Assos

Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish

With its acropolis perched on a steep hill overlooking the Aegean Sea, the city of Assos provides a spectacular view for the visitor. From the acropolis one can look down on the ruins of the ancient buildings on the slope and also see the remains of the city’s harbor in the Aegean. On a clear day the island of Lesbos is visible approximately 7 miles south across the Bay of Edremit. From this island came the first settlers of ancient Assos. The site of ancient Assos is located in the southern part of the Troad area of Turkey, on the modern highway that runs along the Aegean coast and connects the towns of Geyikli and Ayvacïk. Assos was in the ancient region of Mysia. Today the village of Behramkale occupies the site of ancient Assos. During the 7th century B.C.E. Aeolian Greeks from the town of Methymna (modern Molivos) on the island of Lesbos crossed the Edremit Bay and founded the city of Assos. During the first half of the 6th century, King Croesus of Lydia (whose capital was at Sardis) captured and controlled Assos. Lydian domination ended in 546 B.C.E., when Cyrus of Persia defeated Croesus and brought this area of Asia Minor under Persian control. During the following century Assos gained its freedom when a coalition of Greek city-states defeated the Persians. Assos then became a part of the Delian League under the leadership of Athens. One of the rulers of Assos in the 4th century was Hermias, who had been a student, along with Aristotle, of the philosopher Plato. At the invitation of Hermias, Aristotle went to Assos and lived there from 348 to 345 B.C.E., marrying Hermias’ niece. The Persians recaptured the city and killed Hermias, but their control ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s untimely death the Seleucids ruled Assos. In 241 B.C.E. the city became a part of the Pergamene kingdom and remained under the control of the kings of Pergamum until the death of Attalus III in 133 B.C.E., at which time the city passed into Roman hands.

Classics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Hurwit ◽  
Ioannis Mitsios

The ancient city-state (or polis) of Athens was contiguous with the region known as Attica, a large, triangular peninsula extending southeastward from the Greek mainland into the Aegean Sea. In the western angle of Attica, on a coastal plain surrounded by four mountains (Hymettos, Pentelikon, Parnes, and Aigaleos), lay the city itself. Although the modern city has thickly spread up the slopes of the mountains as well as to the sea, the study of Athenian topography concentrates on the monuments, buildings, and spaces of the ancient urban core, an area roughly 3 square kilometers surrounding the Acropolis and defended in the Classical period by a wall some 6.5 kilometers in length. Athens is the ancient Greek city that we know best, and it is unquestionably the Greek city whose art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and political history have had the greatest impact on the Western tradition and imagination. As a result, “Athenian” is sometimes considered synonymous with “Greek.” It is not. In many respects, Athens was exceptional among Greek city-states, not typical: it was a very different place from, say, Thebes or Sparta. Still, the study of Athens, its monuments, and its culture needs no defense, and the charge of “Athenocentrism” is a hollow indictment when one stands before the Parthenon or holds a copy of Sophocles’ Antigone. This article will refer to the following periods in the history of Athens and Greece (the dates are conventional): late Bronze, or Mycenaean, Age (1550–1100 bce); Dark Age (1100–760 bce); Archaic (760–480 bce); Classical (480–323 bce); Hellenistic (323 –31 bce); and Roman (31 BCE–c. 475 ce).


Author(s):  
L. SLOKOSKA

In 1985, archaeologists from Bulgaria and Britain began a collaborative work with the initiation of two complementary projects. The first one was entitled ‘The Roman and late Roman city; Nicopolis ad Istrum’ (1985–1992) when the archaeological research of both teams was concentrated upon the Roman city and its late antique successor. The ‘City of Victory’ was founded by the emperor Trajan and is one of the largest archaelogical sites in the Balkans. The second programme represents a continuation and an expansion of the first and was entitled ‘The city and the village in the Roman and late Roman Empire: Nicopolis ad Istrum and nucleated settlement in its territory’ (1996–2002). It initiated work on the site of the late antique fortified settlement near the village of Dichin. Nicopolis, like the other cities in Thrace, was organized according to the Greek model, on similar lines to those found in the cities of Asia Minor. This influence is reflected in the character of the town, its plan, its agora and in its principal buildings.


2020 ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Waldemar Heckel

Persian Asia Minor had experienced upheavals since the late stages of the Peloponnesian War. When the Spartans emerged victorious from that contest, with the financial help of the Persian king, they soon set out on a program of liberation. But their leadership was corrupt and their methods of controlling the Greek city-states oppressive—Spartan garrisons were imposed under a commander called a harmost, and boards of ten (dekarchies) ruled the cities. Persia successfully removed the Spartan menace, but the Achaemenids were themselves soon threatened by an uprising known as the Great Satraps’ Revolt. Some of the rebels sought refuge at the court of Philip II of Macedon, who later sent an expeditionary force to Asia Minor in the spring of 336. Although this force of 10,000 accomplished little, it was followed in 334 by a full-scale invasion by Alexander the Great, who defeated the armies of a satrapal coalition at the River Granicus. Although Memnon of Rhodes emerged as the leading defender of Persian interests in the West, many of the empire’s leading commanders fell on the battlefield or soon afterward. It was an ill omen for the future of Achaemenid Asia Minor.


Author(s):  
Joshua Hagen

This chapter offers a critical examination of historic preservationist practices to expand our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national heritage. Rather than catalogue the actual techniques of historic preservation, this chapter focuses on the cultural politics animating the regime’s efforts to construct its vision of national history, heritage, and memory. To do so, the chapter surveys the Nazi regime’s efforts to “preserve” three generalized places: the city, the town, and the village


1924 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-244
Author(s):  
C. Phillips Cape ◽  
Sten Konow

The secret language of the Ḍoms, as of other Indian “Gipsy” tribes, is very unsatisfactorily known. I have made some remarks on it in vol. xi of Sir George Grierson's Linguistic Survey, where I have also given references to such other papers about the subject as I have come across. But very much remains to be done, and we must be thankful for the new materials which are now made available. The compiler of the list says about them:—“The following is a collection of words and sentences in use by the Magahiyā Ḍoms, who have made Benares their centre or fixed abode. The language is known to wandering Ḍoms in the Panjāb, and also to those who live in the United Provinces. It was apparently unknown to village Ḍoms in Bengal, though the town and city dwellers in some parts of the Province were familiar with it. Most of the words and sentences were obtained from gipsy Ḍoms who visited Benares in 1914, and then settled in the city, where they came under the influence of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission, of which the present writer was superintendent. The sedentary Ḍoms of Benares city and the village Ḍoms of the district are acquainted with this argot.


1913 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 50-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. C. Edgar

The statue reproduced on Pl. II. was found two years ago in the village of Atfih which lies about forty-five miles south of Cairo on the edge of the eastern desert. Atfih preserves the name and occupies the site of the ancient Per nebt tep aht, the city of the cow-headed goddess Hathor. The Greeks, who identified Hathor with their own Aphrodite, translated the name into Aphroditopolis. The ruins of the town are covered by the modern village, but in the adjoining desert is a large cemetery, mainly of the Ptolemaic period, which Mr. Johnson has recently excavated in search of Greek papyrus.The statue was found accidentally by a labourer digging in the village and was secured for the Cairo Museum by the local Inspector of the Antiquities Department. It is made of a block of rather soft limestone and is considerably more than life size, the height of the figure without the plinth being 2·5 m. Both forearms are missing. The right leg from knee to ankle and parts of the left leg are restored in plaster. The features are badly damaged. There are no remains of paint or gilding on the surface of the limestone.


Author(s):  
Mirko Canevaro

From the earliest stages, the Greeks understood the distinction between legislation and day-to-day administration. They gave laws a special status and often created specific, separate procedures to enact them. In the Archaic period, specially appointed lawgivers were normally in charge of giving laws to the polis; these laws were intended to be immutable, and their stability secured through entrenchment clauses. Making laws was not considered to be among the normal tasks of the government of the polis, and there were no standard procedures to change the laws once these had been given. Assemblies in Greek city-states often enacted rules that had the force of law, but the legislative changes were not institutionally acknowledged, and the laws enacted by the lawgivers could not be changed. This gave rise to significant problems of legitimacy, and it introduced inconsistencies in the legal system of the polis, a problem that we can observe in 5th-century bce Athens. At the end of the 5th century, the Athenians introduced judicial review to vet new legislation and avoid the introduction of inconsistencies, performed a revision of the laws of the city, and finally institutionalised a distinction between nomoi (“laws,” general permanent norms) and psephismata (“decrees,” ad hoc enactments). They also created a complex new procedure, involving a board of nomothetai, to allow the demos to make new laws and change the existing ones. Similar yet not identical procedures are attested also outside Athens: Hellenistic kings often ordered the appointment of nomothetai or nomographoi to enact rules about political institutions, and nomographoi or nomothetic lawcourts are attested in various cities, with the task of “upgrading” decrees of the demos into laws, and entering them among the laws of the city.


Author(s):  
М. И. Кулакова

В статье представлен обзор основных направлений деятельности псковских археологов в 2016 году. Охарактеризованы основные аспекты работ, направленных на сохранение археологических памятников, расположенных на территории Пскова и Псковской области. Площадь археологических раскопок в городе Пскове составляла более 5000 кв. м (раскопки в Кремле, на Завеличье, в центре города, за пределами крепостных стен на посаде) и в Псковской области (археологические раскопки курганной группы Смоленка недалеко от города Остров, курганная группа на восточной окраине деревни Изборск (Усть-Смолка); археологическая разведка в Новосокольническом районе с целью фиксации поселения Х-Х1 в. Горожане, в Красногородском районе (определение границ могильника возле села Станкеево), в Гдовском районе; по трассе ВЛ-330 «Новосокольники - Талашкино» (Псковская и Смоленская области). Проведено определение границ территории объекта культурного наследия «Культурный слой города Великие Луки». Продолжилась разработка направления «военная археология». The article presents an overview of the main activities of Pskov archaeologists in 2016. The main aspects of the works aimed at preserving archaeological sites located on the territory of Pskov and Pskov region are characterized. The Area of archaeological excavations in the city of Pskov was more than 5000 sq. m. (the excavations in the Kremlin, on Zavelich’e, in the Middle Town, outside the fortress walls on the posad) and in the Pskov region (archaeological excavations of the barrow group Smolenka near the town Ostrov, the barrow group on the eastern edge of the village Izborsk (“Ust-Smolka”); archaeological search in Novosokol’nicheskiy district with the goal of the identification of the X-XIth c. Gopozhane settlement, in Krasnogorodsk district (identificaton of the boundaries of the ground burial near the village Stankeevo), in Gdov district; on the highway VL-330 “Novosokolniki - Talashkino” (Pskov and Smolensk regions territory). The definition of the boundaries of the territory of the object of cultural heritage “Cultural layer of the city of Velikie Luki” was performed. The research area of “military archaeology” was continued.


Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann

Drawing on inscriptions, papyri, coinage, poetry, art, and archaeology, The Hellenistic Age: A Very Short Introduction opens up the history and culture of the vast Hellenistic world, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 bc) to the Roman conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom (30 bc). It navigates the power struggles and wars in the three centuries that followed the conquests of Alexander. In this age of cultural globalization, a single language carried you from the Rhône to the Indus. Narrative close-ups of individual cities, including the Greek city-states with the earliest federal governments, and kings from Sicily to Tajikistan who struggled to meet the challenges of ruling multi-ethnic states, are provided.


1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerij Goušchin

On the eve of the Peloponnesian War Athens was a great urban agglomeration. It was almost invulnerable to an enemy. So in 431 B.C. the Athenians began to migrate from the countryside into the city on the advice of Pericles (Thuc. 2.14–16). This recalled to Thucydides the time of Theseus (Thuc. 2.15). S. Hornblower regards this migration as the long-postponed physical synoikism, or synoikism in its physical aspect. He insists on the difference between political and physical synoikism, the former being the political unification of the state and the latter mainly the migration into the city. But the Athenians did not migrate into the city for the first time in 431. At the time of Xerxes' invasion the inhabitants of Attica were to be moved into the city before being evacuated to Salamis and elsewhere, and the invasion made their vulnerability clear to the Athenians. They suffered two evacuations, the devastation of Attica and the substantial destruction of Athens. Through driving back the Persians Athens became the leader of the Delian League and acquired great naval power. The change of Athens' position in the Greek world and the damage caused by the Persians necessitated a major reconstruction of the town. The Athenians began with the town and harbour. They built the walls of the city and of the Piraeus first of all. Beforelong the Piraeus had been built on a large scale. In these years the Athenians remembered Theseus again, and he now gained honour and esteem among all the Athenians.


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