BC 400 – AD 900
Andriake
The harbour of Myra, a port of call for the Alexandria–Rome grain fleet. The vast granary built by Hadrian still stands.
- Lycian League votes
- Not a member / unknown
- Location
- 36.2267° N, 29.9571° E
- Today
- Çayağzı · Demre, Antalya
This city in history
Egypt’s century
after 323 BC · c. 309–197 BC
For roughly a hundred years the coast belongs to the Ptolemies. There is a garrison at Limyra and a shipyard at Patara; for a time the city goes by the queen’s name, “Arsinoe”. Lycian timber feeds the Egyptian navy, and Lycian harbours the grain road to Alexandria.
Cedar, olives, grain
~168–43 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
The Lycian mountains yield ship timber, the plains olives and grain. The quays of Patara and Andriake are stops on the road to Alexandria and Rome; Phaselis is the gateway to eastern trade. Harbours multiply along the coast, and inland new cisterns and olive presses.
Changing ship at Myra
AD 43 · c. AD 60
The Acts of the Apostles records that Paul, under arrest and on his way to Rome, was transferred at Myra to a grain ship out of Alexandria. Andriake is the great transhipment harbour on the empire’s grain road — Hadrian’s vast granary still stands there.
Danger out of the sea
AD ~395–1300 · AD 655–809
For centuries Arab fleets probe the coast; the Battle of the Masts is fought in these waters in 655, and Myra is sacked in 809. The coastal cities shrink and the people withdraw to the castles above. As the harbours go dark, the walls on the hilltops rise.
The coast that went under
AD ~395–1300 · AD 2nd–6th c.
Earthquakes draw the coastline down step by step. At Kekova the stairways, doorsills and quays of Dolichiste pass beneath the water. The harbour of Andriake silts up, the walls of Aperlae walk into the sea. The map changes without a sound.
On the Lycian Way
Rome’s grain harbour
Simena – Myra – Andriake
The rock tombs of Myra pierce the slope like a honeycomb; below them the theatre, further on the church of St Nicholas. Its harbour Andriake was imperial business: Hadrian’s granary still stands, inscription and all. Paul, being taken to Rome under guard, changed ships here — Acts 27 — onto an Alexandrian grain vessel.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
In mythology
The fish of Sura
Apollo
Lycia’s second oracle was at Sura, and its method was altogether different: meat was thrown into a sacred pool fed from the sea, and the behaviour of the fish was read. A fish that took the meat meant good; one that pushed it away with its tail meant ill. The small temple and the seer’s pool are still in place today.
Artemis Eleuthera
Artemis
The chief goddess of Myra was Artemis Eleuthera — Artemis the free, or the liberator. The city’s largest temple was hers, and hers was among the wealthiest cults in Lycia. When Christianity came, this temple was the first building at Myra to be pulled down; the legend of Saint Nicholas begins immediately after that demolition.
A country that lives with the sea
The Nereids
The Lycian coast is full of islands, coves and sunken cities; here the sea is not a border but a road. So the Nereids appear not only on one monument but on the coins and votive offerings of the coastal cities. A people who put out to sea every day take the nymphs of the sea along with them.
Nearby cities
Sura · Myra · Istlada · Trysa · Dolichiste