Miletus

M I L E T U S

Miletus, an ancient city located near the present Akkoy at the mouth of the Buyuk Menderes (Meander) River, owed its importance to its position on trade routes. It was one of the largest cities in Anatolia with a population of between 80,000 and 100,000. Highly prosperous, it founded many colonies and was the home of the 6C BC philosophers Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Thales, the town planner Hippodamus and architect Isidorus. Miletus seems to have produced geniuses the way Aphrodisias produced sculptors.

According to legend, the city was founded by Neleus, son of King Codrus of Athens. Neleus came to settle with his men and killed the resident males compelling the women to marry the newcomers. After this took place the women swore not to sit at the same table with their husbands and also not to call them by their names.

In the 11 century BC Ionians came to Miletus, and by the 7 century BC Miletus was at its peak which was to last for more than two centuries. With other cities of Ionia in 499 BC, Miletus rebelled against the Persians, who had captured, burned it to the ground and enslaved its surviving population. This last battle was that of Lade in 494 BC, just outside the harbor of Miletus where the Persian fleet of 600 warships defeated the Ionian force. The destruction was so bad that when the play of Phrynichus, The Capture of Miletus was performed in Athens, as Herodotus reported, "the whole theater burst into tears, and the people sentenced the playwright to pay a fine". The role of Miletus was significant in the defeat of the Persians at the Mycale battle in 479 BC. Shortly after the battle, Miletus joined the Delian Confederacy with a contribution larger than that of Ephesus. Upon an agreement between the Persian Satrap and Athens, Miletus and other Ionian cities of Anatolia came under the rule of the Persians again. At the end of the 5C BC Miletus was ruled by the Carian satraps.

Captured by Alexander the Great after a siege in 334 BC and ruled by the Seleucid Dynasty in the following years, Miletus remained an important trade center into Roman times.

St. Paul stopped there in 57 AD on his way back to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey. In Miletus Paul sent word to his friends in Ephesus to join him, and after speaking with them for the last time he bade them an emotional farewell, boarded his ship in Miletus and sailed off via Cos and Rhodes to Patara.

The Roman period was followed by Byzantine and Turkish periods.

Miletus was a major port city located on a peninsula with four harbors. With the silting of the Buyuk Menderes (Meander) River the ruins of the ancient city today are a few kilometers away from the sea.

The city had a grid plan which was developed by Hippodamus when it was rebuilt in the 5 century BC after the Persians had sacked it.