|
Greek city of Phaselis in Lycia
Bronze 17mm (3.82 grams)
Struck circa 300-200 B.C.
Reference: Sear 5341; B.M.C. 19.80,5,7; Heipp-Tamer B-20; SNG Copenhagen 12
Prow of galley right.
Stern of galley right, ΦΑΣH above.
Phaselis, an important sea-power town in Lycia, near the borders of Pamphylia, stood on the gulf of Pamphylia, at the foot of Mt. Solyma, in a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. The only Lycian city of purely Greek origin, Phaselis was founded from Rhodes circa 690 B.C. Situated on the inhospitable coast, it’s fine harbors ensured the development of the place as a great commercial center. From its position, and its command of 3 fine harbors, it soon gained an extensive commerce. It did not belong to the Lycian confederacy, but had an independent government of its own. It became afterwards the headquarters of the pirates who infested the south coasts of Asia Minor, and was therefore destroyed by P. Servilius Isauricus; and though the city was restored, it never recovered its importance. Phaselis is said to have been the place at which the light quick vessels called φάσηλοι were first built, and the figure of such a ship appears on its coins. The abundance of its 3rd century silver coinage is evidence of the prosperity of Phaselis in early Hellenistic times, a period of numismatic inactivity at the native Lycian mints.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of 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 BC 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.
|
