Priene
Bias, one of the seven wise men of the ancient times, grew up in Priene. Priene is one of the twelve Ionian cities and a typical Greek city with no Roman buildings. As alluvium from the Maiandros began filling in the city, Alexander the Great found a solution by relocating the city upstream after his visit in 334 BC. A Macedonian king bestowed the Temple of Athena to the city.
About Priene
Priene was an ancient Greek city of Ionia (and member of the Ionian League) at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about 6 km (4 mi) north of the then course of the Maeander (now called the Büyük Menderes or “Big Maeander”) River, 67 km from today’s Aydin, 15 km from today’s Söke and 25 km (16 mi) from ancient Miletus. It was formerly on the sea coast, built overlooking the ocean on steep slopes and terraces extending from sea level to a height of 380 m above sea level at the top of the escarpment. Today, after several centuries of changes in the landscape, it is an inland site. Climb the narrow path and see the view from the peak of the hill where there was once an acropolis. It’s worth the cardiovascular effort.
The city visible on the slopes and escarpment of Mycale was constructed according to plan entirely within the 4th century BCE. It was not the original Priene, which had been a port city situated at the then mouth of the Maeander River. This location caused insuperable environmental difficulties for it due to slow aggradation of the riverbed and progradation in the direction of the Aegean Sea. Typically the harbor would silt over and the population find itself living in pest-ridden swamps and marshes. The underlying causes of the problem are that the Maeander flows through a slowly subsiding rift valley creating a drowned coastine and that human use of the previously forested slopes and valley denudes the countryside and accelerates erosion. The sediments are progressively deposited in the trough at the mouth of the river, which migrates westward and more than compensates for the subsidence.
Physical remains of the original Priene have not yet been identified, because, it is supposed, they must be under many feet of sediment, the top of which is currently valuable agricultural land. Knowledge of the average rate of progradation is the basis for estimating the location of the city, which was moved every few centuries to renew its utility as a port. The Greek city (there may have been unknown habitations of other ethnicities, as at Miletus) was founded by a colony from the ancient Greek city of Thebes in the vicinity of today’s Söke at about 1000 BCE. At about 700 BCE a series of earthquakes provided the opportunity for a move to within 8 km of its 4th century BCE location. At about 500 BCE the city moved again to a few km away at the port of Naulochos.
Although the exact truth is not known, Priene was told to have been first settled by Ionians under Aegyptus, a son of Belus and grandson of King Codrus, in the 11th century BCE. After successive attacks by Cimmerians, Lydians under Ardys, and Persians, it survived and prospered under the direction of its “sage,” Bias, during the middle of the 6th century BC. Cyrus captured it in 545 BC; but it was able to send twelve ships to join the Ionic Revolt (499 BC-494 BC). It was a Persian colony until Alexander the Great’s conquest. Disputes with Samos, and the troubles after Alexander’s death, brought Priene low, and Rome had to save it from the kings of Pergamon and Cappadocia in 155.
Orophernes, the rebellious brother of the Cappadocian king, who had deposited a treasure there and recovered it by Roman intervention, restored the temple of Athena as a thank-offering. Under Roman and Byzantine dominion Priene had a prosperous history. It passed into Muslim hands late in the 13th century.
City Walls and Main Gate
The city wall was built in the 4th cent. B.C., and was approximately2.5 km long. For most of its length it ran along the top of a steep slope, and the east and the west ends abutted on the cliffs of the Telonela Heights. Before continuing some 200 m above the city where they enclosed the triangular plateau of the peak.
The walls had 16 towers, and the curtain between them had a ’saw-tooth’ zigzag form, where by each projecting section covered the flank of the next stretch of wall.