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Notes in Phrygia Paroreus and Lycaonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The following pages contain the meagre results of a hasty journey from the borders of Galatia to the Cilician coast, undertaken in July, 1887, by Mr. H. A. Brown and myself, after parting at Bey-keui with Prof. W. M. Ramsay, who wished to return direct to Smyrna. Our object was to reach Cilicia Tracheia by way of Phrygia Paroreus, and the Melas valley, pursuing in the former district a new route and especially selecting the unmapped and undescribed hill-path from Ilghin to Konia. From Konia we were to have turned westward to Beysheher, and thence struck over Taurus. But only the first part of this programme was carried out at all, owing to the indisposition of my companion, which became so serious by the time that we reached Konia that all idea of further exploration had to be abandoned, and we made direct for the sea. In another respect also the journey was not entirely satisfactory. I now know better than I knew then that an archæologist, who would discover much in Anatolia, must travel with a certain train of pack-animals and attendants: the Englishman who, proud of his power of endurance, discards all superfluities and travels with what he can carry on his own horse excites no admiration but much contempt in the minds of the villagers. “This is a poor man,” say they, and he is shown only just as much of what he wishes to see as will silence his importunity. We had made the initial mistake of travelling too “light,” taking neither tents nor beds, nor cooking utensils, nor indeed anything but the contents of our own saddle-bags, and depending entirely on the favour of the villagers both for lodging and food; and in consequence, while we suffered a good deal of unnecessary hardship, we saw less than might have been discovered by explorers more magnificently equipped.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1890

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References

page 152 note 1 Cp. the description given by the archdeacon Paul of his journey with the Patriarch Macarius from Sakla to ‘Belaidon’ (Travels of Macarius, tr. for the Orient. Trans. Committee, p. 8).

page 152 note 2 Pliny, N.H. v. 29.

page 152 note 3 Lucian of Ipsus signs at Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

page 153 note 1 Bardaëtta, where Bardas Phokas was encamped in 971 (Leo Diac. p. 120), might be near here.

page 154 note 1 I brought away readings of five: of three other stelae I found it impossible to make anything in the time at my disposal, for, my companion being very unwell, we were most anxious to reach Konia, and were still five hours from Tat-keui. Every stele in this cemetery was much weathered, and I doubt if more will ever be read.

page 157 note 1 So far as Professor Ramsay or I have been able to ascertain, no one has ever seen or visited these ruins; certainly not Mr. Sterrett, who, as a matter of fact, never traversed this part of the road at all: but of that I was ignorant at the time. It is just possible that the site is that called Kannideli by Langlois, M., who travelled in 1853 (Voyages dans la Cilicie, pp. 220–7Google Scholar; cp. Le Bas and Waddington, , Voyage Arch. tome iii. p. 365)Google Scholar; but his rather scanty indications as to the locality of Kannideli, which he reached from Lamas, do not accord well with this position: he identified Kannideli with Neapolis of lsauria. In any case his notes require supplementing. But I feel fairly confident that, if we succeed in visiting it this summer, we shall be the first to do so, and shall find that it is the long-lost Olba. [Since this note has been in type I see in the Athenaeum of April 5, p. 443, that Mr. Theodore Bent has found either this city or a fort in its territory, and the dedication to Zeus Olbius, which he mentions, proves the general situation of Olba to be where we guessed: but, if Mr. Bent's ‘fort’ is only twenty stadia inland from Corycus, it is probably neither Olba itself nor the city alluded to in the text above, which appeared to me to lie quite six or seven miles back from the coast.]