Caria

CA´RIA(ἡ Καρία: Eth. Κάρ, Κᾶρος, fem. Κάειρα: Adj. Καρικός, Κάριος), a country in the south-west angle of Asia Minor. Strabo (p. 632) makes the southern boundary of Ionia to be the promontory Poseidion, in the territory of Miletus, and the Carian mountains, as the text stands (τῶν Καρικῶν ὀρῶν). Groskurd ( Transl. Strab. vol. 3. p. 2) writes ὅρωνfor ὀρῶν;and so Strabo is made to say that the southern boundary of Ionia is the Poseidium and the Carian boundaries; but as Caria borders on Ionia, if Strabo wrote so, he has in this passage fixed no boundary, except Poseidion, which is south of the Maeander. If by the Carian mountains he means the range of Messogis, which forms the northern boundary of the basin of the Maeander, he does not seem to have expressed his meaning very accurately; for if the Messogis which is north of the Maeander is the southern boundary of Ionia, it appears inconsistent to speak of a promontory south of the Maeander also as a boundary. But Strabo's text is still capable of explanation. Miletus, which was south of the Maeander, and in a tract once occupied by the Carians, was an Ionian city, and the whole coast line from Phocaea and the Hermus to Poseidion, according to Strabo, was Ionia. It is therefore consistent to make Ionia extend to Poseidium along the coast, and yet to speak of the Carian mountains as a boundary, if he means the Messogis, the mountain range that terminates on the coast in the promontory of Mycale. The Messogis, which lies between the basin of the Cayster and the basin of the Maeander, would form a natural boundary between Caria and the country to the north of the Messogis. Strabo, in another passage (p. 648), says that the plain of the Maeander is occupied by Lydians, Carians, Ionians, Milesians, the people of Myus, and also the Aeolians, who had Magnesia on the Maeander. Again (p. 577), after describing the source of the Maeander, he says that it flows through Phrygia, and then separates Lydia and Caria in the plain of the Maeander; and near the lower part of its course it flows through Caria itself (καὶ Καρίαν αὐτὴν, according to the emended text), that part which is now occupied by the Ionians, and enters the sea between Miletus and Priene. Herodotus places in Caria not only Miletus and Myus, but also Priene, which is north of the Maeander (1.142). It seems, then, a fair conclusion that the Carians once possessed-all the plain of the Maeander in its middle and lower course, and that the Messogis was their northern limit. Immediately south of the Maeander, says Strabo (p. 650), all is Carian, the Carians there not being mingled with the Lydians, but being by themselves, except as to the sea-coast parts which the Myusii and Milesians have appropriated. In Strabo's time, then, or according to the authorities that Strabo followed, the stock of purer Carians commenced immediately south of the Maeander, and there were only traces of the former population in the plain on the north side of the river. On the north-east Caria bordered on Phrygia. Strabo (p. 663) makes Carura on the upper Maeander the boundary between Phrygia and Caria. The range of Cadmus forms a natural boundary to Caria on the north-east, occupying the country between the upper basin of the Maeander and of the Indus, one of the large rivers which enters the sea on the south coast of Caria. The natural limit of Caria on the east would be the high land that bounds the basin of the Indus on the west, and not the range of Daedala, which is in Lycia (Strab. p. 664), and forms the eastern boundary of the basin of the Indus or Calbis of Strabo. But the most eastern place on the coast of Caria, according to Strabo, is Daedala, east of the Indus, and north of Daedala is the mountain range that has the same name. According to this geographer, the small river Glaucus, which enters the bay of Glaucus, is the eastern boundary of Caria on the south coast, and thus he includes within Caria, at least the lower part of the valley of the Indus or Calbis, and the. towns of Daedala, Araxa, and that of Calynda, though the site of Calynda is not certain. [CALYNDA]
The whole coast of Caria, including the bays, is estimated at 4900 stadia. (Strab. p. 651.) The part of the south coast from Daedala westward to Mount Phoenix, opposite to the small island Elaeussa, and to the northern extremity of Rhodes, 1500 stadia in length, was called the Peraea. This Peraea belonged to the Rhodians, and is accordingly some-times called ἡ περαία τῶν Ποδίων (Plb. 17.2), who appear to have had part of this coast at least from a very early period; for Scylax (p. 38) mentions a tract south of Cnidus as belonging to the Rhodians.
The Carians maintained that they were an autochthonous continental people, the original inhabitants of Caria, and that they had always this name. As a proof of it, they pointed to the temple of the Carian Zeus at Mylasa, which was open to the Lydians and Mysians also, for Lydus and Mysus were the brothers of Car. (Hdt. 1.171.) The proof might show that there was some fraternity among these three nations, but certainly it would not prove that the Carians were autochthonous in Caria. But the Cretans had a different story. They said that the Cares inhabited the islands of the Aegean, and were subject to Minos, king of Crete, being then called Leleges, but they paid no tribute. They were a warlike race, and manned the ships of Minos. They were afterwards driven from the islands by the Dorians and Ionians, and so came to the mainland. Strabo (p. 661) follows this tradition, and adds that the continental people whom they displaced were! themselves Leleges and Pelasgi. But this tradition does not explain the origin of the name Carians. In the Iliad (10.428), Cares, Leleges, Caucones, and Pelasgi are mentioned among the Trojan auxiliaries; and we may assume them all to be continental people. The Leleges [[LELEGE] seem to have once occupied a considerable part of the west coast of Asia Minor. Strabo (p. 611) observes, that in all Caria and in Miletus tombs of the Leleges, and forts and vestiges of buildings, are shown.The true conclusion seems to be that Cares and Leleges are different peoples or nations, whatever relationship there may have been between them. In proof of the former occupation of some of the islands of the Aegean by Carians, Thucydides (Thuc. 1.8) states that when the Athenians, in the Peloponnesian war, removed all the dead bodies from the sacred island of Delos, above half appeared to be Carians, who were recognised by their arms, which were buried with them, and by the manner of their interment, which was the same that they used when Thucydides wrote. He states that the early inhabitants of the islands of the Aegean were pirates, and they were Carians and Phoenicians. According to him, Minos expelled the Carians from the Cyclades (1.4), which is not the tradition that Herodotus followed. The Carians of Homer occupied Miletus, and the banks of the Maeander, and the heights of Mycale; and consequently, according to Homer, they were both north and south of this river. Strabo even makes the original inhabitants of Ephesus to have been Cares and Leleges.
Within the limits of Caria was a people named Caunii, who had, a town Caunus, on the south coast. Herodotus (Hdt. 1.171) believed them to be autochthonous, but they said that they came from Crete. Herodotus also says that they approximated in language to the Carian nation, or the Carians to them; he could not tell which. But in customs they differed from the Carians and from every other people. The remark about the language is not very clear, but as Herodotus was a native of Caria, he may be supposed to be right as to the fact of some resemblance between the languages of these two people.
The settlements of the Ionians in Asia displaced the Carians from Mycale, near which Priene was built, from Myus on the south side of the Maeander, and from the territory of Miletus, which, according to Homer, was a Carian city ( Il. 2.866). The Dorians drove them from Halicarnassus, from Cnidus and the Triopia, and probably the Dorians found the Carians in the island of Cos, which they also seized. The possessions of the Rhodians on the south coast probably belong to the same epoch. But it was only the sea-coast that the early Greek settlers occupied, according to their usual practice, and not all the sea-coast, for in the time of Xerxes (B.C. 480), the Carians contributed 70 ships to the Persian fleet, and the Dorians of Caria supplied only thirty. Homer designates the Carians by the epithet Βαρβαροφώνων (II. 2.865), the exact meaning of which is a difficulty to us, as it was to Strabo and others of his countrymen (p. 661). We may conclude that there was some intermixture between the Greek settlers and the Carians, as is always the case when two peoples live near one another. But the Carians maintained their language, though many Greek words were introduced into it, as Strabo says (p. 662), on the authority of Philippus, who wrote a history of the Carians. The Carians lived in small towns or villages (κῶμαι), united in a kind of federation. Their place of meeting was a spot in the interior, where the Macedonians, after the time of Alexander, founded the colony of Stratonicea. They met at the temple of Zeus Chrysaoreus to sacrifice and to deliberate on their common interests. The federation was called Chrysaoreum, consisting of the several comae; and those who had the most comae had the superiority in the vote, an expression that admits more interpretations than one. This federation existed after the Macedonian conquest, for the people of Stratonicea were members of the federation, by virtue of their territorial position, as Strabo observes (p. 660), though they were not Carians. The Carians may have formed this confederation after they were driven into the interior by the Ionians and Dorians. This temple was at least purely Carian, and not a common temple like that at Mylasa, mentioned above. The Carians, at the time of the Persian conquest of Caria, had also a Zeus Stratios, whose temple was at Labranda. (Hdt. 5.119.)
The Carians were included in the Lydian kingdom of Croesus (Hdt. 1.28), as well as the Dorians who had settled in their country. On the overthrow of Croesus by Cyrus, they passed under Persian dominion, without making any great resistance (Hdt. 1.174); and they were included in the first nome of Darius with the Lycians and others. (Hdt. 3.90.) In the Ionian revolt (B.C. 499) the Carians made a brave resistance to the Persians. They fought a great battle with the Persians south of the Maeander, on the river Marsyas, and though the Carians were defeated, the enemy lost a great number of men. In a second battle the Carians fared still worse, but the Milesians, who had joined them, were the chief sufferers. At last, the Persian commander Daurises fell into an ambuscade by night, which the Carians laid for him in Pedasus, and perished with his men. The commander of the Carians in this ambuscade was Heracleides, of Mylasa, a Greek. In this war we see that Carians and Greeks fought side by side (Hdt. 5.119—121). After the capture of Miletus (B.C. 494), the Persians received the submission of some of the Carian cities, and compelled the submission of the rest. (Hdt. 6.25.)
The Persians established kingly government in Caria, and under their protection there was a dynasty of Carian princes, who may, however, have been of Greek stock. Halicarnassus was the residence of these kings. [HALICARNASSUS] Artemisia, the daughter of Lygdamis, and of a Cretan mother, accompanied Xerxes to the battle of Salamis with five ships (Hdt. 7.99). She was more of a man than a woman. The Athenians, during their naval supremacy, made the people of the Carian coast tributary, but they did not succeed in establishing their tyranny in the interior. (Thucyd. 2.9, 3.19.) When Alexander, in his Persian expedition, entered Caria, Ada, queen of the Carians, who had been deprived of the royal authority, surrendered to him Alinda, a town in the interior, and the strongest place in Caria. Alexander rewarded her by re-establishing her as queen of all Caria, for she was entitled to it as the sister and widow of her brother Idrieus. (Arrian, Arr. Anab. 1.23; Diod. 17.24.) It seems that the early Macedonian kings of Egypt somehow got a footing somewhere in Carla. (Plb. 3.2.) After the Romans had finally defeated Antiochus, king of Syria (B.C. 190), who seems to have added Caria to his dominions, the Romans gave part of Caria to Eumnenes, king of Pergamus, and part to the Rhodians. (Plb. 22.27; Liv. 37.56; Appian, App. Syr. 100.44.) According to the terms of the Senatusconsultum, as reported by Livy, the Romans gave to Eumenes, Caria called Hydrela, and the territory of Hydrela which lies towards Phrygia, with the forts and villages on the Maeander, with the exception of such places as were free before the war with Antiochus. They gave. to the Rhodians the part of Caria which was nearest to them, and the parts towards Pisidia, except those towns which were free before the war with king Antiochus in Asia. But the Romans took from the Rhodians their Carian possessions after the war with king Perseus (B.C. 168); or, as Polybius (Plb. 30.5) expresses it, they made those Carians free whom they had put under the Rhodians after the defeat of Antiochus. (Liv. 44.15.) About B.C. 129 the Romans added Carla to their province of Asia; but the Peraea was reserved for the Rhodians, if Strabo's statement applies to his own time. Caunus at least was given to the Rhodians by Sulla. (Cic. ad Q. Fr. 1.1. 11）
The Carians are represented by the Greeks as a warlike race; and Herodotus (Hdt. 1.171), whom Strabo copies, says that the Greeks adopted the fashion of helmet plumes from them, handles for the shields, and devices on the shields They were not a nation of traders, like the Greeks. They served as mercenary. troops, and, of course, would serve anybody who would pay them well; and they were reproached with this practice by the Greeks, who, however, followed it themselves. Apries, the king of Egypt, had a body of Carians and Ionians in his service (Hdt. 2.163); and Psammenitus, the son of Amasis, had also Hellenic and Carian troops (Hdt. 3.11).
The great plain of Caria is the valley of the Maeander, bounded on the north by the range called Messogis The range of Cadmus, or some high range that is connected with it, appears to run through Caria southward, then west, and to terminate in the peninsula in which Halicarnassus is situated. This high land, called Lide, forms the northern boundary of the Gulf of Ceramicus, and is parallel to the south coast of Caria and near it; for there are only a few small streams that flow from the southern slope to the south coast, while three considerable streams run from the north slope and join the Maeander on the left bank, the Kara Su, perhaps the Mossinus or Mosynus, the Arpa Su, the Harpasus, and the Tshina Chi, the Marsyas, which rises in the tract called Idrias (Hdt. 5.118). The valley of the Calbis or Indus is separated by the high lands of Cadmus and by its continuation from the basin of the Meander, though the lower part of this valley is included in Caria by the ancient geographers. The valleys of these three streams, which run at right angles to the direction of the Maeander, are separated by tracts of highly land which are offsets from the central range of Caria. One of these transverse ranges, which forms the western boundary of the valley of the Marsyas, is the Latmus; and the high lands called Grion occupy the peninsula between the bay of Iasus and the bay of Latmus.
This general direction of the mountain ranges has determined the irregular form of the western coast of Carla. On the north side of the peninsula of Miletus was the bay of Latmus, so called from the neighbouring range of Latmnus, but the bay has disappeared, and a large tract of sea has been filled up by the alluvium of the Maeander, which once entered the sea on the north side of the bay of Latmus. (Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor, &c. vol. i. ch. 53, French ed.; MAEANDER) South of the bay of Latmus was the bay of Iasus, also called Sinus Bargylieticus, the northern side of which terminated in the promontory Posidium, and the southern side was the. north coast of the peninsula of Halicarinassus. The Ceramicus (Κεραμεικὸς κόλπος, Hdt. 1.174), or Doris of Pliny, now the Gulf of Boodroon, is a deep inlet, the north side of which is formed by the mountain range already described as running through Caria from east to west, and terminating in the peninsula of Halicarnassus. The southern side of the bay is bounded by the long Triopian peninsula, at the western extremity of which Cnidos was situated; and in the mouth of the gulf is the long narrow island of Cos, which looks like a fragment of the mountains of the continent. The peninsula of Cnidos is contracted to a narrow neck in two places, and thus is divided into two peninsulas. The more eastern of these two necks seems to be the termination of the Triopian peninsula [BUBASSUS], which forms the northern boundary of the picturesque gulf of Syme.The south side is formed by another peninsula, a continuation of a mountain range from the interior of Caria. which terminates on the coast, opposite to the island Elaeussa, in Mount Phoenix, which Ptolemy (Ptol. 5.2) enters in his list as one of the great mountains of the western side of Asia; and it is the highest mountain in those parts (Strab. p. 652). The Peraea of the Rhodians commenced at Phoenix and ran eastward along the coast between the mountains of the interior and the sea (Strab. pp. 651, 652). The bay of Syme has a rugged and uneven coast, and itself contains several other: bays, which Mela, proceeding from east to west in his description of the coast of Caria (1.16), names in the following order:—Thymnias, Schoenus, and Bubessius. The Thymnias, then, is the bay right opposite to the island of Syme, bounded on. the north side by the promontory Aphrodisium; the Schoenus is the next bay further north; and the bay of Bubassus is the bay north of the Schoenus, and the termination of the gulf of Syme. Close to this bay of Bubassus is the narrow neck of land which connects the Cnidian peninsula with the mainland. (See Hamilton's Asia Minor, &c. vol. 2. p. 77.) Some geographers place the bay of Bubassus on the south side of the Triopian peninsula, where also the land is contracted to a narrow neck; but if the Cnidian isthmus of Herodotus is rightly determined, this is not the bay of Bubassns. [BUBASSUS] If this is the right position of the Bubassus, the Bubassie of Herodotus (Hdt. 1.174) is the long peninsula to the east of the Triopia, or the rocky tract that contains the mountain Phoenix. And this peninsula is what Diodorus (Diod. 5.60, 62) calls the Chersonesus opposite to the Rhodians; Pliny also (31.2) speaks of the Chersonesus Rhodia. This peninsula, or Rhodian Chersonese, terminates in the Dog's Tomb (Cynossema) or Ass' jaw (Onugnathos), right opposite to the island of Rhodes, and in the Paridion promontory perhaps of Pliny opposite to the island of Syme. (Comp. Plin. Nat. 5.28, and Mela. 1.16.)
The neck of this Rhodian Chersonese is the narrow tract between the head of the gulf of Syme and a land-locked bay on the east, at the head of which was the town of Physcus. Between this last-mentioned bay and another small bay, Panormus, to the cast, is another Chersonesus; and further cast, between the mouth of the Calbis and the gulf of Glaucus, Macri, is another Chersonesus, which terminates in the promontory Pedalium or Artemisium. The irregular coast of Caria is most picturesque, and in some parts the rocks rise abruptly from the sea.
There was a road from Physcus in the Peraea of the Rhodians to Ephesus. The distances were, from Physcus to Lagina, in the territory of Stratonices, 850 stadia; to Alabanda, 250; to the passage of the Maeander, 80 stadia: in all 1180 stadia from Physcus to the Maeander (Artemidorus, quoted by Strabo, p. 663). At the Maeander Strabo places the limits (ὅροι) of Caria, an expression which may seem to support Groskurd's emendation mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Though a large part of Caria is mountainous, it contains some extensive valleys and a great deal of good land in the basin of the Maeander and its tributary streams. The Peraea is a beautiful country, and contains some fertile tracts. There is still a good deal of timber on the hills in many parts of Caria, firs, oaks, and many fine plane trees. The country produces good grain and fruits, the fig and the olive. The vine grows to the top of the highest trees. Oil is made in Caria. The variation in altitude causes a great difference in climate, for the higher tracts are cold, wintry, and snow-covered, while it is hot in the lower grounds. In the upper valley of the Mosynus it is still winter in the month of March. Some sheep are fed in Caria; and we may conclude that, as Miletus was noted for its wool, the high lands of Caria formerly fed a great number of sheep. The green slopes near Alabanda, Arab Hissá, in the valley of the Marsyas, are now covered with flocks. The limestone of the country furnished excellent building material; and there are but springs and gaseous flames. (Fellows, Discoveries in Lycia, Asia Minor, &c. ) The palm tree grows luxuriantly, and the orange about the ancient Halicarnassus. The wine of Cnidus was highly esteemed in ancient times.
The islands of the Carian coast are too remote to be considered as appendages of the mainland, with the exception perhaps of Cos, already mentioned, and the island of Syme, which is off the bay of Thymnias. There are many small rocky islands along the coast. The numerous towns are described under their several heads.
[G.L]