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Two Notes on Lydian Topography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
In my recent publication of the epigraphical evidence for the cult of the god Men, I made a couple of topographical equations on which further comment is necessary. One of these (Kula/Koloe) has been generally abandoned in recent scholarship, but I think that it is defensible, and would like to take this opportunity to defend it. The other (Ayazviran/Koresa), I would like to withdraw, in favour of proposing the possible equation Köres/Koresa.
Following an old tradition, based on the principle of survival of proper names, I stated that the present day town of Kula was called Koloe in antiquity. Koloe was a widespread place-name in Greco-Roman Lydia. The name is apparently of non-Greek origin, and whatever it may have meant, it seems to have been very much suited to place-names. Three places in Lydia are definitely known to have borne the name in antiquity: a lake, a polis, and a katoikia. At some Koloe in Lydia, Attalus I of Pergamum defeated Antiochus Hierax in 229/8 B.C.
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- Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1975
References
1 Corpus Monumentorum Religionis Dei Menis, I, Leiden, 1971Google Scholar. (=CMRDM). Since the main purpose of that book was to gather and present materials for the history of religion, topography was a side issue, particularly in an area such as Asia Minor, where there is so much uncertainty. Still, it would not be right to leave these topographical matters without explanation. On both these points I found myself confused by the scholarship so far. I have written this article in an attempt to relieve my own confusion, and hope, by publishing it, to spare future students of the area the necessity to untangle the whole matter for themselves.
2 CMRDM, I, p. 40, no. 58Google Scholar. The principle of survival of place-names is well-founded and generally accepted. Robert, L., Villes d'Asie Mineure, Paris, 1935, p. 96 ffGoogle Scholar. gives many examples. It is suspect only when the place-name also has a likely Turkish etymology.
3 Bürchner, in RE, XIGoogle Scholar, col. 1107 (for “westlichen” read “östlichen”). Similar cases seem to occur with other place-names, the original meaning of which (and hence why they were used for several different places) is now lost. Such are Alia, or Tars-. In the case of the former, we have a city of Phrygia, well-attested numismatically, although its exact location is disputed. Drexler, , in Roscher's, Lexikon, II, ii, col. 2709Google Scholar; and Hirschfeld, , RE, IGoogle Scholar, col. 1477 opt for Kırka. Ramsay, , Historical Geography of Asia Minor, London, 1890 (=HGAM), p. 459Google Scholar, contradicting what he says, ibid., 138, opts for Banaz, and is hesitantly followed by the map in A. Philippson, Reisen und Forschungen im westlichen Kleinasien, Petermann's Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsheft 180, 1914, and by Bean, and Calder, , A Classical Map of Asia Minor, London, 1958Google Scholar. We also have an Alianon katoikia in the Rhyndacus Valley (CMRDM, I, no. 88 and references), as well as the place-name Ἀλλιανοῑς in Aristides, Aelius, Hieroi Logoi, III, 1 and 3Google Scholar. This latter place Behr, C. A., (Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales, Amsterdam, 1968, p. 44)Google Scholar would like to place 30 miles east–so he must mean although twice he says “west”–of Pergamum; hence I find his attempt to identify this place with the Alianon katoikia unconvincing. There is also, interestingly enough, a θεὰ Ἀλιανή recorded at Kula (LeBas-Waddington, 699a; J. Keil, Anzeiger Akad. Wien, Phil. Hist. Kl., 1960, 3 ff.). As for Tars-, see Herrmann, Peter, Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordostlydien, ÖAW Denkschriften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, LXXX, 1962, p. 30, no. 21 and discussionGoogle Scholar; Buresch, K., Aus Lydien, Leipzig, 1898, p. 89Google Scholar; Pape-Benseler, s.v. Ταρσός. I have treated this name in an article soon to appear in Numen.
4 Eusebius, , Chronicles, I, 253Google Scholar; the place name has been restored into an inscription of a victory monument of Attalus at Pergamum (Inschriften von Pergamon, no. 27).
5 XIII, 626.
6 Ath. Mit., XIV, 1899, p. 98, no. 32Google Scholar; ibid., XV, 1890, p. 336, no. 4; Revue des Études Anciennes, IV, 1902, p. 264, no. 14Google Scholar; Keil, Josef and von Premerstein, Anton, Bericht über eine dritte Reise in Lydien, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Denkschriften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, LVII, i, 1914, no. 75Google Scholar. For the medieval name, Leo Diaconus, p. 5 (Bonn): πατρὶς δέ μοι Καλόη …… περὶ τὰς πηγὰς τοῦ Καυστρίου ποταμοῦ.
7 660.1. Actually Κολοαισίε, according to the edition of Hierocles by Honigmann, Brussels, 1939. The form Κολοσή is given in RE, s.v., Koloe; Ramsay, , HGAM, p. 105Google Scholar. Actually the inscription cited above as AM, XIV, 1899, p. 98, no. 32Google Scholar was actually published earlier (Mouseion kai Bibliotheke tes Evangelikes Scholes, I, 136Google Scholar, with the reading Κολοσινῶν. This bye-form must have survived in the modern Keles.
8 Académie Royale de Belgique, Mémoires couronnés et des savants étrangers, XXX, 1859, p. 3 ffGoogle Scholar. Picture of relief, Roscher's, Lexikon, IV, col. 244Google Scholar.
9 What is left of the relief is now in the Museum of Manisa (Robert, L., Hellenica, VI, 1948, pp. 111–13)Google Scholar.
10 JHS, VIII, 1888, p. 519Google Scholar; HGAM, passim, esp. p. 123. Ramsay wishes to place the Koloenon katoikia, which he also calls Koloe, in the Kara Taş area.
11 Aus Lydien, Leipzig, 1898, p. 198Google Scholar = Berichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist Klasse, 1894, p. 99Google Scholar.
12 See above, footnote 3.
13 JHS, VIII, 1888, p. 519Google Scholar: “Moreover, this town of Koula is mentioned by the Byzantine writers, who explain the name as a term used by the Turks in the sense ‘castle”; it is the Arabic ‘kala”.” (No footnotes!) Again, HGAM, p. 123: “The coincidence of names, however, is quite accidental; the name Koula is a good Turkish name, which was used by the Byzantine writer Pachymeres. It is the name, meaning ‘fortress”, which they applied to the strong fortress called by earlier Byzantine writers Opsikion.” (No footnotes!) I do not know the basis for all this. Pachymeres (13th century), II, 435, 17 (Bonn) does mention a Turkish fortress by a name similar to, but not identical with, the name of Kula. The context is one of fighting in the Philadelphia-Tripolis area, and the fortress is attacked by the Byzantine general: ὑποστρέΨας προσβάλλει τῷ Κουλᾶ φρουρίῳ. But there is no guarantee that our place is meant, much less that we are dealing with a “good Turkish name”. As for Opsikion, that is one of the Themes of the 7th–11th centuries (Ostrogorsky, , Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates,3 1973, maps facing pp. 80 and 248Google Scholar). It embraced the N.W. part of the Anatolian peninsula, at most grazing our area. George Acropolita, 13C (Bonn), mentions that after 1204 it was all overrun by the Italians. There is also a fortress ὈΨίκια mentioned by Acropolita (also 13th century, 30B (Bonn), which Ramsay, , HGAM, p. 130Google Scholar, arbitrarily places at Kula. Apparently overlooked by Ramsay are the documents, Miklosich, F. and Müller, J., Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi Sacra et Profana, II, Vienna, 1862, p. 88Google Scholar, no. CCCLXXXI (dated 1384) and p. 209, no. CCCCLXII (dated 1394). In the first of these the metropolitan of Laodiceia has assigned to him the following churches or church properties: αἱ Χῶναι, τὸ Κοτυάειον καὶ τὸ Κουλᾶ καὶ ἡ Κόλιδα, πατριαρΧικὰ ὄντα. In the latter, the metropolitan of Philadelphia receives: τὰ περὶ τὴν Φιλαδέλφειαν πατριαρΧικὰ δίαια, ἤγουν τὸ Κουλᾶ ἡ Κόλιδα καὶ τὰ Σύνναδα, ὡς πατριαρΧικά. The fact that in both cases τὸ Κουλᾶ is mentioned in close proximity to Κόλιδα (=Gyölde) makes it likely, but not certain, that our place is being referred to. If so, it seems to me that the most reasonable explanation is that the name Κολόη had been Turkified at an early stage of the Turkish conquest of Anatolia, but the popular etymology which eventually settled the form of the name did not take place immediately. The Turkish form is used in Greek documents, presumably because of the increased importance of the place under Turkish rule.
14 Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 1910, pp. 59–61Google Scholar.
15 Op. cit., pp. 97, 99.
16 Not only did I so hear it when I visited the town in 1969, but the fact is borne out by the pre-World War I transcription of it as τὰ Κοῦλα, AM, XVII, 1892, p. 198, no. 1Google Scholar. Interestingly also, the Greeks of the period, who spoke and understood Turkish, render it into Greek as a neuter plural. One would not expect this if they understood it to mean “fortress” or “tower”. “Kule” would be hellenized as ὁ Κουλές. This form of the name is attested as far back as 1588, in the Ὁδοιπορικὸν Ἰακώβου Μηλιώτη ed. Papageorgiou, S., Παρνασσός, 6, 1882, p. 636Google Scholar, where there can be no doubt but that our place is meant, as the author goes ahead to describe the town as famous for its manufacture of rugs.
17 Robert's references to Kula occur in a chapter devoted to disproving Ramsay's identification of ancient Satala with modern Sandal. Robert, p. 96, complains rightly, that Ramsay had not “surabondamment prouvé”, but merely “surabondamment affirmé”, that Satala was Sandal. Likewise, Ramsay did not prove, but simply repeatedly asserted, that Kula could not have been called Koloe in antiquity. Actually, this is part and parcel of the same argument that Satala is to be placed at Sandal (HGAM, p. 459). For the desire to see the decaying village Satala/Sandal (for its decay see Robert, op. cit., 99–100) as the main city of the area compels Ramsay to deny the importance in antiquity of the relatively flourishing, as well as old and picturesque, Kula (Philippson's statement, op. cit., p. 15, “Die Stadt ist jedenfalls erst im späten Mittelalter oder in der neuen Zeit gegründet, denn keine Spur älterer Besiedlung lässt sich nachweisen”, is probably influenced by Ramsay. Note the apologetic tone; elsewhere he calls the place “ansehnlich”. Ancient remains are plentiful in the entire area, although mostly surface finds that can easily be transported). It is a shame that Robert, while being sceptical about one part of Ramsay's argument, accepts the other. Incidentally, although Robert does not mention it, Adala, with which he wishes to identify Satala, has undergone popular etymology in Turkish. It means, “with an island”.
18 Alone of recent scholars, Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor, Princeton, 1950, p. 738Google Scholar, allows that there may have been two towns Koloe, as well as the lake, at any of which the battle may have taken place. Bürchner, RE, s.v. Koloe 4, refrains from identifying the site either with the lake or with Koloe/Keles, but leans towards the former.
19 Herrmann, op. cit. (note 3), p. 24, no. 18 (=CMRDM, I, no. 47).
20 CMRDM, I, nos. 42, 51, 67, 69, 86, and A 1.
21 CMRDM, I, p. 35Google Scholar.
22 Op. cit., p. 26.
23 Op. cit., p. 3.
24 Op. cit., p. 25; his conclusions are basically negative.
25 Robert, op. cit., p. 98.
26 Herrmann, P. and Polatkan, K. Z., Das Testament des Epikrates usw., ÖAW Sitzungsberichte, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, CCLXV, 1969, p. 42Google Scholar. In general, there are frequent, but not consistent, instances of back-vowels becoming front-vowels in Turkish adaptations of classical place-names. Cf. Enevre from Anaboura. A systematic study of the phonology of such adaptations would yield valuable results.
27 CMRDM, I, no. 90, with bibliography. In my forthcoming CMRDM, III, I will endeavour to make some sense of Men Gallikos, which has caused so much scholarly difficulty. I think that Buresch, , Aus Lydien, p. 88Google Scholar, was on the right track in connecting it with Gallos.
28 Subsequent scholars have been divided whether to follow Buresch or Ramsay. Bürchner, , RE, XI, col. 357Google Scholar, s.v. Κέρυζα, leans towards Ramsay. Philippson, on the other hand (op. cit., map) unquestioningly places Keryza near Köres.
29 CMRDM, I, 57, 61 and 66Google Scholar.
30 Cf. Steinleitner, , Die Beicht im Zusammenhange mit der sakralen Rechtspflege in der Antike, Munich, 1913, p. 37 ffGoogle Scholar.
31 If so, perhaps the Kerassai discussed by Herrmann can also be drawn back into the discussion.