Milyas (landscape)

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Milyas ( ancient Greek Μιλυάς ) is the ancient name for a landscape in the south of Asia Minor . As related Demonyme are Milyai (Μιλύαι) and Milyadeis (Μιλυαδεῖς) narrated in Latin Milyades . The exact boundaries of the Milyas can no longer be reconstructed. It bordered or overlapped with the landscapes of Lycia , Phrygia , Pamphylia and Pisidia .

The Milyas in the ancient sources

Herodotus narrates in his 5th century BC Historical work written in BC, Cretan immigrants under the leadership of the mythical King Sarpedon would have expelled the Milyadeis from the area later known as Lycia. Later, Herodotus mentions the Milyadeis as one of the groups that the Persian Empire were tributary and the campaign of the Persian king Xerxes I participated. Arrian mentions the Milyas in his Anabasis , written in the 2nd century AD, in connection with the campaigns of Alexander the Great . He calls the Milyas a part of Phrygia, which at that time was under the administration of Lycia.

The Hellenistic historian Polybius names the Milyas as one of the regions over which for 188 BC The peace treaty of Apamea concluded between the Roman Republic and the Seleucid Empire was negotiated. According to the ancient geographer Strabo , who lived at the transition from Hellenism to the imperial era , the Milyas extended in their north-south extension from Sagalassos and Apamea to Termessos .

From 159 BC The Milyas was under the administration of the Pergamene royal family of the Attalids . The timing and degree of the Hellenization of the Milyas is controversial. Inscriptions document that the city of Olbasa was before the middle of the 2nd century BC. Chr. Possessed a democratic constitution according to Attic understanding and was linguistically influenced by Greek. This indicates a level of Hellenization no less high than in the rest of Pisidia. On the other hand, in most of the Milyas cities there is only a small amount of Greek-influenced public architecture and urban planning.

In Ciceros 70 BC In speeches written against Verres, the speaker lists the Milyas as one of the communities that the accused Roman official Gaius Verres harmed through his corrupt business. The Milyas must apparently have been an independent administrative unit at this time. From the year 5/4 BC An inscription has come down to us that proves a consecration for Roma and Augustus by the Milyadeis together with the Thracian and Roman population who have now settled there .

The name is last mentioned in the 6th century AD in the writings of Hierocles , who enumerated the choria Milyadika ( χώρια Μιλυάδικα ) in a list of places in Pamphylia.

Localization attempts

Putzger's historical school atlas from 1901 locates the Milyas on the border between Lycia and Pisidia.
Gustav Droysen's General Historical Handbook of 1886 indicates the Milyas as an area that overlaps with Lycia and Pisidia.

The localization of the earliest area of ​​the Milyadeis is essentially based on the information provided by Strabons , who indicates the north-south extent of the Milyas between Sagalassos and Apamea as far as Termessos. All of these cities are in Pisidia. Arrian's description shows the extent of the Milyadeis territory at the time of Alexander the Great. It extended in the north to Apamea , in the east to Sagalassos, Kremna and Ariassos, in the west over the Lysis Valley and the Burdur Gölü and in the south to the plain of today's Elmalı . The cities of Nisa, Kandyba, Choma and Podalia belonged to the Lycian part of the Milyas, the cities of Sagalassos, Kremna and Ariassos to the Pisidic part. A sharp demarcation is not only no longer possible today, but probably also did not exist in antiquity, and it can be assumed that the Milyadis and the populations of the surrounding regions were ethnically mixed.

Accordingly, historical maps indicate the Milyas as an area without fixed borders. The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World maps the territory of the Milyadeis overlapping with parts of Lycia and Pisidia, without defining its boundaries or the affiliation of certain cities.

Olbasa (Ὄλβασα, in the Roman Empire Colonia Iulia Augusta, today Belenli ) and Pogla (today Çomaklı ) were among the most important cities that belong to the Milyas . The author Ptolemaios, who wrote in the 2nd century AD, narrates a city called "Milyas" . However, it is not mentioned in any other text, which is why its actual existence is controversial. An identification with today's place Melli in the province of Burdur is conceivable , whereby the distant similarity of names is the main reason for this assumption.

literature

  • Alan S. Hall: The Milyadeis and Their Territory. In: Anatolian Studies. Volume 36, 1986, pp. 137-157.
  • Peter Talloen: Cult in Pisidia. Religious Practice in Southwestern Asia Minor from Alexander the Great to the Rise of Christianity (= Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archeology. Volume 10). Brepols, Turnhout 2015, ISBN 978-2-5039-9114-6 .
  • Martin Zimmermann : Milyas 2. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 8, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01478-9 , column 195.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herodotus 1, 173; 3.90; 7, 77.
  2. ^ Alan S. Hall: The Milyadeis and Their Territory. In: Anatolian Studies. Volume 36, 1986, p. 139.
  3. ↑ Cicero : Speeches against Verres 2, 1, 95.
  4. ↑ Herodotus 1, 173.
  5. ↑ Herodotus 3:90 .
  6. ↑ Herodotus 7:77.
  7. ↑ Arrian : Anabasis . 1, 24, 5.
  8. ↑ Polybios: 21, 45, 10.
  9. ↑ Strabon 13, 631.
  10. ^ Rosalinde A. Kearsley: The Milyas and the Attalids A Decree of the City of Olbasa and a New Royal Letter of the Second Century BC In: Anatolian Studies, Volume 44, 1994, p. 53.
  11. ^ Rosalinde A. Kearsley: The Milyas and the Attalids A Decree of the City of Olbasa and a New Royal Letter of the Second Century BC In: Anatolian Studies, Volume 44, 1994, p. 57.
  12. ↑ Peter Talloen: Cult in Pisidia. Religious Practice in Southwestern Asia Minor from Alexander the Great to the Rise of Christianity (= Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archeology. Volume 10). Brepols, Turnhout 2015, ISBN 978-2-5039-9114-6 , p. 81.
  13. ↑ Cicero: Speeches against Verres 2, 1, 95.
  14. ^ Alan S. Hall: The Milyadeis and Their Territory. In: Anatolian Studies. Volume 36, 1986, pp. 148-149.
  15. ↑ SEG 36, 1207.
  16. ↑ Hierocles : Synekdemos 680.
  17. ↑ Strabon 13, 631.
  18. ↑ Peter Talloen: Cult in Pisidia. Religious Practice in Southwestern Asia Minor from Alexander the Great to the Rise of Christianity (= Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archeology. Volume 10). Brepols, Turnhout 2015, ISBN 978-2-5039-9114-6 , pp. 13-14.
  19. ↑ Peter Talloen: Cult in Pisidia. Religious Practice in Southwestern Asia Minor from Alexander the Great to the Rise of Christianity (= Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archeology. Volume 10). Brepols, Turnhout 2015, ISBN 978-2-5039-9114-6 , p. 16.
  20. ↑ George Ewart Bean :  Olbasa (Belenli) Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
  21. ↑ George Ewart Bean :  Pogla (Çomakli, formerly Fğla) Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
  22. ↑ George Ewart Bean :  Melli (“Milyas”) Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .