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Iasos MINOAN
and Mycenean seafarers looking for settlement sites in the second millennium BC
favoured low promontories or peninsulas with beaches on which to draw up their
ships. The drop-shaped peninsula of Iasos is just such a place, and, sure
enough, Minoan and Mycenean pottery has been found here by the Italian
excavators, as it has at Miletos and other places on this coast. The remains
which concern us however belong to the classical period and later.
Ancient Iasos depended on fi sh and prawns for its livelihood, and still today
it is famed for its fi sh and there are fi sh-farms growing sea-bass and
sea-bream in the sea north of the site. This shallow rich sea (known as the
Little Sea in antiquity) originally extended much further north over the area of
drained marshland on which Bodrum-Milas airport now lies. Dolphins are common in
the area, and one of principal motifs of Iasean coinage is a boy swimming with a
dolphin. Strabo tells us that the soil of Iasos was poor, though today it
produces some of the best olive-oil in Turkey. Ancient Iasos was also known for
its quarries of pinkish marble.
The site occupies the whole of the peninsula, which was originally defended by a
fi ne Hellenistic wall; little of this now remains for many blocks were removed
in barges in the nineteenth century to build the quays of Istanbul, a fate which
befell several other ancient sites on the west coast of Turkey. Immediately
across the isthmus a stretch of fl at ground contains some of the main public
buildings, including a colonnaded agora rebuilt in the late 130s AD, within
which are the remains of a Byzantine basilical church and its graveyard. Around
or near the agora are a well-preserved semi-circular council chamber; a possible
sebasteion (temple for the worship of a Roman emperor); a probable sanctuary of
Artemis Astias, where the statue of the goddess is reported to have stood open
to the sky, for her father Zeus protected her when he sent rain or snow; and a
Roman bath-house and gymnasium. Further up the hill is the large but poorly
preserved theatre built in the fourth century BC with Roman additions, and
facing north-east (although more Greek theatres seem to face west than in any
other direction, there was no hard and fast rule, and the terrain available
seems to have been the determining factor). Continuing towards the fortress of
the acropolis, whose present walls may have have been built by the Knights of St
John, we reach a basilical church, built originally in the 6th century but
converted to a much smaller church a few centuries later. Further south is an
opulent Roman mansion with mosaics and frescoes, and nearby is a poorly
preserved sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, as usual set well away from the
centre of the city.
On the mainland is the necropolis of the ancient city with tombs going back to
prehistoric times. The most striking is a reconstructed mausoleum of the Roman
period; standing in its own colonnaded courtyard near the remains of an
aqueduct, it takes the form of a Corinthian temple on a podium which originally
had ten steps, and within which are several burial chambers. The courtyard has
been restored and converted into a museum housing the important inscriptions
found on the site and other artefacts. The other noteworthy structure on the
mainland is an unfi nished wall over 2.5 km long dating to the fi fth or fourth
centuries BC; Bean plausibly suggests that it was built as protection for the
camp of Amorges, a Persian nobleman who revolted from the Persian king and
maintained himself at Iasos until it was captured and sacked by the Spartan
allies of the Persian king in 412 BC.