Xanthus
Xanthus(see map: Greece and the Aegean world) was called the largest city in Lycia (southern Asia Minor) by Strabo (14. 3. 6, 666), a claim borne out by its extensive remains; prosperity was based on the fertile plain of the river Xanthus, with access to the sea at Patara. The city was known to Homer, and Herodotus describes its capitulation to Persia in the famous siege of 545 BC (1. 176); in the 5th cent. it was ruled by a line of Persian client-dynasts (the self-styled ‘genos of Karika’). There are impressive and highly distinctive tombs of the 5th and early 4th cents., notably that of the dynast Gergis, with a trilingual (Greek and two types of Lycian) inscription detailing Xanthian involvement in the Peloponnesian War (R. Meiggs and D. Lewis 93; c.410 BC; for the war see Greece (history)),...
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