BC 300 – AD 700
Sidyma
A city on the slope of Mount Cragus, now folded into the village of Dodurga. The emperor Marcian served here as a soldier before he took the throne.
- Lycian League votes
- 1
- Location
- 36.4092° N, 29.1932° E
- Today
- Dodurga · Seydikemer, Muğla
This city in history
The shape of the city changes
after 323 BC · 3rd c. BC
In the Hellenistic century the Lycian city is poured into the Greek mould: agora, theatre, gymnasium, council house. Walls are laid in dressed ashlar — the fifteen towers of Pydnai and the walls of Sidyma are the measure of that craft. The rock-cut tomb, meanwhile, stubbornly endures.
On the Lycian Way
The shadow of the eagle
Alınca – Sidyma
After Alınca the way turns inland and reaches Sidyma: a small but full member of the League, today a scatter of sarcophagi and tomb monuments inside a village. There is a story here — the soldier Marcian fell asleep on the road and an eagle spread its wing to shade him from the sun; a seer read it as a sign of empire. Marcian did become emperor (450–457); the tale is the one the Byzantine chroniclers tell.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
In mythology
Letoon is founded
Leto
Leto is taken in where she found the water, and there she stays. In time three temples rise: Leto in the middle, Apollo and Artemis to either side. The sanctuary is the house not of a goddess but of a family — and for the Lycians the hearth not of one city but of the whole country.