed on the
Xanthian Obelisk
, which says “this monument has
brought glory to the family (genos) of ka[]ika,” which has a letter missing. It
is probably not *karikas, for Kherika, as the latter is translated in the
Letoon trilingual
as Gergis. A more likely
possibility is *kasikas for Kheziga, the same as Kheriga’s uncle, the successor
to Kuprlli, who predeceased him.

Herodotus mentions that the leader of the Lycian fleet under
Xerxes
in the
Second Persian War
of 480 BC was Kuberniskos
Sika, previously interpreted as “Cyberniscus, the son of Sicas,” two non-Lycian
names. A slight regrouping of the letters obtains kubernis kosika, “Cybernis,
son of Cosicas,” where Cosicas is for Kheziga. Cybernis went to the bottom of
the Straits of Salamis with the entire Lycian fleet in the
Battle of Salamis
, but he may be commemorated
by the Harpy Tomb
. According to this theory, Cybernis
was the KUB of the first coin legends, dated to the window, 520-500. The date
would have been more towards 500.

There is a gap, however, between him and Kuprlli, who should have had a
father named the same as his son, Kheziga. The name Kubernis does not appear
again. Keen suggests that
Darius I
created the kingship on reorganizing
the satrapies in 525, and that on the intestate death of Kubernis in battle, the
Persians chose another relative named Kheziga, who was the father of Kuprlli.
The Lycian dynasty may therefore be summarized as follows:

Classical period

Following the ousting of the Persians, as Athens and Sparta fought the
Peloponnesian wars, the majority of Lycian cities defaulted from the Delian
League, with the exception of Telmessos and Phaselis.

In 429 BC, Athens sent an expedition against Lycia to try to force it to
rejoin the league. This failed when Lycia’s leader Gergis of Xanthos defeated
General Melasander. The Lycians once again fell under Persian domination, and
were ruled by men such as
Mithrapata
(late 4th century BC), whose name
was Persian, and by 412 BC, Lycia is documented as fighting on the winning side
of Persia. The Persian
satraps
were re-installed, but (as the coinage
of the time attests) they allowed local dynasts the freedom to rule. Persia held
Lycia until it was conquered by
Alexander III (the Great)

of Macedon
during 334–333 BC.

Hellenistic period

After the
death of Alexander the Great
in 324 BC,
his generals
fought amongst themselves over the
succession. Lycia fell into the hands of the general
Antigonus
by 304 BC. In 301 BC Antigonus was
killed by an alliance of the other successors of Alexander, and Lycia became a
part of the kingdom of
Lysimachus
, who ruled until he was killed in
battle in 281 BC. By 240 BC Lycia was part of the
Ptolemaic Kingdom
, centred on Egypt, and
remained in their control through 200 BC. It had apparently come under
Seleucid
control by 190 BC, when the Seleucids’
defeat in the
Battle of Magnesia
resulted in Lycia being
awarded to Rhodes
in the
Peace of Apamea
in 188 BC. It was then granted
autonomy as a protectorate of

Rome in 168 BC and remained so until becoming a Roman province in
43 AD under Claudius.

Lycian League

Formation

The Lycian League (Lukiakou systema in Strabo’s Greek transliterated, a
“standing together”) is first known from two inscriptions of the early 2nd
century BC in which it honors two citizens. Bryce hypothesizes that it was
formed as an agent to convince Rome to rescind the annexation of Lycia to
Rhodes
. Lycia had been under Rhodian control
since the
Peace of Apamea
in 188 BC. A fragment from

Livy records a “pitiful embassy” in 178 BC from Lycia to the Roman
Senate complaining that the Lycians were being treated as slaves. Whipping had
been instituted as corporeal punishment and the women and children were being
abused. The Romans sent back a stern warning with the Lycians to Rhodes saying
that they had not intended the Lycians or any other people born in freedom to be
enslaved by Rhodes, and that the assignment was only a protectorate. A fragment
from Polybius
tells a slightly different version of
the story, which has the Romans sending legates to Rhodes to say that “the
Lycians had not been handed over to Rhodes as a gift, but to be treated like
friends and allies.” The Rhodians sent an embassy in return claiming that the
Lycians had made the story up for reasons of their own and that in fact they
were a financial burden on Rhodes.

The continuation of the story did not survive, but in 168 BC, Rome took Lycia
away from Rhodes and turned over home rule to the League. There was no question
of independence. Lycia was not to be sovereign, only self-governing under
republican principles. It could neither negotiate with foreign powers nor
disobey the Roman Senate. It was not independent. It could govern its own people
and for a time mint its own coins as a right granted by Rome. It did not
determine its own borders. Land and people could be assigned or taken away by
the Senate. Remarking on this protectorate Strabo says of the government:

“Formerly they deliberated about war and peace, and alliances, but this
is not now permitted, as these things are under the control of the Romans.
It is only done by their consent, or when it may be for their own
advantage.”

Exactly what such a statement might imply is uncertain. Lycia had not been a
sovereign state for some time. Whether the Lycian League as such is meant,
implying that it existed anciently, or some other similar government is meant,
is not clear. The statement does not say also whether there was a gap between
the former sovereign state and the new Lycian League, or whether they are to be
conceived as chronologically continuous.

Composition

According to Strabo, the league comprised some 23 known
city-states
as members.
Lucius Licinius Murena
(elder), Roman consul,
added three more in 81 BC:
Balbura
,
Bubon
and
Oenoanda
, which he had stripped from another
systema to the north, the Tetrapolis, Cibyratis, or Cabalian League. It was
dominated by the city of Cibyra (Kibyra),
which formed a league approximately contemporaneously with the Lycian League.
Cibyra ruled the
Turkish Lakes Region
. It was called Cibyra
Megale, “Greater Cibyra,” to distinguish it from
Cibyra Mikra
or “Little Cibyra” (today near
Okurcalar) near Side
. The lakes region is a string of alpine
valleys in the folds of the Taurus Mountains, which have no natural exits.
Instead they have collected lakes. Cibyra was on a low hill to the west of
Gölhisar Valley and Gölhisar Lake, just north of
Gölhisar
.

Cibyra dominated an ancient region, Cabalis, which was divided between the
later states of Lycia,
Pisidia
and
Lydia
, subsequently incorporated in
Phrygia
. According to Strabo, it spoke four
languages,
Lydian
, even though Lydian had disappeared
elsewhere, Greek, Pisidian and “that of the
Solymi
.” Cabalis, which was later divided into
Lycian and Asian Cabalis, was the putative home of the Solymi. It included the
Milyas District of Lycia, putatively the home of the first Lycians. It is
possible that they spoke a form of Anatolian earlier than the attested Lycian,
which some have dubbed “Milyan.” A further connection of this “Milyan” with
Lycian B of the
Xanthian Obelisk
is pure fantasy.

Unlike the Lycian League, the Cibyratis was ruled by a succession of
deliberately ostentatious and high-handed tyrants. Having become a thorn in the
side of Rome, they attracted the attention of
Gnaeus Manlius Vulso
, commander of the Roman
armies successfully fighting the
Galatian War
of 189 BC. Manlius turned toward
Cibyratis with the intent of removing the thorn. The tyrant, Moagetes, barely
escaped with his life and his position by entering the Roman camp dressed in
humble clothing, with a handful of similarly dressed assistants, claiming
destitution and begging for mercy. He offered a payment of 15 talents. Manlius
set the payment at 500 talents, a huge sum, impossible of payment. Finally moved
to mercy, he allowed Moagetes to bargain him down to 100 and a substantial
payment of grain, necessary to the Roman commissary.

When the Romans had departed Moagetes dropped the pretense, and Cibyratis
resumed its arrogance. Consequently, when Murena did finally deal with Cibyratis,
he had no political mercy. Strabo says that Bubon and Balbura were transferred
to the Lycian League forthwith. He does not mention Oenoanda, but it had been a
city of the Lycians anyway. It minted coinage of the League subsequently. There
is no evidence that Cibyra was ever admitted to the League, although that
assumption sometimes is made. It was in Asian Cabalia and as such was joined to
Phrygia later, an event supported by their coin issues. The last tyrant of the
Tetrapolis was also named Moagetes, a different one, unless the term was a
title, or Strabo made a mistake.

The 23 at first and then 26 city states joined together in a federal-style
government that shared political and economic resources. A “Lyciarch” was
elected by a senate (συνέδριον, synedrion, “sitting together”) that convened by
agreement beforehand at “what city they please.” Each member had one, two or
three votes (presumably by different representatives), depending on the city’s
size. The diminishment of some cities over time caused them to join with the
major state in their vicinity to form a sympolity. In that case they lost their
vote (if they had one) assuming an influence in the vote of the major city.
After election of the Lyciarch the Senate voted for the other public officials
and the magistrates. The League’s government took precedence, but, as in many
federal systems, the issue was not entirely settled, and the resulting civil
conflict led to the dissolution of the union.

Strabo identified the major cities of the League; that is, the three-vote
cities, as Xanthos
,
Patara
,
Pinara
,
Olympos
,

Myra, and Tlos
, with Patara as the capital. The full
complement has been identified by a study of the coins and mention in other
texts. The coins recognize two districts, termed, for want of a better term,
“monetary districts:” Masicytus and Cragus, both named after mountain ranges, in
the shadow of which, presumably, the communities lived and conducted business.
Where coinage before the Lycian League had often been stamped LY for Lycia, it
was now stamped KP (kr) or MA.

Treaty with Rome

An inscription from Tyberissos records the treaty between Rome and Lycian
League, which is of a type the Romans called a foedus. It was much used
between Italian cities and Rome, except that their treaties provided for
contributions to Rome, but this one does not. There is a general statement and
four clauses. The general statement establishes “peace, friendship, and loyal
alliance … by land and sea for all time.” The four clauses provide for
neutrality of Rome to the enemies of the Lycian League, neutrality of the Lycian
League to the enemies of Rome, mutual assistance in the case of first aggression
by an enemy against either, and alteration of the treaty only by joint
agreement. The treaty is written as though between independent and co-equal
states, but all parties knew that this was conventional hypocrisy. The Lycian
League was subject to the decisions of the Roman Senate and the decrees of the
Roman emperors, but not vice versa. Only the Roman state was powerful.

Roman period

In 43 AD, the emperor
Claudius
annexed Lycia to the
Roman Empire
as a province and by the time of
Vespasian
, it was united with
Pamphylia
as a Roman province. The heir of
Augustus
,
Gaius Caesar
, was killed there in 4 AD.

Byzantine era

It subsequently was a part of the
Byzantine Empire
.

 

Turkish era

It was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire and eventually became part of
Turkey
. A substantial
Christian
community of
Greeks
lived in Lycia until the 1920s when they
were forced to migrate to
Greece
after the
population exchange between Greece and Turkey

following the
Greco-Turkish War
in the early 20th century.
The abandoned Greek villages in the region are a striking reminder of this
exodus. Abandoned Greek houses can still be seen at in the towns of
Demre
,
Kalkan
and
Kas
, and Kaya is a Greek ghost town. A small
population of Turkish farmers moved into the region when the Lycian Greeks
migrated to Greece. The region is now one of the key centres of domestic and
foreign tourism in Turkey.