Dardanus

DA´RDANUS, DA´RDANUM(ἡ Δάρδανος, τὸ Δάρδανον: Eth. Δαρδανεύς), a city of the Troad, originally named Teucris. According to the legend told by Mnaseas (Steph. B. s. v. Δάρδανος), Dardanus built or settled Dardanus, and named the country Dardania, which was called Teucris before. [DARDANIA] This old story of Dardanus being the founder of the city, is reported by various other authorities. (Apollod. 3.12.1; Diod. 4.75; Conon. apud Phot. Narr. 21.) It seems that the city was sometimes called Dardania as well as the country. Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.30) names it Dardanium. It was situated on the Hellespont, about a mile south of the promontory Dardanis or Dardanium (Map of the Plain of Troy, by Capt. Graves and T. A. B. Spratt, Esq., London Geog. Journal, vol. xii.), and 70 stadia from Abydus. Between Abydus and Dardanus, says Strabo (p. 595), is the Rhodius. There are two streams marked in the map: one nearer Dardanus, which enters the Hellespont close to the promontory of Dardanis; and another near Sultania, a little north of which is the site of Abydus. Dr. Forchhammer, in the map referred to, which contains his determination of the ancient sites, makes the stream at Sultaniato be the ancient Rhodius; and this appears to be right, according to Strabo, who says that it enters the sea opposite to Cynossema in the Chersonesus. Strabo adds, however, some say that the Rhodius flows into the Aesepus; but of course the Rhodius must then be a different river from the stream that enters the sea between Abydus and Dardanus (pp. 598, 603). Homer mentions the Rhodius ( Il. 12.20).
Strabo observes that the Dardanus of his time, the town on the coast, was not the old town of Dardanus, or Dardania, which appears from the Iliad to have been at the foot of Ida. It was an older town than Ilium, and did not exist in Strabo's time. The later town was an Aeolian settlement, and it is mentioned among the towns on the Hellespont, which Daurises the Persian took after the burning of Sardis. (Hdt. 5.117.) In another place (6.43), Herodotus observes that Dardanus bordered on the territory of Abydus; which might also be safely inferred from the passage in the fifth book. It is mentioned by Scylax in his Periplus of the Troad. In the battle between the Athenians and Peloponnesians in the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War (B.C. 411), the line of the 68 ships of the Peloponnesians extended from Abydus to Dardanus (Thuc. 8.104); a statement that can hardly be correct, for the ships that were outside of the promontory of Dardanis would be completely separated from the rest. Strabo (p. 595) says that Dardanus was so weak a place, that the kings, by whom he means Alexander's successors, some of them several times removed all the people to Abydus, and others moved them back again to their old place. On this spot L. Cornelius Sulla and Mithridates met, after Sulla had crossed over from Europe, and here they came to terms about putting an end to the war, B.C. 84. (Strab. p. 595; Plut. Sull. 100.24.) It was at that time a free city, having been declared such by the Romans after the peace with king Antiochus, B.C. 190, in honour of the Trojan descent of the people. (Liv. 37.9, 37, 38.39.)
There are many imperial coins of Dardanus; and the name of the river Rhodius appears on a medal of Domna. Sestini, Mon. Vet. p. 76.(Cramer, Asia Minor, vol. 1. p. 82.) This seems to show that the stream which flows into the Hellespont near the cape Dardanis, is the Rhodius, and not the river nearer Abydus; but it is not decisive. The modern name Dardanellesis generally supposed to be derived from the name of Dardanus.
[G.L]