BC 1400 – AD 1850
Tlos
Tlawa · Dalawa
“Dalawa” of the Hittite texts. The longest-lived city in Lycia — in the 19th century the mansion of Kanlı Ali Ağa rose on its acropolis. The rock tomb showing Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus is here.
- Lycian League votes
- 3
- Location
- 36.5550° N, 29.4197° E
- Today
- Yakaköy · Seydikemer, Muğla
Monuments and buildings
The acropolis and the castle of Kanlı Ali Ağa
The core of the city · 2nd millennium BC – AD 19th c.
A sheer crag rising some 150 metres above the Xanthos valley, and the four-thousand-year-old core of Tlos. On its summit stand, in sequence, Lycian walls, Byzantine fortifications and — at the very top — the fortified mansion of Kanlı Ali Ağa, the local lord who held the region in the 19th century. It is this unbroken occupation that makes Tlos the longest-lived city in Lycia.
The Bellerophon rock tomb
The signature of Tlos · 4th century BC
A tomb cut into the eastern face of the acropolis with the front of an Ionic temple. On the left wall of the entrance, a relief shows Bellerophon on his winged horse Pegasus attacking the Chimaera — Lycia’s founding legend worked into stone. The chamber behind the two-columned porch was never finished.
The necropolis and rock tombs
The eastern crag of the acropolis · 5th c. BC – AD 3rd c.
The eastern face of the acropolis is honeycombed with dozens of tombs. There are two main types: “house tombs” with flat lintels, turning timber house architecture into stone, and “temple tombs” with pediments. Lycian sarcophagi with pointed lids are scattered among them. On many façades a Lycian inscription sets out the fine to be paid by anyone who opens the tomb.
The theatre
A cavea facing west, towards the acropolis · AD 2nd century (on Hellenistic foundations)
East of the city, on its own terrace across the stream, stands one of the best-preserved theatres in Lycia. A cavea of thirty-four rows is divided into two tiers by a diazoma, with radial stairways slicing the seating blocks. The stage building collapsed in an earthquake; theatre masks, garlands and figured friezes can still be read on the hundreds of blocks scattered in and around the orchestra. Inscriptions say the benefactor Opramoas of Rhodiapolis contributed to the cost of finishing it.
The stadium ground
The long flat between the acropolis and the agora · Roman period
A long level ground running northwest–southeast at the eastern foot of the acropolis. Rows of seats line one long side, with a row of vaulted chambers behind them. Whether the structure was purely a stadium or also the city’s assembly ground is debated — most likely it was both.
The agora and shop buildings
The commercial heart of the city · Roman period
South of the stadium, a square running the length of the terrace with a row of shops facing it. The rooms are laid out as cells of equal width opening onto the street, with a colonnaded portico in front of them. This was both the city’s market and its formal meeting ground.
The city basilica
The episcopal church · AD 5th–6th century
Tlos was a bishopric in the Byzantine period. The three-aisled basilica, with a semicircular apse at its eastern end, follows the classic early Byzantine plan. Some of the columns dividing the aisles were taken from older buildings in the city; traces of mosaic survive in the floor.
The temple of Kronos
The chief god of the city · Roman period
A temple dedicated to Kronos, the chief god of Tlos. Kronos appears again and again on the city’s coins and inscriptions — nowhere else in Lycia is he so prominent. A small building on a podium, with columns across the front.
The Great Bath — the Seven Arches
Seven arches opening onto the valley · Roman, AD 2nd–3rd century
A large bath standing at the southern end of the city, on the lip of the terrace. Its semicircular hall looks out over the Xanthos valley through seven great arched openings — hence the name. The hypocaust piers beneath the floor of the hot room are still in place. It is the most photographed building in Lycia.
The Small Bath and palaestra
South of the agora · Roman period
The second bath, older and smaller than the great one; the colonnaded court beside it (the palaestra) served for exercise and for gathering. In ancient cities the bath–palaestra pairing is almost always built together: exercise first, then washing.
The Late Antique settlement
Housing spread across the plateau · AD 4th–7th century
The broad plateau west of the acropolis was covered in Late Antiquity by a dense fabric of housing. Small courtyard houses, cisterns and narrow lanes run into one another, and blocks stripped from older buildings were freely reused in the walls. It is the clearest evidence that Tlos went on as a living city long after Rome.
This city in history
The Yalburt inscription
~1500–1200 BC · c. 1230 BC
The Hittite king Tudhaliya IV had his Lukka campaign carved into a spring monument. The inscription names the settlements of the region one by one — and those names will still be standing a thousand years later. It is the strongest evidence we have for the continuity of the Lycian cities.
Bellerophon and the Chimaera
~800–600 BC
The founding legend of the region is set here: Bellerophon, sent to his death by the king of Lycia, kills the fire-breathing Chimaera from the back of Pegasus. Tlos claims him as its own hero and carves him into a tomb façade. The monster’s fire still burns at Yanartaş, on the slope above Olympos.
Lords who struck their own coin
5th–4th c. BC · c. 485–360 BC
At Xanthos, Kuprlli, and after him Kheriga and Erbbina, mint silver in their own names. On the coin stands the emblem of Lycia: the three-legged triskeles. The script is Lycian — the region answers to Persia, yet carries its own tongue on its money.
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.
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.
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.
In mythology
The wolves show the way
Leto
Thirsty and worn out, Leto comes upon a pack of wolves. They do not attack; they go on ahead and lead her to the bank of the river Xanthos. Leto finds water, and in gratitude names the land after them: Lykia — the country of wolves. This origin story, told by ancient writers, ties the region’s name to the Greek lykos.
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.
The sky on the coin
Trqqas
The silver of the Lycian League carries the head of Apollo — but on the earlier coins the cities struck for themselves, the emblems of the storm god turn up again and again: the thunderbolt, the bull, the eagle. If you want to know a region’s real god, do not look at the temples. Look at the money.
Lycia’s son-in-law
Bellerophon
At last Iobates accepts the truth: this young man is under the protection of the gods. He shows him the letter, gives him his daughter Philonoe, and grants him half his kingdom. Bellerophon becomes the founding ancestor of Lycia — the lines of both Sarpedon and Glaucus run back to him. On the façade of his tomb at Tlos he is shown in flight on the back of Pegasus.
A mortal son
Sarpedon
Sarpedon is the son of Zeus and the mortal Laodameia, and king of Lycia. Homer introduces him as the noblest of all the allies who come to Troy. We hear the reasoning of his kingship from his own mouth: if the best land and the fullest cups are ours, then fighting in the front rank is our debt.
The man who recited his lineage
Glaucus
Glaucus is Bellerophon’s grandson, and he leads the Lycian army together with Sarpedon. In the Iliad he recites his descent from beginning to end, and it is thanks to this that the oldest telling of the Bellerophon legend has come down to us. It is the first family tree of Lycian history in literature.
“Always to be the best”
Glaucus
Glaucus repeats the charge his father gave him: aien aristeuein kai hypeirokhon emmenai allon — always to be the best and to surpass all others. The line became one of the most quoted in the ancient world; it is still written on university crests today. And it came from the mouth of a Lycian.
For the body of Sarpedon
Glaucus
When Sarpedon falls, Glaucus prays to Apollo with his wounded arm, is healed, and takes over the command; it is he who leads the bitter fight for his king’s body. In the end he too dies before Troy. The graves of both Lycian commanders are in their own land.
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.