BC 700 – AD 1200
Myra
Myrrh · Demre
Tombs cut into the cliff like a honeycomb, with a great Roman theatre below them. The church of Saint Nicholas, bishop of the city in the 4th century, is still standing.
- Lycian League votes
- 3
- Location
- 36.2580° N, 29.9854° E
- Today
- Demre, Antalya
This city in history
The Koinon Lykion is founded
168 BC · after 168 BC
Freedom does not scatter the cities, it draws them together: twenty-three of them found a common assembly. Its name is the Koinon Lykion — the League of the Lycians. Each city runs its own affairs; war, coinage, foreign relations and the high court are held in common.
Three votes, two votes, one vote
168 BC · 2nd c. BC
The League’s invention is weighted representation: the six largest cities hold three votes each, the middling ones two, the small ones one. Costs and taxes are divided in the same proportion. Neither do the great crush the small, nor the small live off the backs of the great.
One coinage, one army
168 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
The League strikes its own silver: the head of Apollo on one face, a lyre and the legend ΛΥΚΙΩΝ on the other — with the initials of the minting city along the edge. One currency, one army, thirty cities each with its own square: here the idea of federation takes solid form.
The age of twenty-three cities
~168–43 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
For a century Lycia governs itself and grows rich. Twenty-three voting cities, together with the dozens of towns around them, make up a single political body. The region’s population, its buildings and its trade stand at the height of their history.
A road map in stone
AD 43 · AD 45
The monument set up at the entrance to Patara lists every road and every distance in the new province: more than sixty routes, written out mile by mile. The Stadiasmus Patarensis is the most detailed road document to survive from the Roman world.
The League lives on, on paper
AD 43 · AD 1st–2nd c.
Rome does not abolish the League; it turns it into a provincial assembly. The title of Lyciarch survives, but the man who holds it is now high priest of the imperial cult. The cities still gather, still vote — only now a governor’s signature sits above their decisions.
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.
The earth shakes
AD 2nd–4th c. · AD 141
A great earthquake strikes Lycia from end to end. From Telmessos to Myra, theatres, colonnaded streets and baths come down. The inscriptions say the cities were levelled to the ground. The largest rebuilding effort in the region’s history begins.
The fortune of Opramoas
AD 2nd–4th c. · c. AD 125–155
After the earthquake, Opramoas of Rhodiapolis rains money on dozens of cities: theatres, baths, granaries, dowry funds. The inscription covering the walls of his mausoleum records what he gave to each city, one by one — the longest record of benefaction in the ancient world.
The century of marble
AD 2nd–4th c. · AD 2nd c.
The cities rise more splendid than they had been before they fell: Hadrian’s granary at Patara, a theatre for fifteen thousand at Myra, five stacked terraces at Arycanda, baths and a stadium at Tlos. Most of the ruins walked through today are the work of this century.
Nicholas of Myra
AD 2nd–4th c. · c. AD 270–343
Nicholas, bishop of Myra, is remembered for saving the city’s grain in a famine and for the purses of dowry money he left in secret. After his death he is held the protector of sailors and of children; over the centuries his name travels to Europe, and there becomes Father Christmas.
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 saint whose bones were stolen
AD ~395–1300 · AD 1087
When Seljuk raids leave Myra defenceless, merchants from the Italian city of Bari carry off the bones of Saint Nicholas. The saint belongs to Bari now; Myra loses its pilgrims. The city’s greatest source of income vanishes in a single night.
The names remain
AD ~395–1300 · AD 13th–14th c.
Turkmen principalities settle the region, and the Teke beylik takes the coast. The ancient cities empty one by one, and their stones are absorbed into village houses. But the names hold on: Telmessos becomes Fethiye, Antiphellos becomes Kaş, Myra becomes Demre, a lord’s manor is raised on the acropolis of Tlos — and the map is still waiting to be read.
On the Lycian Way
Five hundred and forty kilometres
Likya Yolu
A line that begins at Ovacık above Fethiye and ends at Geyikbayırı, on the doorstep of Antalya. The Lycian Way was waymarked in 1999 — so the path itself is young. The ground it treads is not: goat and mule tracks, short stretches of Roman paving, steps cut into rock, cisterns. The route passes through or below some twenty-five ancient cities. Its worth lies not in its own age but in what it strings together.
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.
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.
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.
Natri
Apollo
In Lycian inscriptions Apollo’s name is Natri. This shows that the god was not imported but matched to a local one. In the same inscriptions Artemis appears as Ertemi and the storm god as Trqqas. The Lycians did not take on the Greek gods — they began to call their own gods by Greek names as well.
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.
Why so high?
The Harpies
Lycia’s pillar tombs are always up in the air — the monument does not stand on a base, it is the base. The dead are not put in the ground but set on high. One reason may be the belief that the soul would be taken up by birds. The rock tombs, with their façades at unreachable heights, carry the same idea on.
Nearby cities
Sura · Andriake · Trysa · Istlada · Dolichiste