Cityscapes and Monuments of Western Asia Minor: Memories and Identities

By Oxbow Books

Cityscapes consist of houses, streets, civic buildings, sanctuaries, tombs, monuments, and inscriptions created by multiple generations of citizens and foreigners with an interest in the city; they are interpreted and reinterpreted as expressions of past lives, changing relations of power, memories, and various identities. The present volume publishes 25 contributions written by scholars specializing in the history and archaeology of western Asia Minor. New and well-known material – literary, epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological – is presented and analyzed through the twin lenses of memory and identity.

The contributions cover more than 1000 years of cultural diversity during changing political systems, from the Lydian and Persian hegemony in the Archaic period through Athenian supremacy and Persian satrapal rule in the Classical period, then autocratic kingship in Hellenistic times until, finally, more than half a millennium of Roman rule.

Identities are voiced through several media and visible at many levels of the ancient societies. So are the places of memory – the Lieux de Mémoire – and the studies presented here provide new insights into how human beings chose, deliberately or subconsciously, to commemorate their past and their ancestors, and how identity was displayed and expressed under shifting political rule.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785708374

Book preview

Preface

The present book contains a collection of papers that resulted from a conference entitled Cityscapes & Monuments of Remembrance in Western Asia Minor held at Aarhus University in October 2014. The conference evolved from a research collaboration between the universities in Aarhus, Odense and Hamburg.

Cityscapes are expressions of identity and memories. They are the frames in which street layouts, buildings, monumental structures, and sculptural and epigraphic displays are interpreted and reinterpreted as changing expressions of relations of remembrance, identities and power. It is the inhabitants that shape and continually transform the spaces into unique cities. The conference illuminated many aspects of remembrance and offered examples of how the inhabitants under the various political systems chose – consciously or subconsciously – to commemorate themselves and their ancestors, the present and the past. Chronologically the conference – and reflected by the papers – covered the period ca. 600 BC to AD 500, reflecting more than 1000 years of cultural diversity from Greek dominion, Persian satraps and Hellenistic kings to Roman rule.

Studying the archaeological record through the lens of memory and identity is in no way a purely recent phenomenon. In the first half of the 20th century, the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs asserted in his seminal works on the concept of collective memory that the act of remembering is social. Halbwachs’s thoughts set the stage for further exploration of memory and spurred on culture and literature studies. With the publications by Jan Assmann in the late 1980s and early 1990s, memory studies in relation to the study of Antiquity were boosted. And studying material culture as expressions of memory is inextricably bound up with identity studies. The past can be used to define, even create and reframe, the identity of a certain group of people. The well-preserved cityscapes of western Asia Minor with their extensive, varied archaeological, epigraphical, and numismatic evidence provide an ideal basis for investigating various forms of social remembrance and common identity.

The papers of the conference explored cityscapes and memories of four different, but not necessarily separable, spaces: private, public, sacred and funerary. That the spaces are not always separable is also reflected in the book, where we have grouped them under five different headings. A broader theoretical approach to the studies presented in this book is introduced and outlined by Martina Seifert in the first contribution.

Seven contributions offer insight into the Cityscapes of Remembrance departing from Assos, with one contribution on the city from its foundation to the Roman period (Eva-Maria Mohr and Klaus Rheidt), and one on Byzantine Assos (Beate Böhlendorf-Arslan). Next stop is Hellenistic Teos and its ruler cult (Anthony Shannon), Magnesia on the Maeander and a new chronology for the development of the cityscape there (Orhan Bingöl). In Aphrodisias, the heroes and their place in the cityscape are discussed (Eva Mortensen), and in Lycian Xanthos, old tombs are examined as sites of memory in later periods (Jacques des Courtils). Lastly, the representation of Rome in the cityscape and civic self-perception in the cities of Asia Minor is studied (Kai Töpfer).

Three papers focus on various aspects of Recollections of the Past in Public Civic Monuments studying certain building types such as Gymnasia (Ulrich Mania), memory in connection with a single monument, the East Gate of Side (Ute Lohner-Urban) and aspects such as rituals in public space (Günther Schörner).

Two papers treat various aspects of Representations of Memories and Identities in the Private Sphere the point of departure being houses found in Ephesos, Pergamon and Delos (Elisabeth Rathmayr) as well as the city quarter above the theatre in Ephesos (Christoph Baier) and six papers concentrate on Narratives of Remembrance in a Religious Context: a statue of a poet or learned man found in the Sanctuary of Apollo in Klaros (Ergün Lafli); the Amazons in Ephesos (Helene Blinkenberg Hastrup); memory and identity in relation to the processional road of Kos, through its development over time (Monica Livadiotti and Giorgio Rocco) and through a sensorial experience emphasizing views, sounds and smells (Luigi Caliò); the Sanctuary of Apollo Archegetes on Asar Island, ever-present in the city due to its dominating location (Mustafa Şahin); and common identity and collective memory through reinterpretations of older cults in Herakleia under Latmos (Katy Opitz).

Finally, six contributions investigate the Commemoration of the Dead on the basis of the burial mounds at Kolophon and their role in the construction of ethnic identity (Benedikt Grammer), the nekropoleis and the mortuary landscape of Ephesos (Martin Steskal), the Totenmahl tradition in Classical western Asia (Poul Pedersen), the so-called Beautiful Tomb in Hierapolis and the dynast represented on the sarcophagus (Ilaria Romeo), the collective memory expressed by the dynast tombs of Xanthos (Laurence Cavalier) and commemorative inscriptions across time and space (Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail).

Other scholars participated in the conference too, and a few have chosen to publish elsewhere, but we think that this collection of 25 contributions offer a varied and intriguing impression of strategies of commemoration and aspects of identity building in western Asia Minor. We wish to thank all the authors for their efforts as well as the many anonymous peer-reviewers and readers. Finally, but not least, we should like to thank Poul Pedersen (University of Southern Denmark) and Martina Seifert (University of Hamburg) for collaboration on the organization of the conference, and Neil Stanford and Nino Praisler who linguistically improved many of the contributions.

The conference would not have been possible without the generous support from the Danish Research Council, the Stella Polaris programme and the former research programmes Classical Antiquity and Cultural Dynamics (Aarhus University).

We are grateful to Oxbow Books for accepting the papers for publication, and to Aarhus University Research Foundation and the Ny Carlsberg Foundation for generously providing the necessary funding for the publication.

Eva Mortensen and Birte Poulsen

Part I

Introduction

1

Constructing Memories: Gateways between Identity and Socio-Political Pluralism in Ancient Western Asia Minor

Martina Seifert

Despite the obsessive practice of recording architecture and physical features in the greatest detail imaginable, archaeologists were somehow missing the point in their substitution of description for understanding – when Mike Parker Pearson wrote this sentence in 1994, the movement referred to as the spatial turn had already, for two decades, influenced studies in social sciences and the humanities. It was however, hardly noticed by those working in the field of Mediterranean Archaeology.¹ This brief introduction will focus on some aspects of the theoretical and methodological background related to social space and memory studies. It is intended to provide some clues for the following conference papers, but it will take into account neither the variety of approaches nor the whole of important recent studies on Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor.

Historical background

The spatial turn

Dealing with the study of architectural plans and urban layouts, the historians Jacob Burckhardt and Heinrich Wölfflin were the first to start treating the built environment explicitly as one indicator of cultural tendencies.² But it was due to the exceptional work of Nikolaus Pevsner and his successors that scientists in the 20th century considered social and technological innovations as crucial criteria in their descriptions of the evolution of particular building types.³ Last, but not least, through the work of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja the spatial turn was established in the social sciences.⁴ According to Henri Lefebvre (Social) space is a (social) product … the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power; yet that, as such, it escapes in part from those who would make use of it.⁵ And furthermore: Space commands bodies, prescribing or proscribing gestures, routes and distances to be covered … Monumentality … always embodies and imposes a clearly intelligible message … Monumental buildings mask the will to power and the arbitrariness of power beneath signs and surfaces which claim to express collective will and collective thought.⁶ Architecture, i.e. the built environment, was now approached as a source of historical information. Here, the focus was especially on aspects of social life which left no other traces, but had the potential to influence and determine society’s development in a most effective way. The built environment reveals an image of rationalized orders e.g. by following the ideas of political or economic organization in various contexts.

Space, place and architecture

What about archaeologists? In what way do scientists reflect upon aspects of urban space architecture or geography? Until the 1990s archaeologists rarely referred to the theoretical framework of the spatial turn using descriptive approaches in the study of ancient architecture and urban layout. As the archaeologists Mike Parker Pearson and Colin Richards worked out, subjectivity and the experience of space determine the relationship of archaeologists to the built environment.⁷ Both pointed out the dynamic and reflexive relationship between architecture and space referring to Amos Rapoport’s idea of environments being thought before being built.⁸ This idea refers to the permanent, interactive processes of non-verbal communication, considering individuals as well as societies. As part of a cultural system of symbols, the environment holds meanings by influencing actions and determining the social order. To express it more clearly: by naming and categorizing the environment, space is differentiated and marked. One often cited example deals with the conceptualization of the forest in its historical transformation.⁹ Being treated as a place of dangerous spirits and wild creatures in former storytelling, the concept nowadays has shifted to the forest as a place for retreat and recreation. The oral tradition of storytelling and myth reflects the designated space as a culturally constructed part of a historical or fictive landscape.¹⁰ Nowadays, the scientific community widely accepts theories and concepts resulting from the discussion on the spatial turn within archaeology in general. Working with the theoretical framework of the spatial turn opens the door for reinterpreting facts and changing meanings, i.e. space is an accepted field not only of experience but also of practice and usage. The relationship between spatial form and human agency, therefore, could be described as being mediated by meaning. People actively ascribe meanings to their physical environments, and then act upon those meanings.¹¹ Dealing with the concept of environment as a cultural artefact, two causal relationships between space, place and architecture were hence proposed by scholars: form follows function or function follows form.¹²

Space, architecture and memory

In the course of time, environments were created, shaped, changed, and destroyed by human impact. Settlements and cities were built and abandoned; by this process, urban landscapes not only accompany or influence people, but also become depositories of memory. In this sense, the reminiscence of ancestors – in Antiquity and nowadays – is embedded in the different layers of a landscape or, even better, of the cityscape. Thus, these sites are also projected memories. As memory is especially connected with marked places, i.e. physical sites, the role of the built environment is quite important in the processes of remembrance,¹³ and it plays an important role in the analysis of archaeological features. The processes of remembrance also are linked to the identity of individuals and communities, because both imagine their identity in relation to marked places. Cityscapes and places which support and promote memory through their visibility are of prime significance in that case. Inter alia, Aleida and Jan Assmann argued that individual and collective identities are largely based on a common remembrance of a common past.¹⁴ The built environment turns into a component of power and urban planning into an instrument of a policy of remembrance and identity. Architecture being the constitutional element of the urban space, the outer appearance of a building – its dimensions, the design of its façade – provide a wealth of information about the ideals, the taste and the aesthetic preferences or the financial background of its builder.¹⁵ The theorization of memory studies as well as the analysis of the social frameworks and sites of memory were influenced by the sociological studies concerned with the memoire collective and the concept of the lieux de memoire.¹⁶ Individuals remember less than groups and they usually share a pool of knowledge and information in the memories of different members of a social group. Despite the number of members in small or large social groups, collective memory is constructed – by daily life’s experience as well as by decision-making processes. Each social group is able to influence its specific collective memory intentionally. According to Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory is sustained through a continuous production of representational forms. These representational forms are expressed by the built environment, and focus on the city e.g., by its architecture and built infrastructure. We can now talk about the general architectural shape of a city including all memory as symbolic capital.¹⁷ Following this idea, symbolic capital plays a key-role in the promotion of political, economic and other interests.

Ancient Asia Minor

Some of these thematic concerns involving the relation between memory, urban space¹⁸ and the symbolic capital, are also the focus of recent studies on the archaeology of Asia Minor. One important aspect is the social memory, which identifies larger groups such as families and communities looking at their past and future.¹⁹

Identity and socio-political pluralism

In her important article (2001) on the reconfiguration of memory in the Eastern Roman Empire, Susan Alcock raised the question of responsibility for the creation of what she called memory theatres.²⁰ Memory theatres she defined as spaces which conjured up specific and controlled memories of the past through the use of monuments, images, and symbols.²¹ Following her approach, the typical decision-makers in early Roman Asia Minor were local elite families well integrated in political networks, and who used their rank to enable them to take charge of the civic memory. One prominent example is the two elite Aphrodisian families who sponsored the local imperial cult centre, the Sebasteion, in the 1st century AD. The building complex glorifies the subjugation of conquered peoples by the emperors in a more or less Greek setting of references.²² The process described could be labelled the attempt of provincial urban elites to construct local identities.

Transforming geographical space into a mentally and culturally defined place by using memory constructions constituted a common civic mechanism, especially in Roman Asia Minor. Recent micro-regional studies going into greater detail show how tradition, language, religion and mythology were used to define and create a specific identity for different cities and their territories.²³ These studies also discuss the benefactors’ activities in organizing and manipulating civic space, but now turn to more or less normal people or the civic public as important protagonists in their analysis. Working with geographic communities instead of focusing mainly on wealthy, prominent citizens, Arjan Zuiderhoek, for instance, proposes a less oligarchic interpretation of post-Classical civic politics. He argues that the structure of the urban landscape was the result of differentiated socio-political arrangements between civic elites, the imperial government and ordinary people.²⁴ A closer look at professional associations in, for instance, Asia Minor reveals the practice of honouring distinguished members of the urban local elites as well as the negotiations that took place between polis institutions and association: by accepting civic rules and values the associations gain civic space in honour of their members and participate in constructing memory of that space meanwhile.²⁵ In order for it to be compatible with complex social and political negotiations, constructed memory plays an important role; functioning as a gateway between identity and socio-political pluralism.

Notes

1Parker Pearson 1994, xi.

2A general overview is given by Watkin 1980. Cf. Burckhardt 1860 and Wölfflin 1888, 10–11.

3Pevsner 1936; Giedion 1941; Banham 1971. A brief comment by Matless 2002, 73–99.

4Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1989; 2003.

5Lefebvre 1991, 26.

6Lefebvre 1991, 143.

7Parker Pearson and Richards 1994, 2.

8Parker Pearson and Richards 1994, 2–3; cf. Rapoport 1980, 298; Preziosi 1983, 12.

9Rapoport 1982, 40.

10 Space is a qualifying category, Bruner 1984, 5; Littlejohn 1967, 334–335. For an excellent summary of the literature up to the 1990s, see Lawrence and Low 1990, 453–505.

11 Moore 1986, 186–187.

12 According to Harris and Lipman (1980, 415–428) behaviour determines the architectural form of environment (form follows function) or behaviour is the result of environment (function follows form); cf. also Parker Pearson and Richards 1994, 5.

13 Herold et al. 2011.

14 See Jan Assmann on cultural memory: Assmann 1997, 34–40 and 48–64; 2000, 37–44; cf. Aleida Assmann on memory studies: Assmann 1999; 2007.

15 Herold et al. 2011, 24.

16 Cf. the prominent classic sociological studies: Halbwachs 1925; 1950, or the more recent work: Nora 1996.

17 Bourdieu 2000, 38.

18 Crinson (2005, xi–xx) called the developing dynamics urban memory.

19 Alcock 2001, 324.

20 Alcock 2001, 234 and 326–326 (with a brief research history).

21 Alcock 2001, 335.

22 For the example of Aphrodisias, see Alcock 2001, 340. Also see contributions by Mortensen, Schörner and Töpfer, in this volume.

23 A sample of interesting regional studies is presented by Bekker-Nielsen 2014.

24 Zuiderhoek 2014, 104.

25 van Nijf 1997, 247.

Bibliography

Alcock, S. E. et al. 2001: Empires. Perspectives from Archaeology and History, Cambridge.

Alcock, S. E. 2001: The reconfiguration of memory in the eastern Roman Empire, in: S. E. Alcock et al. 2001, 323–350.

Assmann, A. 1999: Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses, München.

Assmann, A. 2007: Geschichte im Gedächtnis. Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung, München.

Assmann, J. 1997: Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, München.

Assmann, J. 2000: Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis, München.

Banham, R. 1971: Los Angeles. The Architecture of the Four Ecologies, New York.

Bekker-Nielsen, T. 2014: Space, Place and Identity in Northern Anatolia, Stuttgart.

Bourdieu, P. 2000: Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen, Frankfurt.

Bruner, E. M. 1984: Introduction: the opening up of anthropology, in E. M. Bruner (ed.), Text, Play and Story: the Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1983, 1–16.

Burckhardt, J. C. 1860: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch, Basel.

Crinson, M. 2005: Urban memory – an introduction, in M. Crinson (ed.), Urban Memory. History and Amnesia in the Modern City, London, xi–xx.

Giedion, S. 1941: Space, Time and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition, Cambridge.

Halbwachs, M. 1925: Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris.

Halbwachs, M. 1950: La mémoire collective, Paris.

Harris, H. and A. Lipman 1980: Social symbolism and space usage in daily life, Sociological Review 28, 425–428.

Herold, S. et al. 2011: Reading the City: Urban Space and Memory in Skopje, Berlin.

Lawrence, D. L. and S. M. Low 1990: The Built Environment and Spatial Form, Annual Review of Anthropology 19, 453–505.

Lefebvre, H. 1991: The Production of Space, Oxford (transl. D. Nicholson-Smith).

Littlejohn, J. 1967: The Temne House, in J. Middleton (ed.), Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism, New York, 331–356.

Matless, D. 2001: Topographic Culture: Nikolaus Pevsner and the Buildings of England, History Workshop Journal 54, 73–99.

Moore, H. L. 1986: Space, Text and Gender: an Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya, Cambridge.

Nora, P. 1996: General Introduction: Between Memory and History, in L. Kritzman (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, New York, 1–13.

Parker Pearson, M. 1994: Preface, in M. Parker Pearson et al. (ed.), Architecture and Order. Approaches to Social Space, London–New York, xi–xii.

Parker Pearson, M. and C. Richard 1994: Ordering the world. Perceptions of architecture, space and time, in M. Parker Pearson et al. (eds.), Architecture and Order. Approaches to Social Space, London–New York, 1–37.

Pevsner, N. 1936: Pioneers of the Modern Movement, Burlington.

Preziosi, D. 1983: Minoan Architectural Design. Formation and Signification, Berlin.

Rapoport, A. 1980: Vernacular architecture and the cultural determination of form, in A. D. King (ed.), Buildings and Society. Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment, London.

Rapoport, A. 1982: The Meaning of the Built Environment: a Nonverbal Communication Approach, Beverly Hills.

Soja, E. W. 1989: Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London.

Soja, E. W. 2003: Writing the City Spatiality, London.

van Nijf, O. M. 1997: The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East, Amsterdam.

Watkin, D. 1980: The Rise of Architectural History, London.

Wölfflin, H. 1888: Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien, München.

Zuiderhoek, A. 2014: Controlling urban public space in Roman Asia Minor, in T. Bekker-Nielsen 2014, 99–108.

Part II

Cityscapes of Remembrance

2

Cityscape and Places of Memory in Assos

Eva-Maria Mohr, Klaus Rheidt and Nurettin Arslan

In 1886 Joseph Thatcher Clarke published an essay about a Doric column shaft with 25 flat flutings and an unusual flat and very wide Egyptian base, which had been inserted into a cavity carved out of the natural bedrock below (Fig. 2.1).¹ The column, which was found in situ in the western necropolis of Assos, carries an inscription which William Mitchell Ramsay read as Arístandre Ik(tinou)…. The full length and content of the inscription which concludes with …kios is not clear since it is written in the Boustrophedon manner and we do not know how much is missing nor whether the entire, 2.75 m high, column was inscribed.² The monument is Archaic, possibly from the middle of the 6th century BC.³ Clarke concluded correctly that it did not belong to a grave, since the rock underneath does not show any room for a burial. It can be seen rather as a memorial, possibly for one or several warriors, fallen in some battle, erected perhaps by relatives or the demos.⁴ If Clarke is correct in interpreting the monument as a cenotaph, the honoured Arístandre or the group of people connected with him, must have fallen in some heroic action, well anchored in the collective memory of the city. Already in Archaic times, this memory was transformed into a place of remembrance in a very prominent location: 130 m away from the western city gate, directly to the north of the late Archaic street of burials (Fig. 2.2). Here the monument remained untouched and visible from afar for one millennium until the end of Antiquity.⁵ The column raises the question whether, and in which periods, the reminiscence of certain events from the distant past of the city’s history were emphasized and which were the monuments which evoked – and the reasons for – this memorization.

Fig. 2.1: Archaic Doric column shaft with inscription in the western necropolis of Assos (from Clarke 1886, 267, fig. 33).

Myths and history of Assos

Clarke imagines a Phoenician trading post having been situated on the site of today’s Assos and is of the opinion that Assos is identical with Pedassos, mentioned in the Iliad.⁶ History and monuments of the city of Assos, indeed, go back to at least the late 8th or early 7th century BC,⁷ when Assos was founded by the port city of Methymna on the northern shore of Lesbos,⁸ and was as its colony extremely successful in Archaic times. The two ports facing each other controlled the straits between Lesbos and the southern coast of the Troad (Fig. 2.3), apparently a lucrative business which not only increased the competition between mother town and colony but also, especially, their wealth. On the southern coast of the Troad, Assos was the only port for larger vessels. Even the grain for the bread at the court of the Persian king, which probably came from the Plain of Skamander, was shipped from here.⁹

Fig. 2.2: City map of Assos (The Assos Project).

Ancient literature throws light on one era of the city in particular, beginning around 400 BC, ending in 345 with the assassination of the tyrant Hermias, ruler of Atarneus and Assos at the hand of the Persians. The predecessor of Hermias, Eubulos of Atarneus, had sided against the Persians with the disloyal satrap Ariobarzanes, entrenched behind the walls of Assos. He then became so insolent that he attacked Maussollos of Halikarnassos at sea,¹⁰ an episode which sheds further light on the importance of the port and fleet of Assos. Ariobarzanes and Eubulos already enjoyed close relations with Athens which obviously were not damaged when Timotheos and Agesilaos halted the campaign of Ariobarzanes, because Athens did not need a breach of the Peace of Kings of 386 BC. The Athenian fleet rather came to the aid of Ariobarzanes, who was now being attacked in Assos by the Persians. Ariobarzanes and Eubulos seem to have played an important role in the power poker between the Persians and Athens and the city must have profited greatly. Hermias, student at the Academy of Plato in Athens, was the one who ultimately brought Aristotle and other philosophers to Assos, put the city at their disposal and thus turned it into a centre of Platonic teaching in Asia Minor.¹¹

The last occupation of Assos by the Persians who imprisoned Hermias and put him to death at the Persian court in Susa in 345 BC ended only with the liberation of the Troad from the Persian yoke by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. The last quarter of the 4th and the early 3rd century BC witnessed a rapid rise of polis-institutions and local families known from various inscriptions. The agoranomos Megistias, son of Sogenes, is mentioned in an inscription as having donated his weights and measures to Athena.¹² In the late 4th century a certain Ladamas and his wife erected the bouleuterion as the inscription on the architrave of the building shows.¹³ Apart from those examples of epigraphic evidence, the historical sources on Assos are silent, which indicates the somewhat provincial context of the newly emerging polis. Only in the late 3rd and 2nd century BC does the city show up again in the sources as part of the Kingdom of Pergamon, when it was renamed Apollonia¹⁴ probably by Attalos I. After this period, Assos again disappears from the historical written sources which indicates the rather limited importance of the city in late Hellenistic and Roman times. In the second half of the 2nd and in the 1st century BC Assians are only mentioned as having been called as judges to other cities, which then put up honorary monuments to them.¹⁵ Only in imperial times do an increasing number of inscriptions draw attention to an influential group of Roman trader families, who promoted themselves publically by wealthy donations of various statues, monuments, and buildings.¹⁶ The first place in the contest of the most important city of the southern Troad, however, was then occupied by other cities, above all Alexandria Troas, 50 km distant from Assos.

Fig. 2.3: Map with sites of the southern Troad and northern Aeolis (with Lesbos) (The Assos Project).

The city of Assos – new archaeological evidence

At the time of its foundation in the late 8th century BC the Aeolian settlement was concentrated on the acropolis and the adjoining northeast saddle. In the following centuries the Archaic settlement below the precipitous rock of the acropolis was growing to the south and west. During the city survey (2010–2012) a number of polygonal walls from the Archaic period were discovered, especially on steep, peripheral slopes, which obviously would not have been attractive to settlers in later phases.¹⁷ Soundings in 2014 in the south-east part of the city confirmed the great age of these walls. One wall still rises to the height of 2 m and is made of carefully crafted polygonal masonry (Figs. 2.2, 2.4–5), the courses of which run into great, horizontally layered ashlars at the corners. According to the archaeological findings it belongs to the Archaic phase of the western necropolis.¹⁸ The closest parallels to this wall construction are in South Aeolian Larisa and on Lesbos.¹⁹ The vertical masonry of the wall in the south-eastern city, perhaps a tower, exhibits a horizontal finish of the uppermost preserved stone course which points out to a further wall section above. In contrast to this high rising structure most of the numerous, more simply constructed, polygonal walls in the south and west of the city belong to the group of buttressing walls. The terraces created in this way probably supported small houses made of polygonal stones. With these buildings and terraces a respectable number of structures survived the later urban changes of Assos and remained part of it, at least on the steep periphery.

Not much younger than the Archaic housing terraces is the late Archaic Temple of Athena,²⁰ until now the best researched monument of Assos (Figs. 2.2 and 2.6). By the erection of the dramatically located temple on the precipitous rocky summit of the mountain as an emblematic landmark, the city was given an essential aspect of its unique identity. Assos was an influential port city the greatness of which was demonstrated from the sea through its urban prospect. Like the column, the temple remained standing to the end of Antiquity. It was lavishly restored several times without changing its physical aspect, however, and remained for almost a thousand years an essential, if not the most important, identification point of the urban panorama. Bonna D. Wescoat calls it the face of the archaic polis, the city’s earliest defining monument. She concludes from the various significant repairs, that subsequent generations of Assians must have felt deeply connected with this temple,²¹ which thus became a place of remembrance of a glorious past.

The 5th century BC is underrepresented in the archaeological evidence in Assos. Apart from unstratified finds from the first quarter of the 5th century BC, the soundings in the urban centre offer until the end of the 5th century relatively few findings, which, however, are partially of remarkable quality. Also some of the few early Classical burials in the western necropolis were richly endowed.²² When Ariobarzanes barricaded himself in Assos in 368 BC,²³ the city obviously possessed extremely strong enclosing walls. Since the city fortifications can hardly have been erected in the 5th century BC after the Persian raids, they must date back to Archaic or very early Classical times, perhaps mended in some places in the intermediate periods.

The 4th century BC thus begins with war, and Assos can look back to centuries of Persian rule und continuous efforts to link up with Athens or Sparta. The marked increase in finds from the early 4th century BC points to a re-invigoration of the city. In some areas the city seems to have still consisted of older building terraces, in other parts it was completely remade. This is apparent in long, parallel running settlement terraces, especially in the south and the south-east (Fig. 2.2 with parallel walls in the southern and south-eastern settlement areas).²⁴ Remains thereof are also to be found above the buildings of the agora. In the south-east they border on the city walls, also occupying the southern precipices, so that we can conclude that Assos was again densely populated when Aristotle moved here from Athens, married a relative of Hermias and taught here together with other philosophers.

Even parts of the city walls, especially the western curtain wall with the western main gate could be dated by archaeological findings to the late Classical period, replacing an older, probably Archaic fortification.²⁵ These parts of the walls have to be seen in the context of the rule of Hermias of Atarneus, who brought Aristotle and other philosophers to Assos. The archaeological soundings suggest²⁶ that the city walls at the main gates had been destroyed right down to their foundations during the former Persian occupation. This was probably a punishment of the disloyal city by the Persians to prevent, by force, a renewed reinforcement of an Attic base on their Aegean frontier. The rebuilding of the city walls in late Classical times, however, shows several interesting features: The strange positioning of the western gate out of the axis of the Archaic burial road (Fig. 2.2) obviously took into consideration new urban premises. At the same time the new western fortification-belt was constructed without a dense series of repeated defense towers, which would have been state of the fortification technique judging by comparable walls elsewhere. Thus the newly erected wall was constructed in a demonstrably old-fashioned manner, recalling the picture of a Classical city and restoring urban representation. Like the temple, the city wall – restored at the middle of the 4th century BC – became a place of remembrance, a kind of citation of the Archaic fortification wall seen as retaliation for the disgrace of the Persian destruction and to reconnect the cityscape with the traditional grandeur of the city. This city remodelling, even if in part that of ruinous and uninhabited settlements, bears within the city all the marks of a thorough modernizing, with no respect shown to older monuments and thus, with the exception of the temple, hardly with any defined places of remembrance. Urban connections to the temple are not evident either. In this phase modernization seems to have been more important than the connection to venerable monuments of the past.

Assos, the city of the philosophers, has hardly left any traces except in the long parallel settlement terraces and parts of the fortification walls. These are still visible above all at the periphery of the city, which was less densely populated and underwent no architectural transformation. The succeeding Hellenistic polis of Assos on the other hand experienced a rapid boom after the liberation from the Persian yoke by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. This led to new, larger buildings and obviously also to a new urban order. Most of the buildings belonging to this construction programme have now been securely dated by the excavations between 2010 and 2014.²⁷ The bouleuterion is among the oldest in Asia Minor and was built in the last quarter of the 4th century BC.²⁸ The theatre was built around 300 BC²⁹ and its construction interrupted the regular system of the building terraces of the southern city. During the 2014 research into the stage building it became clear that the late Classical houses, which had to make room for the theatre construction, were razed to their foundations. Also the the precursor of the northern stoa of the agora, a banqueting building with a middle colonnade, can be dated to around 300 BC.³⁰ These major buildings of urban institutions were erected at great expense between the hillocks of the western and eastern city, which made construction especially difficult. This was carried out mainly for two reasons: On the one hand the buildings and their high buttressing walls could only, in this position, be seen already from afar at sea and on the other hand the new constructions put up an architectonic axis between the harbour, the commercial centre of the city and the venerable Temple of Athena and its altar (Figs. 2.2 and 2.7). Both aspects carried prestige and, after the remodelling of the cityscape in late Classical times, were reminders of the specific Greek history and Athenian connections of the city during the Persian wars. Together with these new structures the temple finally underwent extensive restoration, which confirms the assumption that it had special importance as a place of remembrance within the otherwise completely new city prospect.

Fig. 2.4: Building remains and soundings in the south-east corner of the city investigated in 2014 (The Assos Project).

Fig. 2.5: Early Archaic wall no. 54/3 (view from south) (The Assos Project).

Hellenistic kings and Roman traders – from modernization to memorization

In the 2nd century BC, under the hegemony of Pergamon when Assos was renamed Apollonia, probably to honour Apollonis, wife of King Attalos I and mother of his successor Eumenes II and Attalos II, even the old-fashioned name of the city did not play a role any longer. The bouleuterion is a good example of how older structures with a special identity for the citizens were marginalized in this period. The two-storeyed northern stoa of the agora is a royal building, a typical export item from Pergamon, like the stoai of Eumenes II and his brother Attalos II in Athens. The marble parts of the Stoa of Eumenes were completely prefabricated in Pergamon and brought to Athens.³¹ The same procedure seems to have taken place with a huge statuary monument covered with marble slabs in front of the eastern end of the stoa in Assos. Placement marks on the stones and the unusual use of marble indicate its probable origin in Pergamon.³² The stoa with its monuments makes the entrance to the bouleuterion protrude markedly, towers over it and pushes it visually into the background (Fig. 2.8). Just as in Pergamon we see the disappearance of the citizens from the cityscape of Assos during the time of the Pergamenian kings.³³

Fig. 2.6: Temple of Athena (view from north-east) (The Assos Project).

Fig. 2.7: Early Hellenistic urban prospect. Photography showing axis of public buildings between the eastern and western city (The Assos Project).

Fig. 2.8: Reconstruction of the agora with adjacent buildings (Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 27).

This development seems to change only in the time of Augustus, when suddenly influential native citizens appear again on the urban stage, and also Romaioi, Roman merchants who equally engaged themselves in the beautification and enlargement of the city. But this era also witnessed severe destruction to the city, not by war this time but by several devastating earthquakes, the traces of which we see in several places in the city. Especially in the south-east, the polygonal buttressing walls of Classical times were clearly torn apart by the horizontal torque and then, probably in the second half of the 2nd century AD, rebuilt with small ashlars and reused polygonal stones.³⁴ Already the consul Sextus Appuleios (27–15 BC) distinguished himself with the restoration of several buildings.³⁵ Also the 12-city-quake of the year AD 17, known from ancient literature,³⁶ would have been felt in Assos, but we have no mention thereof in the literary sources. The terrace-walls in the south-east were probably destroyed by an earthquake, perhaps one of the earthquakes of AD 146/147, 149/150 or 178. The damages caused to several cities like Smyrna and Mytilene were described by Aelios Aristeides.³⁷

For the Romans in Assos the Greek heritage seems to have had a special fascination. They erected statues of Gaius Caesar, Julia and the Dea Roma in the bouleuterion, which gave the venerable building new meaning in the context of the imperial cult.³⁸ Also in the bouleuterion the inscription of the well-known oath of allegiance of the people of Assos at the enthroning of Caligula in AD 37 was set up. In this document the Roman traders refer with self-confidence to the goddess Athena with the words … with the immaculate virgin whom our fathers honoured …,³⁹ which was far from being part of the memory of their ancestors. Thus the glorious past of the city, represented by the temple, was incorporated into a new history-construction to show that the romaioi of Assos were aware, and part of, the ancient history of their city.⁴⁰

To this group of local romaioi also belongs the family of Lollius, Q. Lollius Philetairos, who comitted himself to the restoration of the Hellenistic gymnasium and donated a new stoa for the old-fashioned building, which again was not redesigned in a modern architectural style but fits perfectly the fabric of the Hellenistic building. His wife Lollia Antiochis built a thermal complex south of the agora, which she dedicated to Julia, daughter of Augustus. It was fed by a large cistern in front of the north stoa of the agora. An additional cistern was cut into the floor of the southern nave of the southern stoa.⁴¹ These water installations show that the fresh water supply was insufficient to maintain the ambitious Baths of Lollia in the long run. Some of the smaller bases of statues and pedestals of inscriptions, standing crowded together with the Hellenistic statuary monuments in front of the bouleuterion⁴² (Figs. 2.8–9), show traces of wear and replacement on this spot. Earlier, the monuments seem to have stood in front of the north stoa but probably had to make room for the insertion of the cistern. Their new placement shows that the recollection of the people displayed here was to be kept alive despite the architectural and functional changes of the agora.

Fig. 2.9: Plan of the agora with adjacent buildings (status 2014) (The Assos Project).

Finally the brothers Kallisthenes and Aristias should be mentioned. The people of Assos erected for them a small Doric temple with a marble façade, next to the south stoa on the agora. This foundation is recalled in a memorial inscription, probably carved after their death, on the architrave of this heroon intra muros, the naos of which held two limestone sarcophagi.⁴³ This little building, too, shows no modern ideas, but by its location and the Doric architectural details it decidedly relates to the older Greek polis (Figs. 2.8–9). This return to and imitation of Hellenistic ornaments and building techniques makes it difficult to identify Roman structures without excavating. Little wonder, that the so-called agora-temple was unscrupulously dated to Hellenistic times until now.⁴⁴ With its masonry of large upright flagstones alternating with flat courses, it resembles the north Pergamenian stoa of the agora so strikingly that a different date hardly seemed possible. But the building is Roman. The caementicium filling behind the flagstones and the accompanying finds from the layers belonging to this building period are definite proof.⁴⁵ It was probably only erected in the 3rd century AD, further evidence of the enduring and conservative taste of the rich Roman families of Assos. Since its platform could not be reached by stairs, the agora-temple was not even a temple but is probably rather to be seen as a heroon, like the foundation of the brothers Kallisthenes and Aristias next to the nearby south hall. These structures and the erection of the statues of Julia Domna and later that of Emperor Constantine II in the area of the western entrance to the square show that the agora enjoyed great importance until the end of the imperial period, both as a place of remembrance and centre of the city.

Proof of the enduring conservative attitude of the Romans of Assos can also be found in the necropolis. The monumental Roman burial structures are so cleverly integrated into the mixture of Classical and Hellenistic graves, that they do not disturb the old-fashioned aspect of the necropolis. Among the richest monuments are those which border directly on the city wall, rendered useless in Roman times. The burial of Publius Varus Aquila (late 1st century BC) merits particular mention,⁴⁶ because right up to today the city wall constitutes an impressive setting for the funerary monument (Fig. 2.10). Also immediately next to the gateway stood a Roman monument on a marble base, which is only vaguely visible from its traces on the flagstones of the wall of the gate. It obviously used the old-fashioned wall as background and to emphasize the historical magnitude of the Roman society of Assos.

All this proves that the romaioi immigrants in particular were very interested in firmly anchoring their activities in the historical-political structure of the city. Their monuments, which now introduced marble to Assos on a larger scale, marked the cityscape and defined its identity essentially. But it is always the existence of the late Classical city walls and the Hellenistic buildings, the bouleuterion and the halls of the agora, which form its background and emphasize the roots of the city in its post-Persian history. The early Hellenistic city prospect recalled memories of a glorious past. These buildings, together with the high rising city walls, shaped the panorama of the city and were important until Late Antiquity, since they provided for the Roman elites in Assos the necessary historic dimension in the context of the competition between the rival Roman cities of Asia Minor.

Fig. 2.10: Funerary monument of Publius Varus Aquila in the western necropolis: reconstruction in front of the city wall (from Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 229, fig. 1).

Memory and places of remembrance – a summary

Looking for specific places of remembrance in Assos one encounters, first and foremost, the Temple of Athena, enthroned 235 m above the ships anchoring in the harbour. Restored several times in its old-fashioned manner, it functioned as a bearer of identity and continuity, even in Roman times, when the romaioi recalled its historical significance for their own purposes. The Doric column in the western necropolis is even older and could be seen rather as a metaphorical place of remembrance, since its inscription offers an account of the mythical past of the Archaic city. Obviously also the fortification walls, at least the curtain wall with the western gate, were parts of this topography of memory.⁴⁷ They were rebuilt in late Classical times, ignoring any modern fortification techniques which had been developed in the first half of the 4th century BC. Thus, these signs of overcoming the Persian occupation were set up as a metaphorical reminder of the city’s glorious past. The romaioi used this restored western wall as a stage for their most prestigious tomb buildings, thus combining their representational needs and legitimation with the glorious history of the city. The same way of occupying older buildings and transforming them into metaphorical places of remembrance is to be seen in the bouleuterion, where statues of the imperial family profoundly changed the meaning of the building from the seat of an independent city council to a place of worship in the cult of the emperors.⁴⁸ The old-fashioned building, however, was used as historical background and legitimation of Roman rule in Assos, even if only represented by some few, but obviously wealthy, trader families.

Ancient literary sources, however, focus on Assos as part of the Athenian resistance against the Persians and as an ally of Athens or Sparta. Pliny, Strabo and others describe the history of the Persian wars in detail, also pointing out the significant role of Assos and its fortifications. The city is also mentioned as part of the Kingdom of Pergamon. But beyond the brief notice of the founding of Assos by settlers from Methymna nothing is mentioned about specific places of memory, which could be of more than regional interest. The phases, in which the city shows up in ancient historiography, on the other hand, seem to be periods of a rather ahistorical lack of interest when it comes to historical places and memory: In the late 5th or first half of the 4th century as well as in Pergamene times urban development seems not to commemorate the past at all. It seems to be much more the idea of an ideal, orderly laid-out cityscape in the first period and the idea of urban spaces reflecting the new architecture of the Pergamene kings in the second.

The periods in which memory played an important role and influenced urban planning seem to be those of less interest for the historical writers. When Assos recovered from the Persian yoke and started its amazing building programme to create a new city-centre, the ancient harbour and the Temple of Athena were the key anchor points for the new cityscape, but also the parts of the old fortifications destroyed by the Persians which had been rebuilt in an old-fashioned manner. The building programme was related to the glorious past of the city by axial connections between the main polis buildings which were already visible from far-off. In Roman times, however, evoking the city’s far-reaching history and turning the historical monuments into places of remembrance seems to have been desired mainly by Assians who had only recently arrived from elsewhere. In this case the memory of a glorious past, which might have been explained in detail in front of the Doric column outside the western gate from one of the romaioi to his foreign guest, is a totally metaphorical construction, far removed from any authenticity or direct relationship to the storyteller.

Still today the city walls of the western necropolis, together with the city mount of Assos with its Temple of Athena, evoke genuine astonishment when approached from the sea. Strabo informs us, that Assus is by nature strong and well-fortified; and the ascent to it from the sea and the harbour is very steep and long, so that the statement of Stratonicus the citharist in regard to it seems appropriate: ‘Go to Assus, in order that thou mayest more quickly come to the doom of death’.⁴⁹ Not only the travellers of Antiquity, but scholars and travellers in modern times as well as the first excavators of this city in the southern Troad emphasize its site in different ways.⁵⁰ According to William Martin Leake, the cityscape of Assos gives the most perfect idea of a Greek city that anywhere exists.⁵¹ Assos has, indeed, an impressive physiognomy, which has stamped its panorama throughout time. There is no other port city on the west coast of Asia Minor with equally favourable, topographic conditions for a representative, vertical city prospect. The reflection of the historic past of the settlement as materialized in its buildings experienced in the course of Antiquity various approaches including preservation, valuation or renewal but also damage, deformation or replacement of older structures. The memory of the past and the places of remembrance appear to have been of varying significance for the city. In early Hellenistic (late 4th–3rd century BC) and early imperial times (late 1st century BC–1st century AD), however, a significant influence of these places and monuments on the urban development can be traced, which, for different reasons, transformed the cityscape of Assos into an urban topography of memory.

Notes

1Clarke 1886.

2Clarke 1886, 273–275, figs. 33 and 35 (inscription). For the inscription, see furthermore Sterrett 1885; Ramsay 1885, 149–151.

3Merkelbach 1976, no. 1.

4Clarke 1886, 274.

5Only after the American excavations, was the preserved lower portion of the column brought to the Istanbul Museum, Mendel 1908–1914, II 24, no. 269, and only recently has it been replaced on the site by a simple column fragment.

6Clarke 1882, 58, 60; Hom. Il. 6.33–35.

7Scattered early Bronze Age finds from the acropolis – Clarke mentioned sherds under the Temple of Athena which were similar to Troy I and II sherds – and Bronze Age pottery fragments from the lower city area, which were registered during a ceramic intensive survey (2010–2012), however, indicate a much older settlement on the site, Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 164; Stupperich 1990, 29. The ceramic finds were supplemented in 2007 by the discovery of a Bronze Age arrow head, Arslan et al . 2008, 105.

8Strabo 13.1.58.

9Strabo 15.3.22; Hopper 1982, 83; Tenger 1995, 148–149.

10 Funke 1998, 219.

11 Strabo 13.1.57; Diod. Sic.16.52.

12 Merkelbach 1976, 3–7, no. 3.

13 Arslan 2016, 88.

14 Plin. HN 5.123; Anth. Pal. 9.679; Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 2.

15 Merkelbach 1976, 13–22, nos. 7–10.

16 Mohr and Rheidt 2016, 149–150.

17 For the city survey, Kasubke 2013; Mohr and Rheidt 2016.

18 Stupperich 2016, 170–173.

19 Koldewey 1890, 87, n. 3 (Makara), pl. 14.7 (Xerokastron), and pl. 15.4 (Apothike). The next comparisons for polygonal walls with a horizontal completion of the lower wall section can be found in Larisa, Boehlau and Schefold 1940, pls. 3 and 33. However, the joints of the masonry of similar walls from Larisa are tighter and as a whole more oriented to the horizontal.

20 For details of the temple and the building history, Wescoat 2012; 2016.

21 Wescoat 2016, 33.

22 For the Classical necropolis, Freydank 2000, esp. 94–98 and 142–145.

23 Xen. Ages . 2.26–27; Nep. Timoth . 1.3.

24 In the south-eastern city such parallel terrace walls are visible for more than 80 m in length above ground. To clarify the structural and chronological development of this settlement pattern three soundings ( Fig. 2.4 ) were conducted in 2014. The building remains could be assigned to a total of ten different phases. The system of regular parallel settlement terraces could be dated around the mid-4th century BC.

25 For the city walls, Türk 2012; 2013; 2014; 2016.

26 Mohr and Rheidt 2016, 134–135 with fig. 4; Türk 2016, 5–6.

27 For the archaeological work since 2010, Arslan et al . 2012; 2016; Arslan 2013a; 2014; Arslan and Rheidt 2013.

28 Arslan 2016, 88–89.

29 Mohr and Rheidt 2016, 146.

30 Arslan 2013b, 213–217; Arslan and Eren 2012, 283–285; Arslan 2016, 89–91.

31 Korres 1984, 201–207.

32 Marble base no. 7 on Clarke’s plan, Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 74. Weber (2013, 23–26) suggests a much earlier date for the monument and a translocation from another place in Assos, which seems highly unlikely; see also Kienast 2013.

33 Rheidt 2015, 305 with further literature.

34 The restoration of the Classical terrace walls in Roman times was documented in 2014 in excavations in the south-eastern city. The backfilling of the newly established Roman terrace walls contained a large quantity of pottery, which is currently being evaluated with regard to the time of the restoration.

35 Merkelbach 1976, 47–48, nos. 22–23; Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 63.

36 Tac. Ann . 2.47. For the earthquake, Ambraseys 2009.

37 Aristid. Hieroi Logoi 4.38 (Mytilene, Smyrna); Aristid. Or . 18–19 (Smyrna).

38 Römhild 1993, 162–163, n. 17.

39 Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 66, fig. 17.

40 Römhild 1993, 161; Merkelbach 1976, 54, no. 26; Cancik 2003, 36–37 with n. 33.

41 The installation of this cistern is seen so far in connection with the establishment of the Roman baths. The south stoa (building phases, construction and transformation) is currently investigated by Julia Engel.

42 Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 74. See also Sielhorst 2015, 149–151.

43 For this, see Schörner 2007, 247–248, cat. A22, figs. 126–134; Berns 2003, 180.

44 The simultaneous construction of the agora buildings in Assos was already proposed by Clarke (Clarke, Bacon and Koldewey 1902–1921, 23–74) and taken up in many publications, cf. Dinsmoor 1950, 334. Most interestingly in this context might be the reconstruction by Klier (1983) based on Hellenistic temples in Pergamon. See also Sielhorst 2015, 102 and 120, who mentions the temple in an early Hellenistic context but argues otherwise for an early imperial date of this building.

45 Arslan 2016, 92.

46 For a new view of this grave monument, Berns 2003, 56, 180–181, fig. 25.

47 For the theoretical background, Stein-Hölkeskamp and Hölkeskamp 2006, 13.

48 Arslan 2016, 89 and 94.

49 Strabo 13.1.57. Transl. H. L. Jones (Loeb 1960).

50 For example, Kind 1862, 233; von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1937, 173.2: der Aufstieg vom Landeplatz zur Burg ist sehr beschwerlich.

51 Leake 1824, 129.

Bibliography

Ambraseys, N. 2009: Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and Middle East: a multidisciplinary study of seismicity up to 1900, Cambridge.

Arslan, N. 2013a: 2011 Yılı Assos Kazı Çalışmaları, KST 34.2, 319–336.

Arslan, N. 2013b: Die Agora und die