Mycale

Coordinates: 37°39′40″N 27°09′02″E / 37.66111°N 27.15056°E / 37.66111; 27.15056
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the mountain. For the vocal group, see
Mycale (genus)
.
Mount Mycale
Μυκάλη
Samsun Dağı
Aydin Province, Republic of Turkey
Parent rangeAydin Mountain Range in the Menderes Massif
Geology
Mountain typeRidge, 20 km (12 mi) long
Climbing
Easiest routeHike

Mycale (

Samos by the 1.6 km wide Mycale Strait. The mountain forms a ridge, terminating in what was known anciently as the Trogilium promontory (Ancient Greek Τρωγίλιον or Τρωγύλιον).[1] There are several beaches on the north shore ranging from sand to pebbles. The south flank is mainly escarpment
.

In the Late Bronze Age, it may have been known under the Hittite name Arrinnanda.

In classical Greece nearly the entire ridge was a promontory enclosed by the Aegean Sea. Geopolitically it was part of Ionia with Priene placed on the coast on the south flank of the mountain and Miletus on the coast opposite to the south across the deep embayment into which the Maeander River drained. Somewhat further north was Ephesus.

The ruins of the first two Ionian cities mentioned with their harbor facilities remain but today are several miles inland overlooking instead a rich agricultural plain and delta parkland created by deposition of sediments from the river, which continues to form the geological feature named after it, maeanders. The end of the former bay remains as a lake, Çamiçi Gölü (Lake Bafa). Samsun Daği, or Mycale, still has a promontory.

The entire ridge was designated as a national park in 1966; Dilek Yarimadisi Milli Parki ("Dilek Peninsula National Park") has 109.85 km2 (27,145 acres), which is partly accessible to the public. The remainder is a military reservation. The park's isolation has encouraged the return of the native ecology, which is 60% maquis shrubland. It is a refuge for species that used to be more abundant in the region.

Geophysics

Main articles: Geology of Turkey and Geography of Turkey
Mount Mycale seen from the island of Samos, across the Mycale Strait.

Western Turkey is mainly

Turkish and Aegean plates are being pushed together, generating ridges in Turkey. This orogenic belt was in place by 1.6 mya and continues to be a hot spot of earthquakes and volcanoes.[2]

Mount Mycale is part of a larger ridge, which continues in

Samos on the other side of the Samos Strait, and to the northeast in the Aydin Dağlari ("Aydin Mountains"), ancient Messogis range, on the other side of low hills and passes. The entire block of mountains around the Menderes (Maeander) River is known as the Menderes Massif.[3]

Mycale is scored transversely by numerous ravines through which sources drain. The biggest ravine is Oluk Gorge, with cliffs 200 m (656 ft) high. The main permanent streams are the Bal Deresi, the Sarap Dami and the Oluk Dereleri. The ample water supply supports a verdant maquis.

The rock is primarily

Palaeozoic and conglomerates of the Cenozoic
. The renowned builders and sculptors of Ionia made full use of these materials for their major works.

Ecology

Cypress in maquis

The ridge and its environs offer a number of different ecologies. The crest is a sharp divide between the

xerophytic southern slopes and the forested northern slopes, with 66.24 km2 (16,368 acres) of maquis and 35.74 km2 (8,832 acres) of mixed pine.[4]
Around the base of the promontory is a maritime environment.

The maquis vegetation includes

Nerium oleander, Platanus orientalis, Fraxinus ornus, Laurus nobilis, Cupressus sempervirens and Rubus fruticosus
.

The mixed pine forest goes up to 700 m (2,297 ft). Its major plant species are

Pyrus eleagrifolia, and Prunus dulcis
.

Some

Panthera pardus
.

Some birds are

Sturnus vulgaris
.

Thunnus thynnus
.

History

Map of Mycale, Lade, and Miletus.

Earliest references

Mycale,

Maeander appear in the Trojan Battle Order of the Iliad, where they are populated by Carians. "The steep heights of Mycale" and Miletus are also in the Hymn to Apollo, where Leto, pregnant with Apollo, an especially Ionian god, travels about the Aegean looking for a home for her son, and settles on Delos, the major Ionian political, religious and cultural center of Classical Greece[citation needed
].

A similar metaphor is to be found in the centuries-later Hymn to Delos of

Samos
), where it is entertained by the nymphs of Mycalessos. Just as Parthenia is the previous name of Samos so the reader is to understand Mycalessos as the previous name of Mycale. On being chosen as the birthplace of Apollo, Delos becomes fixed in the sea.

Hittite records of the Late Bronze Age. In Hitti language, Apasa (Ephesus), the capital of a state called Arzawa, in which also was Karkisha in (Caria) and Millawanda (Miletus). In the Linear B script tablets the region is called A-swi-ja (Asia). Documents at Pylos, Thebes and Knossos identify female textile workers and seamstresses (raptria) in servitude of Mi-ra-ti-ja, *Milātiai, "Milesians". The regions from which they came were centers of Mycenaean civilization although the languages they spoke was an early Greek-Mycenaean language and written in Linear B, although some support that was an unknown.[5]

Further information: Caria

The state of Melia

After the Late Bronze Age the entire Aegean region entered a historical period termed the

Orientalizing Period[citation needed] in which Ionia
played a cardinal role.

During this rise to prominence twelve cities were settled or resettled and emerged as Ionia speaking varieties of Ionic Greek[citation needed]. Vitruvius, however, says there were thirteen, the extra state being Melite, which "... as a punishment of the arrogance of its citizens was detached from the other states in a war levied pursuant to the directions of a general council (communi consilio); and in its place ... the city of Smyrna was admitted into the number of Ionian states (inter Ionas est recepta)."[6] There is no other mention of Melite anywhere but two fragments of Hecataeus say that Melia was a city of Caria and an inscription from Priene confirms that there had been a "Meliac War"[7] against a state located between Priene and Samos; i.e., on Mycale.

The inscription records the result of an arbitration between Priene and Samos by jurors from

Macedon a century earlier. That case is mentioned in an earlier inscription from Priene.[9]

Priene had now reopened the case arguing that their sale of plots from the land demonstrated their continuous ownership of it except for a brief period when an invasion of the

Lygdamis forced temporary Greek evacuation of the region (about 650 BC). The Samians used a passage from the now missing History of Maeandrius of Miletus to support their claim. The jury found that Maeandrius was not authentic and reversed the earlier decision.[10]

Panionium

Main articles: Panionium, Ionian League, and Ionia

The Melians had named their capital Carium, "of Caria" as a Greek word[further explanation needed]. Considering that it was placed in Ionia, the choice of name suggests a political statement of some sort, although the word may have had a different meaning in the Carian language, now lost except for a few dozen words. The Ionians leagued together to defeat it and continued the league, building a capital they called Panionium, "of all the Ionians" next to the former Carium. It rose to prominence while the Ionian confederacy was sovereign, became a memory when Ionia was incorporated into other states and empires and finally was lost altogether. The ancient writers remembered that it had been on the north side of the mountain, across the ridge from Priene.

After a few false identifications in modern times, the ruins of Melia and the Panionium were discovered in 2004 on Dilek Daglari, a smaller peak of Mycale, 15 km (9 mi) to the north of Priene at an elevation of 750 m (2,461 ft).[11] The Carium must be the early 7th century BC town surrounded by a triangular wall in places as thick as 3 m (10 ft).

The

Protogeometric period. Coldstream characterizes the burial structures as of "a considerable Carian substrate".[12] The culture was not entirely Carian; the Ionians continued the worship of Poseidon Heliconius there, which Strabo says came from Helike in Peloponnesian Achaea.[13]
This event must have been during the Ionian colonization. Melia therefore was a renegade Ionian state.

The temple believed to the

Panionia. The construction of this temple is a terminus post quem for the existence of the Ionian League
, which as a constituted body had a name, the koinon Iōnōn ("common thing of the Ionians"), a synedrion ("place to sit down together") and a boulē ("council").

Whether this body existed before the Meliac War is uncertain. Vitruvius' commune consilium seems to translate koinon. Some analysts have postulated an association as early as 800 BC but whether formally constituted remains unknown. There is no sign of it yet on Mycale unless Carium had in fact been it.

Battle of Mycale

Main article: Battle of Mycale

In 479 BC, Mycale was the site of one of the two major battles that ended the second

Persian fleet and army.[14] According to Herodotus, the battle occurred the same day as the Greek victory at Plataea.[15]

Notes

  1. ^ Smith, William (1850). "Mycale". New Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology and Geography. London: John Murray.. Downloadable Google Books.
  2. ^ Metz, Helen Chapin, ed. (1995). "Geology". Turkey: A Country Study. GPO for the Library of Congress. Retrieved 2008-01-30.
  3. ^ Candan, Osman; O. Özcan Dora (February 1998). "Granulite, eclogite and blueschist relics in the Menderes Massif: an approach to pan-African and tertiary metamorphic evolution" (PDF). Geological Bulletin of Turkey. 41 (1): 3.
  4. ^ UNEP:WCMC (1988). "Turkey: Dilek Yarimadisi NP (Dilek Peninsula)". United Nations Environment Programme: World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Archived from the original on 2008-02-21. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  5. ^ Morris, Sarah (2000). "Potnia Aswiya: Anatolian Contributions to Greek Religion". In Laffineur, Robert; Hägg, Robin (eds.). Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference Göteborg. Université de Liège: Aegeum 22 2001. pp. 425–428. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-22. Retrieved 2008-02-05..
  6. ^ Vitruvius, Marcus (2008). Thayer, Bill (ed.). de Architectura: Book IV Chapter 1 Sections 4-5. LacusCurtius..
  7. Melos
    .
  8. ^ Syll. 599 - in English translation.
  9. ^ RC. 7 - in English translation.
  10. ^ A discussion of the arbitration in English can be found at Tod, Marcus Niebuhr (1913). International Arbitration Amongst the Greeks. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. pp. 135–140. Downloadable Google Books. Most of the inscription can be found in Müller, Carolus (1848). Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum: Volumen Secundum (in Greek and Latin). Paris: Editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot. pp. 336–337, Fragment 7, Maeandrii Milesii. Downloadable Google Books.
  11. ^ a b "Recent Finds in Archaeology: Panionion Sanctuary Discovered in Southwest Turkey". Athena Review. 4 (2): 10–11. 2005. Archived from the original on 2012-03-23. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
  12. ISBN 0-415-29898-9
    .
  13. ^ Pausanias (2000–2008). "Description of Greece 7.24.5". Theoi Greek Mythology: Poseidon Cult 2: II Helike Town in Akhaia. The Theoi Project: Greek Mythology. Retrieved 2008-08-02. Strabo's contention (8.7.2, quoted on same page) that the "Akhaians later gave the model of the temple to the Ionians" cannot be true, as the submersion did not occur until 373 BC.
  14. ^ Pausanias, 1.25.1, 3.7.9, 8.52.3; Thucydides, 1.89.
  15. ^ Herodotus, 9.90, 9.96.

References

External links

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