The Ancients - Fortress Cilicia: Megastructures in the Near East

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s death, his empire became the subject of a series of titanic clashes: the Wars of the Successors. In this episode of the podcast, Dr Nick Rauh takes us through some of the monumental Hellenistic super fortresses built during this period in ancient Rough Cilicia, modern day southeast Turkey, along the Northeast Mediterranean shoreline. He also highlights the importance of this area of the ancient world to preceding superpowers such as the Assyrians and the Persians. Nick is a professor of Classics at Purdue University.Fair warning, we nerd out quite heavily in this podcast, so below are some references to help!Map of ancient Anatolia (Asia Minor), with place names mentioned in the podcast: https://www.worldhistory.org/img/c/p/1200x627/253.pngThe Ptolemaic Kingdom - Hellenistic kingdom centred around Egypt that emerged in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death.The Seleucid Kingdom - Hellenistic kingdom centred around Syria / Mesopotamia, that emerged in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death.Antigonus the One Eyed - Prominent general during the Wars of the Successors. Father of Demetrius. Enemy of Eumenes of Cardia (Alexander the Great's former secretary).Demetrius - Son of Antigonus and another prominent general during the Wars of the Successors.Ovacik Peninsula - Cape TisanFor behind the scenes and extra Ancients, follow Tristan on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ancientstristan/

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, where we are going to southeastern Turkey, to an area of the ancient world which was known as Cilicia or Cilicia, to talk about a set of fortifications, constructed most likely in the Hellenistic period as the wars of the successors raged. This is a gruesome, horrible, but remarkable period in ancient history, the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death. And to talk about the archaeology that survives from southeastern Turkey that may well relate to this period and why control of this area was so important, so significant. I was delighted to get on the show my good old friend Dr Nicholas Rao from Purdue University in the USA. Nick, he's a lovely chap. It was wonderful

to chat to him all about this. He's been going out to southeastern Turkey for many, many years now, doing a lot of archaeological excavation on the remains, on the ancient remains that survive there. He's a fellow Hellenistic geek like myself. Great minds think alike. So without further ado, here's Nick. Nick, it is great to have you on the show. Well, thanks for having me. No problem at all. Fortress Cilicia. I mean, this is a region of the ancient Mediterranean that seems to be just covered with the remains of awesome ancient fortifications, like a Mediterranean sea wall of fortresses.

fortifications, like a Mediterranean sea wall of fortresses. Yes. And there's an interesting component to this. There are many more than I have seen. And I've probably visited maybe 40 along the south coast. And then the locals will show me photographs of more, but they're almost inaccessible, many of them. So it's an imperfect picture that we're organizing here. But there seem to be sort of two particular phases. There is this what I call pre-Hellenistic phase, Persian era phase that we see of various kinds of fortresses, and their masonry techniques can vary. But it looks like for the most part, these were Persian garrison places. And in Lycia in particular, there's been a big study about this, these tower farms. So maybe there's a garrison there, and this is a place where they could seek refuge under attack, but otherwise they lived in the area

and they farmed. And we know that this Persian colonization practice was pretty commonplace. And in fact, there's a recent book by a man named, I think his name is Kapena, where he's really kind of shown how the Persians, maybe because they themselves were kind of a hybrid population, had an ability to kind of settle in among the locals and kind of assimilate among the locals throughout their empire. They seem to have been very tolerant of local peoples. I mean, I don't want to say they weren't oppressive because we have the evidence of the rebellions to demonstrate to the contrary. Interestingly, I can give you the best example

I know. At Çatalhöyük in this period, the classical period, the mound portion of it was used as a necropolis and they have excavated remains there, and they have Persian DNA among the people buried at this necropolis. So they're there, right? And that's the weird thing about the Persians in Anatolia. They just seem to be there, settled in among the population. So these fortification systems of that early period could be a connection to that. But then there's a dramatic departure from that to the kinds of fortifications we see post-Alexander the Great. Bigger fortification systems, masonry technique entirely different, and so on. And my theory is that this has to do with

the emerging technologies, military technologies that evolved in the 4th century and 3rd centuries BC. My argument is that there is this sort of 50-year period where military technology took a kind of quantum leap and everything else had to adapt to it. And so there's a quantum leap and then that new level, that new threshold pretty much sustains itself right through to the end of antiquity. So there is this moment that I'm kind of fascinated with, where we can see how the new advent of what I call projectile firing machines, which is catapults and ballistae, things like that, forced everybody to adapt to it. You either adapted or your city would be taken by these Macedonian armies,

and you'll be under their thumb and under their garrison and what have you. So it really was critical, and we see these towns and settlements adapting to this rather rapidly. In Rufsilicia, interesting thing about this, we have no monumental architecture in this region apart from these fortresses of this era. Now, maybe that's because it's a mountainous place with lots of forest. So maybe they built their houses of wood. It's a very pastoral population for the most part, which involves migrating up into the islas in the summer and back down. So maybe they just lived in tents. But it is interesting that we don't have the kind of monumentality you would see elsewhere until they start building

these fortresses. And the fortresses probably represent toll holes by various elements that are trying to get at the timber for shipbuilding, for example. Well, Nick, let's take a step back there. First of all, you've said all of these names, but let's just get an idea of whereabouts we're talking pre-Alexander and post-Alexander. We'll definitely go into those catapults and those artillery pieces and the fortifications themselves very soon. But first of all, and I love this name of an ancient region, Eastern Rough Cilicia. Nick, whereabouts are we talking in the ancient Mediterranean with Eastern Rough Cilicia? Well, Rough C Salicia is a hump, a mountainous ridge, the Toros, that kind of comes down from Antalya and swings along north of Cyprus and then curves up to Silifke. So eastern Ruff Salicia is the Silifke side. I would say from anywhere, say east of Anamurion, Anamur, although Anamur is kind of on the bottom.

of Anamurion, Anamur, although Anamur is kind of on the bottom. And the reason I distinguish this is because I ran a survey in western Ras Al-Isha, which is over on the Alanya-Gazipasha side, on the western side of the hump. And then I was invited to work with Professor Gundur Armin Leolu of Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul on her survey, which is just south of Silifke. in Istanbul on her survey, which is just south of Silifke. And she's actually a Byzantinist. She's very interested in the kind of tremendous sort of pilgrimage traffic going on in this region. St. Thekla's martyrium is there and things like that. But in the process of working with her, we started finding all these Iron Age and Hellenistic fortification systems. Kind of interesting, in the classical period, Hellenistic periodification systems. Kind of interesting, in the classical period, Hellenistic period, it's almost like a war zone. It's just nothing but fortresses.

And then later in the late Roman era, it becomes this thriving Christian thing. And so it's kind of, so what happened? Where did the boundaries move? These are big questions that we don't have the answers to, but it's fascinating. I mean, it absolutely is. We'll get into those Iron Age fortifications very very soon but just quickly keeping on the location of rough silicea a bit longer because nick it looks like if we're talking about the geography the topography you have this thin line of coastline and then the backdrop to it are these incredible highlands yes and that's one of the things about this area where the mountains kind of converge to the shore.

It goes from sea level to 2,000 meters in less than 30 kilometers. So it's just basically straight uphill. The only valleys we have are these alluvial ravines where just erosion has carved out river valleys. And they're very narrow. And so you have in many places what we call coastal ridges, but the mountains just drop to the sea, and you just get these little pockets. So imagine being in a rickety sailing ship, and you've got to navigate this coast. First of all, you don't want to be out there at nighttime. Well, there's very few places you could pull in safely anyway. And they're very, very small.

I mean, one of the things I keep stressing, there is not enough hinterland to sustain any large communities along this coach, with the exception of Anamur. And then when you get to Silifke, you've got the, that's the big delta of the Kalikognos River. So that's a big flat open area as well. But really between those two places, it's just fjords, in-out, in-out, in-out. It's a big, flat open area as well. But really, between those two places, it's just fjords. In-out, in-out, in-out. It's been one of the real problems working in this region. There was a national highway that went along the shore, and it was one of the most horrible roads you could imagine driving. I had to drive it at night and swore that off. But now they're actually tunneling through the mountains to make it possible to bring

traffic, to bring tourism to this region. Because it is, even today, it is, Anamur, these places are still pretty isolated, as opposed to like Alanya or Mersin, where there's millions of tourists in the summertime. Just now, as we go on, Nick, onto the Iron Age fortifications, just because I normally think of the Iron Age, normally I think of Northwestern Europe. That's my British bias. But with the Iron Age, what time period are we really talking? Is this archaic and classical combined? Whenabouts are we talking? So late Iron Age is basically, I don't know, 400 down to Alexander. And that's primarily what we're seeing, I think. So that's a problem. That is a problem. That's why I kind of flip over into classical. The reason we say Iron Age is because we are dependent on the published pottery, which is primarily Eastern Mediterranean way. And that's another interesting thing about Rassalysia. It seems to be right on the scene between, shall we say, the Aegean influences of the Delian League and things like that, and then the Persian Empire and the Phoenician

influences, which are not only coming from Syria, but also from Cyprus north. Keeping on that Cyprus link right there, because now going on to power and authority, because Cyprus obviously was renowned in ancient history for having all of these petty kings. And it really seems that at this time, rough Cilicia, from your research, from looking at it, is it almost, can we say, divided in terms of power and authority between you have these external foreign powers,

but you also have these prominent local chieftains too? Yes, and that's something demonstrated as early as the Assyrian records and the Neo-Babylonian records. They controlled the Syrian coast. And there's just these repeated instances where the emperor had to kind of lead Arrasia over into Cilicia across the plain, which is Adana and Tarsus and Mersin, to the mountainous region. And it seems like every record has. And we captured 20 of these petty kings in the mountains. And there's even a relief that shows them with ropes around their necks, all in a line, being marched along. So you got these little, these warlords that are up in the mountains

who are just notorious. And this gets to the questions of local banditry and things like that. They seem to be pillagers to begin with. That's their way of life. But at moments, they seem to have become, maybe some were able to consolidate power, gain control of the coast, and project strength out into the sea, such as this Apawashu of Kirshu, which is the site of Medan-Jekale. They found an Aramaic inscription that identifies it as Kirshu. And this guy, Apawashu, was mentioned by Mary Glissar in his Razia that he conducted in the 520s BC. And so we got a known person here in that one instance. And the dating of these ring forts in the area of Medan-Cikale seems to be associated with his hegemony.

You might think of it that way. But it's these small principalities that seem to come and go and yet stay at the same time. You mentioned Medan-Cikale just then. I hope I got the pronunciation right. Yeah. But it sounds like from what you were saying there, Nick, and I've got it in my notes as well, that of all the Iron Age fortresses, this seems to be one of the most remarkable that we've found so far.

Yes, but I should point out that the impressive parts may be later. There is this remarkable building which we think is a palace. It has tremendous similarities to a building in Soloi in Cyprus, which is also identified as, Macy, a Persian satrapal residence. Why do I say amazing? Because the stonework is unprecedentedly fine for this region, for this period and this region. Very, very detailed ornamentation, very uniform, and most of the stonework in this region. Very, very detailed ornamentation, very uniform, and most of the stonework in this region is kind of vernacular and cruder than this thing. So somebody from the outside clearly designed this thing, let's say it that way. And then it has this massive fortification.

It's up on top of the plateau, looking directly over the valley and the sea, there is a kind of narrow neck and a promontory that juts out, and they built a fortress right there at that narrow neck, and that's the means of access. And so the fortress appears to be Persian, but then we know it was occupied by a Ptolemaic garrison because they found a coin hoard that dates squarely to like the 220s BC. So we don't know, again, if it was Persian and then what portions might have been modified by the Ptolemaic garrison, because it's heavily modified. They excavated, and this is a French team directed by a man named Daven and Lemaire, Daven and his wife. It was a salvage excavation. And they went below the foundation of the citadel and they found this crude rock-yoon remains of walls,

which was probably the Iron Age settlement that preceded this construction in the Persian era. So that's what we assume. There's three phases of construction. Well, we'll definitely get back on the Ptolemies very soon. But Nick, this fortress, this wasn't the only Iron Age fortress which your project was looking at. Dana Island. What is this? Well, I should point out there is controversy here in a number of ways. But what we are told again is that, so let's back up. So Appawashu of Kirshu took over the whole coastal area. And I should

point out this area is probably, I don't know, 30 kilometers away, slightly to the north on the coast from Kirshu, which is set back on the hills. And yet we're finding these ring forts along the shore. We've found about five of them now. And two of these ring forts are up on the peaks of this Dana Island, which is an island. It's about three kilometers long. It's about a kilometer offshore, north of Medanjik and just south of Silivke as well. So what we're told is that Appawashu had a city, which we believe is Kashiju, the ferry port town, right at the mouth of the Calicodnes River. Ura was its name. And it goes back. I mean, that site actually goes back to the Bronze Age. And that's where he had his main settlement. His ancestral settlement was up on the promontory. And then he also had an installation of some sort on this Dana Island.

So when Derry Glissar came with his force, he ran Apawashu out of Ura and burned the place to the ground. He then had a naval battle against Appawashu's forces on Dana Island. Supposedly, he says he killed and captured 6,000 men on this barren island. Very hard to believe that part. And then he chased Appawashu all the way up to Kirshu and set fire to that place as well, but he still didn't capture the guy. Apawashu escaped. And then Deriglasar went on Arrasia along the entire coast, all the way to a site he says is Salini, which we accept as Salinas, which is way over Mardagazi Pasha on the western end of Rapsalicia. And he supposedly set fire from there

all the way to the border of the Lydian Empire. We presume this means Pamphylia, and in fact, there's a coastal ridge between Silenus and the Siedra River where Pamphylia begins, and maybe he set fire to the ridge. I mean, this is a region today that is subjected to repeated forest fires. It doesn't take much for a fire to wipe out 10 I mean, this is a region today that is subjected to repeated forest fires. It doesn't take much for a fire to wipe out 10, 15 kilometers of the coast this way. In fact, it just happened near Calendaris about eight years ago. It's recovering now, but driving through there after the forest fire, it was really charred. Remarkable. So anyway, that gives us a sense of Appawashu's points of interest.

And when we started surveying on Dana Island, we got a hold of, Gunda got a hold of some aerial photography. And you can actually see the fortress up on top, this ring fortress of the mountains. So we went up there. That was a big event as well. And it's a ring fortress, which is quite typical of this period elsewhere in Anatolia. They're in Lycia, they're up on the mainland as well. It's a simple way to build, it's basically a stone foundation or a socle, probably with pounded earth above that. So it's generally, they're about two meters tall, about two and a half meters thick. And then one could assume it went up another meter or two above that. And what we found on Dinah Island is that it has the walls constructed with faces of

large irregular quarry stone. And then they just throw a lot of fill into the middle of it, small chip stone. They're banging away on the bedrock and just throwing it all in there. But they also threw in broken pieces of pottery. And so we were able to recover about 30, 40 pieces of this pottery. And it's all kind of Phoenician style. It's basket handle amphoras, which are produced between Cyprus and Syria. It is a couple of archaic forms, a very early Kean amphora that dates somewhere around 500 BC. We even found a handle that was stamped Sigma Omicron, maybe Soloi from Cyprus. So we can kind of see a Cypriot influence there as well.

But it puts us squarely in this, I would say, the beginning of the 5th century BC. Maybe not early enough to coincide with this event, but certainly close enough that we're in the same horizon that way. Along the shore, in late antiquity, it was used for quarrying stone to build neighboring communities, especially the remarkable, densely packed settlement on this little island called Bosak Island, where these two-story structures, the whole island just became built. If you zoom in and Google Earth to Bosak, you'll see nothing but houses from shore to shore. Tiny little island, but there you go. And we think the stone was coming from Dana Island. And interestingly, the quarrying on the shore goes right through

the foundations of pre-existing houses. And all the pottery there was either, mainly it's late Roman and Byzantine, but some early Roman as well. We're told with the saint's life of St. Barnabas that he supposedly was sailing on his way to being martyred in Cyprus. And he was caught in a storm on a ship, and they pulled into Dana Island, and they were there for like three days. And he prayed to the Lord, and the storm lifted, and he was able to continue. So it was a kind of place in the Roman era where maybe it was just a way station for

shippers making their way along the shore. It didn't seem to have any significant population. And like I said, almost everything we've mapped at Donna Island is late Roman and Christian. There's five churches on the island. There's a martyrium seemingly built within the ring wall of the fortress on the top. So that's its main phase of settlement. There's even a remarkable stone stairway that leads from the church down below all the way up to this martyrium. So it's almost like, what is that place in Spain? You know, where you have to go up on your hands and knees. I think there's even little gates. We think there were stations of the cross. This was a major pilgrimage site for Christian tourists at the end of antiquity. So that's another question entirely.

The point I wanted to make about Dinah Island is that there was a competing group of Turkish archaeologists who are convinced that what these cuttings are on the shore are ancient trireme ship sheds, and that this place was a Persian naval base. At first, he was saying Bronze Age naval base until he realized there's no Bronze Age pottery there. So following our pottery, I should add, by the way. And so he's concluded now this is the largest naval base to have survived from antiquity. Some of these cuttings do have the necessary stone posts for pulling ships up. There's about two or three that we've argued, okay, that's possible, which could just be for repairing ships in late antiquity.

But the rest of it's all quarry cuts. So we're having a big debate as to whether these are ship sheds or quarry cuts. The interesting thing about the quarry cuts, they go all the way into the very base of the mountain. They go in a hundred meters. It's not really limestone. It is the alluvial deposition of erosion of limestone on the shore over millions of years. And so you can cut into it real easy. There is a sand layer below it about 30, 40 centimeters down, which means that if you were using hammers, it would be very easy to break stone once you've carved a groove into it, and the groove survived. So this was a major late Roman stone production center, and I hesitate to think of what that really meant. My feeling is, because there's very little monumentality in the structures on this island, except for the churches, there is a bath,

there seems to be a kiln, but I think it might have been a prison island. I think they had prisons just banging the rest of their lodges, banging stone to build these neighboring communities, you know, in penance for their sins. It's an ancient Alcatraz almost. Yeah, yeah. And where are they going to go? It's a kilometer offshore. Well, a kilometer offshore. That's incredible. I didn't realize that. Hello. If you're enjoying this podcast,

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fortifications the location of them does it really seem to emphasise the importance for these Iron Age powers of maritime trade, of maritime control in the north-eastern Mediterranean? Yeah, that's really precisely the point, is that the nature of ancient cargo shipping. I mean, I'm thinking, at what point do we see these ships really just going out into the Mediterranean and leaving landmarks, having the ability to do that sort of thing? Probably in the classical period. There is this one ship that was found off of Euboea that is a very large ship. It dates to the 5th century, mid-5th century BC.

And they estimate maybe as many as 10,000 amphoras were on this thing, small Thassian and Mendian amphoras. So there's a large cargo ship that is not doing itinerant trading. It's not pulling in from port to port. It has a point of departure and a point of arrival. It's what we would call wholesale trade, if you want, bulk commodities. And then it would be dispersed maybe from a big harbor like the Piraeus from there outward. So we have one ship that has been found in the Aegean like this. And then by the time of the Hellenistic period, we're getting into the same sort of thing.

So some traffic could go out into the Mediterranean and go from a major port to a major port. But most traffic, if you're going to get to the settlements, that's really the key. These settlements are in these fjords and pockets and things like that. Big ships can't get in there. So even to the end of antiquity, there was, I would think, the majority of shipping was still this in the range of 300 tons, small ships that could navigate and negotiate the risk of the shoreline

that way. And rough Cilicia is on one of the major trunk routes to this trade that if we think of, what are the core of the trade? Well, it's the Egyptian grain trade. That's something very identifiable, and it's going to flow northward up against the prevailing winds. But the current does go with the trade. It's called the Great Crawl of the Eastern Mediterranean, where if you're using the diurnal sea breezes, you're going to make three to five kilometers a day. And that's kind of the Eastern Mediterranean until you get out to the Aegean, where the winds can propel you better, shall we say. So if you're going northward, you're going to have to go by either Cyprus or rough Cilicia, depending on where your contacts

are that way. So they had to go along this rugged shore. That's really the point. And there's very few places to pull in. And so we see, first of all, the local warlords taking advantage of this. of all, the local warlords taking advantage of this. And secondly, external empires realizing they have to assert authority or these warlords are going to disrupt everything. It sounds like the harklings of the Cilician pirates, which we might talk about in due course, or maybe we'll do a separate pod on it. But Nick, now we are going to move forwards in time. We're going to the Hellenistic period, because you might know that I do have an interest in this area of ancient history. Because Hellenistic rough Cilicia, especially early Hellenistic rough Cilicia, so just after Alexander the Great's death, this is a key area for the successors, a key connection area. connection area. Yes. And for a variety of reasons, one possibility is that by this point, I wonder to what degree the highland forests of Lebanon had been depleted or was making it maybe

more difficult to get forest products there, whereas rough Cilicia was still basically virgin territory. And just checking, Lebanon is ancient Phoenicia, I'm guessing? Right, right. And right up through southern Turkey today. So Lebanon and Turkey, that region. The Amanus Mountain, that area right in there. So we have this remarkable event. And that is, I guess it's the second wars of successors. I get them confused. But we know that Antigonus chased Eumenes all the way out to Iran in this epic conflict. So this is after misfortune for Perdiccas. But he chased him all the way out there and got him captured and got him eliminated, took care of the silver shields, who were also a tremendous menace.

took care of the silver shields who were also a tremendous menace. And he must have looked around out there and realized, having commanded Anatolia the whole time that Alexander had done those eastern campaigns, realized there was nothing there for him. He couldn't sustain it. I think he was a realist. He realized this is just too far from where I want to be and what I know is attainable. But he wasn't going to leave without taking the entire Persian treasure with him. The estimates range, let's say, 50,000 talents of bullion. He supposedly constructed heavy wagons specifically to convey this treasure from Iran, so from Ecbatana, from Persepolis, from Susa, all the way to the Mediterranean coast. And he arrived there in 315 BC on the coast of Flat Cilicia, which became his headquarters. And had been, I should point out, Flat Cilicia is one of the richest agricultural zones, probably the richest agricultural zone even today in Turkey.

A big, big alluvial plain. And the Persians have been using this place as a staging ground for all their conflicts with the Vagueras of Cyprus in the 4th century, as well as the Egyptian rebellions. This was a major staging ground for them. So it's not surprising that Antigonus also kind of settles in here. But he's got the entire treasure of the Persian Empire. The Athenian Empire at its peak, they had that reserve treasury in the Acropolis of what, 5,000? This is 50,000. That's millions, I'm guessing, in modern day money.

Well, I mean, that's a good question. A talent is what, 56 pounds of silver? Wow. Yeah, incredible. So what's an ounce worth today? You know, and today, of course, it's much more than a decade ago, too. But we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, yeah, in today's terms. And of course, all the other state traps were like, hey, this was supposed to be to run the empire. I mean, we've still got two kings, right? Ostensibly. And they said, we demand a portion of this. And he said, come and get it. So he starts a major conflict. And he's got this issue, which is that while he was fighting Eumenes, Ptolemy had stolen the entire Phoenician navy from Tyre, over a hundred of these decked warships.

And that's really the key of these decked warships. And he had taken them all to Egypt. And Antigonus realized that if he's going to fight all these guys, he needs a navy. going to fight all these guys, he needs a navy. And so in 315, he started from scratch building a navy of decked warships, producing maybe 250 of these decked warships and going to sea, and suddenly becomes a major naval power. So where does he get the timber for all this? And how do you maintain these navies? What we really have is this acceleration of naval construction and naval warfare at this juncture for domination of the eastern Mediterranean and rough siliceous forests clearly loom large in this development.

And you think that with that context, we have the answer, possibly in your project, to the construction, to the modification of several fortifications in rough silicea by the coast? Yes, and I should point out, with the exception of Aphrodisias and Alania, Coracesion, we don't really have any major ones. We have these towers. We have places where there were ring walls, such as Hamaxia, which is right above Alanya, where they put one of these Hellenistic artillery towers just inside the ring wall. So you can see the adaptations. They also added some towers to the ring wall itself. Hamaxia is an interesting case. I would really like to work there again in a more detailed manner, because I'm convinced that the ring wall is Persian era, but that it was modified with towers around its outside,

and then this Ptolemaic artillery tower put up later on. So I'm basing this on changes in the design of the masonry. And that's, you know, that's a questionable technique. There's a lot of controversy about this. I mean, vernacular is vernacular. You can find very, very fine isodomic, which means completely rectangular and smooth surfaces like a cube, techniques of construction at the Parthenon in the 5th century BC. But nonetheless, I think we can see a clear adaptation from masonry techniques where there's a lot of small blocks, and especially what I call small block interstices. So Hamoxia has this, where it does kind of have irregular

courses of irregular cut quarry stone, more or less dressed to fit in courses. But there will be cracks. It's unevenness. They just jam little stones into those cracks. And why does that matter? Because when you're firing projectiles at these walls, it's those vulnerable interstices that when they get hit repeatedly those little pieces are just going to fly out and you've got a hole there and so that seems to be a dividing line for me from this kind of small block construction that we saw on dinah island for example to this what

we call hellenistic ashlar and hellenistic polygonal masonry. Very large blocks. In the case of the ashlar, they're rectangular. They are very even courses. They dress the edges so that they join very well. Sometimes they have a recess of the join and maybe even leave a quarry face boss exterior to protect the joins. But it's just a lot harder to break this stone. And what we know about, and this is from Marsden's great book on ancient artillery, is that these machines and the biggest ones could fire things like a talent, so 56 pounds stone round shot. Once they adjusted them, it had an accuracy of within a square meter. So it's just going to keep firing at a weak spot again and again within a square

meter until it breaks that weak spot. And if you've got this kind of crumbly small blocks, they're going to be obliterated. And you can see that wall of homoxy very easily, areas where I would fire, because I know I could just blow a hole there and then the whole everything above it's going to come down. You know, so artillery is the other big transition. And I think this construction mode is a response to the new threat of the artillery. We should probably talk about that, you know, in terms of when did it come online? The evidence suggests that it came online in the 4th century BC. Maybe Greek elements in Sicily picked it up from the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians may have picked it up from the Phoenicians. and at Patara indicates that these Persian-era fortresses had slits for these firing machines prior to Alexander, and that Alexander, first Philip the Great, and then Alexander, had a siege train. They took this weaponry with them all the way across the Mediterranean.

So we know by the 4th century it's being used. The difference with Antigonus and his son Demetrius is that they took it to a new exponential level. They did indeed. Yes. I mean, the Siege of Rhodes, 4,000 of these weapons. Let's say that's an exaggeration, only 2,000. What are we talking about here? What kind of insanity is this? Because these things are incredibly expensive and the very best engineering minds had to construct them in the first place. So that's what I see as the transition. And it's important to remember, Nick, that when we think of artillery, you mustn't just think of artillery being placed on land for like a land storming of a settlement. At this time

in the early Hellenistic period, you see the emergence of huge ships which could have on their decks massive bolt firing or stone firing artillery pieces. Yeah. And you know, it's so hard. We have to mention William Murray's book, The Age of Titans. It's a remarkable book because none of these ships have survived. He's basing this whole study on the measurements of the rams that were put up like an actium as trophies. And he noticed that the rams are six feet tall, whereas the ram of a trireme I can hold in my hands, it's maybe 60 centimeters long, right? Well, now we got rams that are six feet tall. They're taller than me. And they have the outlet ram where they tested the smelting of the bronze. And the conclusion was,

this was so well smelted, it's actually airplane technology. So well done. And so, okay, so you got this ram. What kind of colleague do you need for a ram that's six feet long? So these ships were like battleships. Their job was to clear the road, just clear the road this way. And we have to kind of put it in our minds, when you get to fives and sixes, these ships were probably two to three stories tall above the waterline. You got a tri-lead, and then you got a deck ship that's two stories taller with maybe a thousand Marines on it, just dropping things on you. So they're almost, you can't attack them. They're just unapproachable in this way. And they were used primarily, and that's what the counter-argument is, wow, they couldn't go out at sea, you couldn't navigate at sea. No, their job was to

sea. You couldn't navigate at sea. No, their job was to besiege harbor cities and attack the walls, attack the defenders, and take harbor cities. Again, we get back to that whole transportation phenomenon that the sea is the way in which both staples were supplied to these urban populations. And if you could take the harbors, then you control the highways. And that's what's going on between Antigonus and Demetrius and Ptolemy. Demetrius defeated Ptolemy's navy at the Battle of Salamis in Cyprus in 306. And suddenly Ptolemy had no means of projecting force overseas. Having done his grand tour of the Aegean previously and that sort of thing, suddenly he's helpless, and Demetrius is able to take harbor after harbor after harbor to create a logistical route by which he can move an

army from Phoenicia and Cyprus, an army of 20,000 men and 5,000 horse, all the way to Greece and back, we have enough records to indicate that he moved his forces back and forth across the eastern Mediterranean at least five or six times in the course of 14 years. This is the first real, to my mind, marine amphibious military force. You can go back to Xerxes, but think of what a complicated, enormous effort that was for Xerxes, first of its kind, and how vulnerable it was to things like getting to go slightly inland, like at Thermopylae, and trying to cut off the army from its supplies. That's what the Greeks kept trying to do up in the Vale of Tempe and at Thermopylae, get them away from the ships, and then they couldn't feed themselves.

So the scale of this is extraordinary. And Demetrius just took it to a whole new level by taking city after city after city this way along the shores. But ultimately, we'll get onto one example in particular, the Ovechik Peninsula in a moment. But I feel just before we get onto that, we've got to focus a bit on demetrius because ultimately nick it doesn't end too well for him this stretch of maritime coastline that he for a time does control yes but he's you know we have to add the fact that he was a character right he's just an incredible character i mean maybe it takes that kind of bizarre person to be this kind of military genius he He supposedly designed his own machines, designed his own ships. I mean, he was totally into this new technology. And again, you know,

the technology's there in the fourth century, but he just took it exponentially. Okay, you got two of these machines at your gate? Well, I'm going to come at you with 2,000. I mean, that's the scale that he's coming at them with. You know, it's hard to put it in perspective. You've got Antigonus, and he's got control of this massive landmass and a big army. He's got the whole Persian treasury, which I should point out, they spent the whole thing in 15 years. They spent all 50,000 talents. We have a source that says Demetrius passed through this treasure fortress, Kyinda, in eastern Rassilisia, and there were 1,200 talents left. He took the last of it at the end of his career. So they spent the whole thing. I think their logic was,

you know, if we spend all the money and conquer the world, then we'll get it back eventually. But better that than die and leave the money to one of our adversaries. I mean, he had a gold American Express card. Demetrius is just swiping this thing and building these crazy things. It must have been frightening to his adversaries. And I think that's a large part of it. At first, he's got his father behind him. His father was so proud of him, too, it's clear. And he's just kind of a nuisance factor out there with these navies this way. But ultimately, you have to have a hinterland. You have to have some places that are producing the food. I mean, let's think of it this way.

This force of his, all told, when you add the rowers, add everybody, what are we talking about? 50,000, 60,000 people. It's a moving city. How do you supply a moving city? You've got to have a steady flow of logistics. You have to, before you depart, all of your nodes that you're going to touch on, let's say a harbor every day, has to have the food assembled there. You have to have agents that know this and are reporting to you. So you've got a whole logistical network that you have developed. And also probably it's

a convoy system where so many squadrons are chained out and they're stopping in. So when Demetrius goes from east to west, his navy probably passes by your harbor for about a week, two weeks, pulling in. Every day, every other day, there's another squadron coming in this way. So it's a mammoth logistical feat to begin with. It took tremendous organization, is my impression. And when his father lost at the Battle of Ipsus and was killed. Demetrius lost the Hinterlands. He still has these chains of fortresses along the sea. Remarkably, he's able to sustain it for a few

more years. Who knows where he would have gone had he not made the foolish attempt to take Macedonia at the end, because if he had concentrated on what he had, maybe he could have sustained himself. But I think he lost control of the Hinterlands, And so he was no longer able to feed this force. And it starts to splinter and become pocket forces over time. Well, there's the believed context for these early Hellenistic fortifications. And Nick, I'd love to focus on one of the examples that we have now. And this is the Ovechik Peninsula or Aphrodisias. What is this? Yeah, this is just a remarkable thing.

So I first visited this place in 2006. You must understand, I have worked in the shadow of two incredibly great figures, George Bean and Timothy Mitford, extraordinary archaeologists and survey archaeologists. They did epigraphical research, but they explored the entire south coast of Anatolia in the 1950s and 60s. I mean, what they would do is they would be brought by boat to some place like Gazipaşa with a mule, and they would take their mule and supplies and just hike up into the mountains and visit these ancient sites. George Bean was completely fluent in Turkish. He would talk to the locals. They'd show him stuff. And they would just do

these two-week arcs out there. I'm sure they got sick repeatedly, dysentery, things like that. And so we work in their shadow, and they mentioned this place, and they said that it had Mycenaean Cyclopean masonry. And a German who studied this place, his name is Knibbe, he also mentioned it as Cyclopean masonry. And at the time I'm reading this, I'm thinking, you know, I haven't seen Cyclopean masonry anywhere along this coast. I better go check this place out. I mean, if this is Mycenaean, this is big news. And I got up there and I immediately recognized, no, it isn't Cyclopean.

It's this Hellenistic polygonal masonry. So basically, it's very large blocks that are quarried on site. They just hacked out of an outcrop right there, and they are dressed rapidly by engineers. They're brought to them by the labor, and they're just dressed and put into like a puzzle. So their shapes are irregular, but they're still arranged in courses. And these things are about 60 centimeters wide by 40 centimeters tall. So they're big blocks. things are about 60 centimeters wide by 40 centimeters tall. So they're big blocks. The main thing is that they very, very finely chisel the edges so that they join, even if they're curving or slightly off kilter. We get these fine-tooth combed edges, joints that make

it this massive, very primitive-looking wall. And this is characteristic of what we call Eastern Ruff Solicia. Now, there's a debate about this as well, but what we can say is that the date of this construction coincides with Seleucus I's conquest of the region at the demise of Demetrius. So Demetrius controlled this region first. This was the heartland. Flat Cilicia, Rough Cilicia, Syria was the heartland of the Antigonid Empire. And that's problematic because his influence must have been enormous, but his stay was very brief. We have to allow for the fact that some of this architecture we're seeing in here must have been built by Demetrius, but I can't say for sure. In this case, there are a number of sites, maybe as many as 30, where this particular type of architecture is very prevalent. And a very

distinguished Turkish archaeologist named Sera Durgunul did a book on this where she argued that this is the architectural message, the brand of the priest-kings of Olba. So Olba was this great sanctuary, magnificent site north of Silivke, about 60 kilometers north, up on the plateau north of Silivke. about 60 kilometers north, up on the plateau, north of Silithke. And there's no doubt that this royal family, this realm of priests, kings, lived in these giant towers, three, four-story tall towers, manor house towers,

like medieval England in a way, and that they had this kind of architecture. But what I was able to show is that at Ovejic, here we have one of the really salient examples, this long Galan Mauer. It's almost two and a half kilometers long. It's up on top of the mountain above a very small isthmus beach and a little site. There's a knob down there, and that's the site of Iron Age aphrodisias, a lesser aphrodisias for Anatolia. So there is this wall there, and this is south of the Kallikonus, and it's out of the region of Olba. So it's not their territory. And so I argue that it's more likely that somehow the client kings, these priest kings, became client kings of Seleucus, and they're all using the same style of architecture because it's the same engineers or because it's an expression of Seleucid territory or whatever it is. What we know at Aphrodisiace or the Ovidic Peninsula is down by the Isthmus, we did an extensive survey of the pottery, and it's all early Hellenistic. And it's all the more jarring because I've been doing the pottery of this survey now for six years, and it is all late Roman pottery. There's practically nothing but late Roman pottery. I find late Roman pottery not all that attractive. I know it. I can do it. It doesn't thrill me.

So to suddenly hit early Hellenistic, and 60% of the pottery that we processed in this area is early Hellenistic, just shocked me. But it conforms with the wall itself. And the wall has a tower complex every 100 meters or so. The complex is a tower that's about 10 meters across, so big enough for the very largest machines. There is a ledge for Joyce, so we know there's a second story. Each tower adjoins a large platform that's about five to eight meters wide, and there's a stairway on the platform. So you could store your equipment inside the tower. There's a door right there. And we know that the torsion bundles were very, very fragile, vulnerable to humidity. You couldn't keep them out in the rain. They would

store them in boxes in the tower and bring them out up the stairs and set them up during emergencies. in the tower and bring them out up the stairs and set them up during emergencies. Several of the towers, we're able to identify a very narrow sally port on the other side of the tower for assault as well. So this is what military specialists call an aggressive fortification system. It's not very tall. It's two meters tall, and maybe it went up another meter or two, but it's designed for firing at the enemy and also for coming out and assaulting them through the Sony gates as well. And that's one of the innovations we see with this period of warfare. Now, why do you think they decide, whether Seleucus or these client people,

they decide to construct the fortress on that peninsula in particular. Well, so again, this is the controversy. But if you build a new provincial capital at Seleucia on the Kalikavnos, modern day Silithke, and that's about less than 20 kilometers north, is this a naval base? Because you've got an isthmus, it faces two ways, and that's ideal. We know about ancient sailing, the winds are going to be variable, so you want to be able to approach it depending on the winds. You want at least two means of approach. The Piraeus has like three. And so was this a naval base to protect Seleucia and the boundaries of the Seleucid Empire? It's interesting that, again, from here, less than 30 kilometers away, we have Medanjikale,

and we know there was a Ptolemaic garrison there. It's interesting that the polygonal masonry gives out right there at Ovejik. You go southwest 30 kilometers, and this Ptolemaic, more rectangular Ashlar masonry takes up, and it continues all the way around to Alanya. seems to be the DMZ between the Seleucid Empire of the 3rd century and the Ptolemaic Empire of the 3rd century in Cilicia, I'm always worried that I'm going to find some polygonal masonry to the west or vice versa. I can say after 20 years of research, this line still is there. Nothing to the contrary yet in that respect. It's almost as if if you were to approach and you start seeing the plagiarism masonry, you know you're in Seleucid territory. It's like a brand. It's a semiotic message to my mind. Same thing with the Ashlar masonry further west.

It's sort of a brand or a way of expressing you are now in Seleucid territory or you are now in Ptolemaic territory this way. Just visually, you could get the message for better or for worse. Well, there you go. A physical divide, possibly a physical divide between two remarkable Hellenistic superpowers. Nick, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Okay, great. And always a pleasure to see you again. Thanks for having me.