BC 400 – AD 600
Gagai
A small harbour on the coast; the black amber it gave its name to — jet — spread from here.
- Lycian League votes
- Not a member / unknown
- Location
- 36.2888° N, 30.3480° E
- Today
- Mavikent · Kumluca, Antalya
On the Lycian Way
Gifts to twenty-eight cities
Limyra – Rhodiapolis – Gagai
Rhodiapolis is a small city, but it produced the most generous man in Lycia: Opramoas. When the earthquake of AD 141 wrecked the region he sent money from his own fortune to twenty-eight cities — theatres, baths, walls, grain. The inscription on the wall of his tomb lists those gifts one by one and is the longest known inscription in Anatolia. From there the way descends to Gagai, on the sea.
Pirates and a fire that will not go out
Gagai – Olympos – Yanartaş
In the first century BC Olympos was a pirate nest: Zeniketes made it his stronghold, cut Rome’s Mediterranean trade and was besieged in 78 BC by Servilius Vatia — he set fire to his own castle and died in it. Above the city lies Yanartaş: gas rising from the rock has burned for thousands of years. In antiquity this was the sanctuary of Hephaestus, and the breath of the Chimaera.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
Nearby cities
Rhodiapolis · Olympos · Limyra · Phaselis · Idebessos