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Home , Geography (Ptolemy), Lycia

CHAP'IERTWO

THE LYCIAN PEOPLE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT

1 and communications in Lycia1

Lycia lies on the south-west coast of Minor, between and Pam• phylia. At the period of its smallest extent, at the time of the Persian con• quest, the Lycian state covered an area comparable in size to Attica, ex• tending over most of the territory of the valley, probably as far north as , more than forty kilometres away from Xanthos, and nearly fifty from the Mediterranean; Bryce has argued that to '' meant no more than the Xanthos valley. 2 At its largest, under Perikle of (pp. 154-70), the Lycian state was comparable in size to the south• ern (i.e. Laconia and Messenia), stretching from in the east to Telemessos in the north-west, nearly a hundred and thirty kilo• metres as the crow flies, and included a large section of southern , if not all of it (p. 20). It is separated from its neighbours by high mountains which hampered movement in antiquity. 3 This remoteness continued into modern times-when Bean first visited the area in 1946 he found a country where tractors were unknown, and:

When I asked, 'What do you do in the winter?', the answer was, 'We sit'.4 Three great chains determine access to and within Lycia. In the west two spurs of the western Tauros, the Boncuk Daglan and the Baba Dag1 (this latter being ancient Mt. Kragos and Mt. Antikragos) restrict access to Ly• cia to the pass between them, east of Telemessos. This division is clearly noticeable; the open wide plains of the <;ay1 (ancient Indos) and Nif <;ay1 (ancient Glaukos) give way rapidly to high forested mountains, traversable even today only by narrow roads. Nonetheless, there is no other reasonable means for an army to enter Lycia from Caria other than the pass north of Mt. Antikragos. West of Mts. Kragos and Antikragos the cities were of a mixed Lycio-

1 For full discus.sirn of the tqiogmphy ofLycia: Treuber 1887: 10-11; Mascn 1942: 93-95, 145-48; Bayburtluoglu, Bord:Jhardt 1990; Kolb, Kupke 1992: 4-8. 2 Bryce 1986: 13. 3 On Lycia's isolatirn: Treuber 1887: 9-12. Mascn 1942: 93 describes it as having "rugged, indented shores, from \WidJ. communicatirns inland are very difficuh". 4 Bean 1978: 5. 14 CHAPrERTwo

Carian culture, the citizens quite possibly often bilingual. Coinage of the area has been found with Lycian names inscribed in Carian letters.' at the western edge of this area is always described as Carian until the sixth century A.D.,6 yet has tombs very similar to a typical late Lycian type, 7 whilst Krya, at this time acknowledged as Carian, has three tombs which are certainly of a Lycian type. 1 It may be that the language of the Kaunians, described by ( 1.172.1) as similar to that of the Cari• ans but not identical, was in fact a Carian dialect which borrowed from Ly• cian. In Telemessos, a coastal city, one is constantly aware of the mountains rising up to the south, and the city seems very much enclosed. There is, however, a small fertile plain to the east. 9 To leave Telemessos by land even today one is forced to travel east, even if one is actually attempting to reach the southern coast of the peninsular (the modem resort of Olii Deniz). From Telemessos to the Xanthos valley was a two-day trek with a donkey even as recently as 1946. 10 The valley of the Xanthos river (modem E~en <;ay1) is long and rela• tively wide for river valleys in Lycia (fifteen to twenty kilometres for most of its length), though small in comparison to the great river plains of the Aegean coast of . According to Aleman, the river's streams were yellow, but that is probably because ~civ8o~ was the Greek word for 'yellow' ,11 to which the original Hittite name of the river, Siyanti (p. 57), had become assimilated. 12 It stretches from the mountains at Araxa to the coast at , flanked by mountain ranges, running inland for around thirty kilometres, providing a fertile plain in stark contrast to the moun• tains either side. Homer (II. 12.314) says that the finest land there (that assigned to Sarpedon and Glaukos) was "rich in vineyard and wheat-bear• ing ploughland" (1eaMv qn>'taAt ft~ 1eal cxpo'i>pTJ~ 1tupocp6poto ). 13 Though Aeschylus (Supp. 870) describes the tomb of Sarpedon at Xanthos as 'very sandy' (noiuwaµ.µ.ov), the dunes that are now characteristic of Xanthos

' Masscn 1974: 124-30. 6 The earliest descripticn of it as Lycim:1 is Hierocl. Synecdemus 685.1. It was pem.aps added to Lfcia as part ofthe provincial reorganiz.aticn ofDiocldi.m:1; see Bem:1 1978: 30. Roos 1972: 95. 8 Roos 1985: 33-35. 9 Ruge 1934b: 414 describestheseplains as 'wide' ("weiten"), wbidi is a slight exaggeraticn, m:1d fruit-bearing ("fruditbaren"). Ruge, followed by Laumcnier 1958: 613-14, believes that Cic. Div. 1.42.94, \WO refers to fertile fields cultivated by the Telemessi1D1S of Caria, is in fact a refer• ence to Lycim:1 Caria; but against thisBem:1, Cook 1955: 153; Harvey 1991: 249. 10 Bem:1 1978: 5. 11 LSJ, 1187 s. v. ~ttv86\j. 12 It is somdimes said that the streams are yellow, though I have not myself observed sudi coloraticn. Homer's descripticn of the river as 'swirling' (6tvft£t\j: fl. 2.877, 5.479), however, is reco~ble today \Were it flows past the outcrq, en whidi Xm:1thos the city sits. 1 Tr. Hammcnd 1987: 220.