Datcha—Stadia—Halikarnassos
The opinion of Captain T. A. B. Spratt that the ruins at Datcha represent the Dorian city of Akanthos has naturally been adopted by subsequent cartographers as being that of the one man who has thoroughly explored the Knidian peninsula. The identification rests, like so many others, on slight evidence owing to the meagreness of ancient records concerning the city in question: added local knowledge makes another identification seem preferable.The inhabitants of Syme, on the authority of M. Chaviaras, himself a Symiote, to this day refer to the site as Stadia (Σταδία), of which Datcha is in reality only a dialectic variant with the Σ elided, as so often, by false analogy. The existence of a town called Stadia on this coast can be traced from Pliny downwards. The latter places a town variously called Pegusa or Stadia near Knidos—Est in promontorio Cnidus libera, Triopia, dein Pegusa et Stadia appellata: the name Pegusa is readily explained by the springs in the plain of Datcha, and the comparative obscurity of the town by the fact that it was in ancient times subordinate to Knidos.