Priene

It was at Priene, another Ionian League city, that Vicki articulated her "great houses" theory of touring classical ruins. In the UK of GB, a year ago, we toured dozens of the great houses. (We had National Trust and English Heritage passes). Yes, they all have certain similarities: big houses, great halls, art work, parks, grounds, gardens, follies. Taking a little more time with them, as we did, we began to see more of the historical/cultural/political/regional/other nuances. They are all quite different and quite interesting, despite the superficial similarities. (There is also a similar approach to touring cathedrals...). Anyhow, we have now attained that state where, despite the same old stones, theatres, stadia, agora, baths, nymphanea, etc., we are beginning to see each of these ruins as quite distinct and different. Of course they can't have the richness that great houses have with all their furniture, decorative arts, landscaping, recent history, familiarity, etc. (Museums can supply some of this for the ancients). But I digress.

Priene was not a coastal city but was rather well up the Menderes Valley, perched on a hilltop at the foot of Mt. Mykales' great face. As an Ionian League city, it could trace its origins to the Greek colonists who settled many of these places, sometime around 1,000 BCE. For whatever reasons, the Romans were never attracted to Priene; its influence waned, and, by Byzantine times, it was abandoned. And so it remains one of the very best examples of a purely Greek/Hellenistic city. And it is relatively well preserved.

Here's what archaeologists think it looked like, in its hey-day

Columns of Priene's Temple of Athena, 4th century BCE

Column-building is quite elementary, you see; you just

match "A" to "A" and "B" to "B" and then proceed on up

until finished

Menderes Valley from Priene

"Greek to me" department

Main Street; agora

Every now and then, you see a really nice day-pack-sized

fragment in a conspicuous place; bait for would-be

smugglers we think...

Priene's Greek theatre

VIP seating and the central altar; theatre for the Greeks was

far more a religious experience than entertainment, hence,

the altar, for sacrifices 

Me on the altar; Dionysus knows I am one of his best

customers



Priene's Temple to Egyptian Gods

Vicki leaving via the city's main gate

Miletus

A few more miles up the road is the former coastal city of Miletus--the whole valley now silted up but wonderfully fertile--the major port of the Ionian League. Miletus thrived until taken by the Persians in the 6th century BCE and was rebuilt by the Greeks after Alexander and then by the Romans. Most of the remaining ruins are Roman in style and origin. It was the home of the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales. Just FYI.

Set on the hill overlooking the place is its best-preserved feature, its theatre

Interior view, with the Byzantine citadel rising in the background

Nosebleed view

Goodyear blimp view

The two axes, I believe, were a symbol of Carian resistance

to the Romans

The one nice frieze, found by Vicki, apparently over-looked by the British Museum;
apparently they had already reached their loot-limit for that season

Claw-footed bleachers

The south agora and Faustina's Baths (Marcus Aurelius' wife), said to be the 
model for Turkish baths

The Nymphaneum

Me on the Sacred Way, north agora

The Harbor Monument

Sunset at Miletus

Leaving, the next morning; the nice staff at the site had permitted us to over-night 
in the parking lot; note: much of the area is marshy, and there are mosquitoes...

Temple of Apollo, Didyma

Our next stop, on what turned out to be a three-site day, was the Temple of Apollo, in the coastal city of Didyma. Didyma had been an important site from the sixth century BCE, with an oracle second only to the one at Delphi. Didyma was second-fiddle in another way, too. Originally planned to have 122 columns, it was to be the largest temple of the ancient world. But Ephesus, up the road, built its Temple of Artemis with 127 columns, and thus made the Seven Wonders of the World list. Didyma didn't. Nonetheless, a couple millennia later, Didyma's temple ruins are the more impressive. See a later post on the Temple of Artemis, tentatively entitled "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

Although only three of the columns still stand, including the one in the 
foreground that was never completed, you really can get a sense of the 
size of the thing, absolutely colossal

Colossal Medusa, representations of which supposedly scared off the evil spirits

Another view

Toppled columns; earthquakes did most of the damage

Closer-up, including some insight as to how these puppies

were put together

The two remaining, finished columns

Carving at base



The unfinished, that is, un-fluted, column; I conjecture, when 
the  developers heard about the larger temple up in Ephesus, 
and figured out they were not going to make the Guinness 
Book, they just sort of gave up...

View from within the sanctum sanctorum

Nice griffins all around

Sacred spring; kind of a dry hole now, but at least there was no trash at the bottom

Construction markings are all around (although this one probably says "3 slices 
pepperoni, 2 sausage and mushroom, and 3 all the way (hold the anchovies)"

You can see the marks where the flutes were to begin...

Euromos, Turkey

Our search for a campground in Bodrum proved futile, so we spent a second night at the beautiful little turn-out perched above the Aegean, east of Bodrum.  (Though we didn't get a good photo, the highway's retaining walls were decorated with inset amphoras; nice touch). Next morning, hoping to avoid Milas and Mugli, and lots of road construction, we did another "backroads of Turkey" expedition, crossing the fertile Menderes valley (from which we get "meandering"), passing by Lake Bafa--once an arm of the Aegean, now a huge brackish lake--en route to Didyma. This took us past Euromos, a Greek-later-Roman town dating from the 6th century BCE, the town and most of its buildings now well gone, but sporting one of the half dozen best-preserved temples in Asia Minor, its Temple of Zeus.

Temple of Zeus, Euromos; 200m off the road

Another view

Detail

In the necroplis--middle of a plowed field, mostly--a tomb

that reminded us of dolmens, aeons earlier, in northwestern

Europe

Later I wandered up the hill, through the olive groves--the

mountains here are covered with olive trees, more than I

have seen before--in search of Euromos' badly ruined

theatre; and eventually found it



The aisle staircase still in pretty good shape

All that's left of the stage building

  

Bodrum Museum Humor

International "castle without handrail" warning sign



When the Ottomans took over in 1523 or so, they walled-up

the castle's dungeon and Christian torture chamber--which

bore this cute inscription ("no God abides here")



When the museum staff took over, 400 years

later, they un-walled the dungeon and found

various real instruments of torture, several

"solitary" confinement areas, and not a few

bones; here's Vicki descending to where no

God abides

To wit...

Like many museum jobs, you just hang around, keeping an

eye on the visitors...

This one really cracked us up

But best was the "symposium of eastern Mediterranean

amphoras"

Someone had a lot of fun doing this...

What else are you going to do with the rest of the world's

largest collection of amphoras?