Assos

After Pergamum we decided to spend a few days doing the coastal backroads of Aegean Turkey, at least up to Troy. Tuesday night found us on a lay-by overlooking Assos (present-day Behramkale), in a bit of a gale. The next morning, as the skies cleared, we visited ancient Assos. It's well off the tour bus circuit, the site was actually closed for the season, but they left the gate open. Assos is important, to me, because Hermias, the 4th century BCE ruler, was a student of Plato, and he invited his schoolmate, Aristotle, to found a school of philosophy at Assos. (Which reminds me: I forgot to mention that the pre-Socratic Heraclitus was a native of Ephesus).

Um, I think this might be a more recent

representation of Aristotle

Part of the city wall, necropolis, and cliff above Assos,

which evidently provided most of the building material

A temple in the agora

Baths

Nice view from the residential section; that's Lesbos in the

distance ('distance' being a couple miles)



Very faint inscription: "Aristotle's

'Peripatetic' School of Philosophy,

Office of Career Placement Services";

actually, all this does not have a happy

ending: the Persians arrived (again) in

348 BCE, Aristotle fled to Lesbos, and

Hermias was tortured to death

Assos theatre



Greek theatres were generally placed on a hillside with a

great view (in case the play was boring); this one is hard

to beat

The seat inscriptions are usually for the stone masons'

guild or the tanners' guild, et al; this one is for the followers

of the Sarapis cult (an Egyptian god)