Ancient Greek music: now we finally know what it sounded like

The God Apollon Playing The Cithara,
Marble, Miletus(Balat, Söke), Roman Period, 2nd. cen. AD.,
İstanbul Archaeological Museums.
Photo: @ancientpix

Armand D'Angour, University of Oxford

In 1932, the musicologist Wilfrid Perrett reported to an audience at the Royal Musical Association in London the words of an unnamed professor of Greek with musical leanings: “Nobody has ever made head or tail of ancient Greek music, and nobody ever will. That way madness lies.”

Indeed, ancient Greek music has long posed a maddening enigma. Yet music was ubiquitous in classical Greece, with most of the poetry from around 750BC to 350BC – the songs of Homer, Sappho, and others – composed and performed as sung music, sometimes accompanied by dance. Literary texts provide abundant and highly specific details about the notes, scales, effects, and instruments used. The lyre was a common feature, along with the popular aulos, two double-reed pipes played simultaneously by a single performer so as to sound like two powerful oboes played in concert.

Despite this wealth of information, the sense and sound of ancient Greek music has proved incredibly elusive. This is because the terms and notions found in ancient sources – mode, enharmonic, diesis, and so on – are complicated and unfamiliar. And while notated music exists and can be reliably interpreted, it is scarce and fragmentary. What could be reconstructed in practice has often sounded quite strange and unappealing – so ancient Greek music had by many been deemed a lost art.

But recent developments have excitingly overturned this gloomy assessment. A project to investigate ancient Greek music that I have been working on since 2013 has generated stunning insights into how ancient Greeks made music. My research has even led to its performance – and hopefully, in the future, we’ll see many more such reconstructions.

New approaches

The situation has changed largely because over the past few years some very well preserved auloi have been reconstructed by expert technicians such as Robin Howell and researchers associated with the European Music Archaeology Project. Played by highly skilled pipers such as Barnaby Brown and Callum Armstrong, they provide a faithful guide to the pitch range of ancient music, as well as to the instruments’ own pitches, timbres, and tunings.
Central to ancient song was its rhythms, and the rhythms of ancient Greek music can be derived from the metres of the poetry. These were based strictly on the durations of syllables of words, which create patterns of long and short elements. While there are no tempo indications for ancient songs, it is often clear whether a metre should be sung fast or slow (until the invention of mechanical chronometers, tempo was in any case not fixed, and was bound to vary between performances). Setting an appropriate tempo is essential if music is to sound right.

What about the tunes – the melody and harmony? This is what most people mean when they claim that ancient Greek “music” is lost. Thousands of words about the theory of melody and harmony survive in the writings of ancient authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Ptolemy, and Aristides Quintilianus; and a few fragmentary scores with ancient musical notation first came to light in Florence in the late 16th century. But this evidence for actual music gave no real sense of the melodic and harmonic riches that we learn of from literary sources.
More documents with ancient notation on papyrus or stone have intermittently come to light since 1581, and now around 60 fragments exist. Carefully compiled, transcribed, and interpreted by scholars such as Martin West and Egert Pöhlmann, they give us a better chance of understanding how the music sounded.

Ancient Greek music performed

The earliest substantial musical document, found in 1892, preserves part of a chorus from the Athenian tragedian Euripides’ Orestes of 408BC. It has long posed problems for interpretation, mainly owing to its use of quarter-tone intervals, which have seemed to suggest an alien melodic sensibility. Western music operates with whole tones and semitones; any smaller interval sounds to our ears as if a note is being played or sung out of tune.


But my analyses of the Orestes fragment, published earlier this year, led to striking insights. First, I demonstrated that elements of the score clearly indicate word-painting – the imitation of the meaning of words by the shape of the melodic line. We find a falling cadence set to the word “lament”, and a large upward interval leap accompanying the word “leaps up”.

Second, I showed that if the quarter-tones functioned as “passing-notes”, the composition was in fact tonal (focused on a pitch to which the tune regularly reverts). This should not be very surprising, as such tonality exists in all the documents of ancient music from later centuries, including the large-scale Delphic Paeans preserved on stone.

With these premises in view, in 2016 I reconstructed the music of the Orestes papyrus for choral realisation with aulos accompaniment, setting a brisk tempo as indicated by the metre and the content of the chorus’s words. This Orestes chorus was performed by choir and aulos-player at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in July 2017, together with other reconstructed ancient scores.


It remains for me to realise, in the next few years, the other few dozen ancient scores that exist, many extremely fragmentary, and to stage a complete ancient drama with historically informed music in an ancient theatre such as that of Epidaurus.

Meanwhile, an exciting conclusion may be drawn. The Western tradition of classical music is often said to begin with the Gregorian plainsong of the 9th century AD. But the reconstruction and performance of Greek music has demonstrated that ancient Greek music should be recognised as the root of the European musical tradition.


Armand D'Angour, Associate Professor in Classics, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From washing machines to computers: how the ancients invented the modern world

A Sun Dial, Ephesus Museum.
Photo: instagram.com/ancientpix

Zena Kamash, Royal Holloway

True innovation is hard to find, as few things come out of nothing. Take the now ubiquitous selfie, for example. The format may have changed but the concept of making self-portraits is hundreds, if not thousands of years old. The same is true of many inventions that we typically think of as modern, some of which actually have precedents dating back over 1000 years.

A Roman washing machine

“Fulling” was a major occupation in the Roman world that involved cleaning cloth by trampling it in tubs containing an alkaline solution, such as water and urine or the mineral known as fuller’s earth. But in ancient Antioch, in what is now Turkey, evidence suggests the process may have been mechanised, meaning the Romans may have effectively created the world’s first washing machine as far back as the 1st century AD.
Traditionally thought of as a medieval invention, the mechanical fulling mill would likely have consisted of a waterwheel that lifted a trip-hammer, which would then drop to press the cloth. A fullers’ canal mentioned in an inscription in Antioch would have supplied an estimated 300,000m³ of water at almost a metre per second, far in excess of what was needed for regular foot-powered fulleries. The power this could generate means it could have supported fulling on an industrial scale with maybe 42 pairs of mechanical hammers.

An ancient Greek computer

In 1900, divers off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera discovered something that changed our view of ancient science. The Antikythera mechanism is a bronze system of 30 gears that models the cycles of the sun and moon. It is effectively the first-known analogue computer, dating back to the 1st century BC. Set in a wooden box, the internal gears would have turned dials on the outside that showed the position of the sun and moon, as well as the rising and setting of specific stars and possibly the positions of Mars and Venus, too. Another dial could be moved to take into account leap years.
Although we now know that the Babylonians discovered how to use geometry to track the course of Jupiter in around 1800 BC, the Antikythera mechanism is the earliest known device that automatically calculates astronomical phenomena. We know of no other similiar devices for several hundred more years until the 8th century AD, when mathematician Muhammed al-Fazari is said to have built the first Islamic astrolabe. And nothing as mechanically sophisticated would appear again until the European astronomical clocks of the 14th century.

The Great Roman Bake-Off

Bread was big business in the Roman world. It was given out by the state as part of a dole known as the annona. This meant that it was possible for people to make substantial amounts of money as bakers. One such person was Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, a freedman (ex-slave) from Rome, who was so proud of his successful baking business that he commemorated it on his tomb. Today it is one of the most striking monuments from ancient Rome.
The top of the monument is decorated with a series of scenes that show a range of baking activities including the mixing and kneading of dough, the forming of loaves and the baked loaves being stacked in baskets. The most curious part, however, is the cylinders that make up the bulk of the monument. These features have baffled scholars for quite some time. One convincing theory argues that it is likely that these cylinders are related to baking and may well represent an early dough-mixing machine. The idea is that a rotating metal arm would have been attached to each cylinder in order to mix the dough.

The first state space project

Ninth-century Baghdad in what is now Iraq saw the rise of a growing scientific community, particularly in astronomy, centred around a library known as the “House of Wisdom”. The problem for these new scholars was that their books were written many centuries earlier and came from a wide range of different cultures – including Persian, Indian and Greek – that did not always agree. The Caliph al Ma’mun decided the only solution was to build an astronomical observatory so the city’s scholars could determine the truth.
Observatories weren’t new but a state-sponsored scientific institution was. It’s hard to be sure exactly which instruments were used in the al-Shammasiyya observatory, but they probably included a sundial, astrolabes and a quadrant set on the wall to measure the precise position of objects in the sky. The quadrant may have been the first of its kind to be used in astronomical observations. The scientists used these instruments to reassess Ptolemy’s Mathematical Treatise from the 2nd century AD, and to make numerous astronomical observations, including the latitudes and longitudes of 24 fixed stars.

Zena Kamash, Lecturer in Roman Art and Archaeology, Royal Holloway
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Roman gladiators were war prisoners and criminals, not sporting heroes

Venetio Relief, Roman Period, Nysa Ancient City, Aydın Museum.
Photo: instagram.com/ancientpix

Alastair Blanshard, The University of Queensland
For centuries, the bloody gladiator conflicts that the Romans staged in amphitheatres throughout the empire have engrossed and repelled us. When it comes to gladiators, it is almost impossible to look away. But the arena is also the place where the Romans feel most foreign to us.
The gladiator was the product of a unique environment. He can exist only within a very particular set of religious, social, legal, political and economic circumstances. It is not surprising that this is a form of spectacle we have not seen either before or since the Romans. To acknowledge this is also to acknowledge that they are only ever going to be partially comprehensible to us.

Sadly, this is not a view shared by the Queensland Museum, which last week opened its new exhibition, Gladiators: Heroes of the Colosseum. The exhibition brings together 117 objects from Italian museums, most notably the collection of the Colosseum at Rome. Highlights include some extremely well preserved and intricately decorated gladiatorial helmets and pieces of armour from Pompeii, as well as some very fine carved reliefs depicting scenes of combat.

Yet, while the quality of the individual objects is without question and certainly worth the price of admission alone, the intellectual framework of the exhibition is far more problematic.
This is not an exhibition that is plagued by doubts or uncertainties. It firmly knows who gladiators were and what they stood for – gladiators, the opening panel of the exhibition proclaims, were the “elite athletes” of the ancient world. The antique equivalent of today’s fighters in the popular sport MMA, if you like.

Sporting analogies pepper the exhibition. Spectators are routinely referred to as “fans” and the catalogue promises that this is an exhibition that “touches on many issues that have parallels with modern-day sport and sporting culture”.
At times, the exhibition also feels like it has taken its cues from contemporary video-game culture. The special weapons of the various types of gladiators are spelled out and visitors are invited to contemplate who would win between a gladiator fighting with a net (known as a retarius to the Romans) and one heavily armed (secutor). A video-game spin-off from the exhibition is easy to imagine.

Rogues not heroes

Gladiatorial combat was certainly popular among the Romans. Evidence for gladiators is found in every province of the Roman Empire.
These fights initially began as contests of matched pairs as part of funeral rites honouring the dead. However, over time their popularity grew. By the time of the Roman Empire, hundreds of gladiators might be involved in spectacles that could last as long as 100 days.
These games were never just displays of gladiatorial fighting. At their most elaborate they involved beast hunts with exotic animals, executions of criminals, naval battles staged in flooded arenas, musical entertainments and dances.
The Queensland Museum is not the first to try to understand gladiators as sporting heroes. However, this analogy causes more problems than it solves.
The vast majority of gladiators were either prisoners of war or criminals sentenced to death. Gladiators were the lowest of the low; violent murderers, thieves and arsonists. Even your most badly behaved football team at their most morally blind would have had no trouble in rejecting this crew.


Gladiators in Rome were regarded as fundamentally untrustworthy and outside of legal protection. It is more useful to think of gladiators as prisoners on death row than as David Beckham with a net and trident. The section in the exhibition where children are encouraged to dress up as gladiators would have appalled any respectable Roman parent (that said, it’s great fun).
The Queensland Museum can’t escape the lowly, servile and criminal origins of the gladiators, but it does attempt to moderate our opinion of them by suggesting that some free citizens wilfully chose to be gladiators in search of “eternal fame and glory”. In fact, the evidence of such citizen gladiators is extremely slim. It was almost certainly extreme desperation that forced them into the arena rather than a desire to be remembered by posterity.
At another point, the exhibition suggests that the crowd saw reflected in gladiators the virtues of the soldiers who guarded the empire. Such talk would have had any self-respecting Roman legionary reaching for his short sword.

Gods and monsters

Representing gladiatorial combat as sport also inevitably underplays the religious dimension of the fighting. The exhibition includes some fabulous tomb paintings from the city of Paestum, which illustrate the origins of gladiatorial combat in the funerary rites for the dead. These are wonderful works, which deserve to be much better known; however, they are a rare intrusion into an otherwise secular narrative.
Gladiatorial combats never stopped being religious events. Every day of the games would begin with a “solemn procession” with sacrifices on altars. The gladiators themselves were deeply implicated in the Roman theology of the divine, death, and the relationship between mortal and immortal. These spectacles were Roman sermons written in blood.

The final problem with focusing on gladiators as sporting heroes is that it tends to isolate their combat from the other elements that made up the games. Beast hunts and the executions of criminals were just as popular, possibly even more so. They were not precursors to the main event or entertainment for the intervals.
The executions of criminals could involve extravagant mythological tableaus. Prisoners were dressed as Hercules and burnt alive. The fatal flight of Icarus towards the sun might be re-enacted for the audience.

Certainly, these elaborate, gruesome affairs captured the attention of ancient writers far more than the gladiators who accompanied them. Wealthy Romans seemed far more preoccupied with obtaining suitably rare fauna for their spectacles.
For the poorer members of the audience, the beast hunts had an added attraction. Often the animal meat was distributed to the audience members to take home. They were literally watching their dinner being butchered in front of them.
One of the most intriguing items in the exhibition doesn’t relate to gladiatorial combat but to one of these beast hunts. It is a second-century CE mosaic that features what appears to be a female hunter facing off a giant tiger. Who is this woman? Evidence for female hunters (like female gladiators) is practically non-existent. Is she part of some mythological tableau? A woman pretending to be an Amazon? Or a man dressed up as a woman? Is this a scene from real life at all?
She is an enigma and a worthy reminder that the real secret of the appeal of Roman combat spectacle is that it raises more questions than it answers.

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Gladiators: Heroes of the Colosseum will be on at the Queensland Museum until January 28 2018.
Alastair Blanshard, Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why did Tutankhamun have a dagger made from a meteorite?

Head of Tutankhamun, Met Museum.

Diane Johnson, The Open University

Scientists have long speculated that the ancient Egyptians used metal from meteorites to make iron objects. Now an analysis of a dagger found in Tutankhamun’s tomb has given us strong evidence that this was the case – and that the Egyptians knew the iron had come from the sky. But why did they use such an unusual source for the metal when there’s plenty of iron here on Earth?

Until recently, we didn’t think that the ancient Egyptians were particularly good at producing iron objects until late in their history, around 500 BC. There’s no archaeological evidence for significant iron working anywhere in the Nile Valley. Even the large amounts of iron-rich smelting waste products found in the Delta region could actually have been produced by attempts to make copper. When Tutankhamun died – 800 years earlier – iron was a rarer material than gold.

The most common natural source of metal iron on Earth is iron ores – rocks that contain iron chemically bonded to other elements. These need to be processed by heating them with other materials (smelting) to extract a low-quality form of iron, which is then beaten with hammers to remove impurities. This requires considerable know-how, effort and tools that we have no evidence for in ancient Egypt.

There were abundant supplies of iron ore in both Egypt and the Sinai peninsula and textual sources indicate that Egyptians were aware of the metal from early in their history. But the ore was mostly used to create pigments for art and make up. One explanation for this may be that the readily accessible iron ores were of poor quality so couldn’t be worked into more useful metal.

Interstellar source

But iron doesn’t just come from iron ore. We have evidence that numerous prehistoric societies worldwide which did not have access to ores or knowledge of smelting made use of metallic iron found in occasional meteorites. This precious gift from nature still required shaping into a useful form, often resulting in very basic iron objects, such as small thin metal pieces that could be used as blades or bent into shapes.

If ancient Egyptians knew that iron could be found in meteorites that came from the sky – the place of the gods – it may have been symbolically important to them. As a result, they could have seen all iron as a divine material that wasn’t appropriate to work into a practical, everyday form and that should be reserved only for high-status people.

Meteorites may have even played a more direct role in state religion. For example, the “Benben” stone worshipped in the sun temple of the god Ra at Heliopolis is thought to have possibly been a meteorite. The word “benben” is derived from the verb “weben”, meaning “to shine”.

The ancient language also offers clues as to how how iron was perceived by Egyptians – and that they knew meteorites were a source of the metal. The earliest hieroglyphic word for iron was greatly debated by translators, who frequently confused the words for copper and iron. The word “bi-A” was eventually translated as “iron”, but could easily have referred a range of hard, dense, iron-like materials.

The word was used in many texts including the funerary Pyramid Texts, early religious writings dating from approximately 2375 BC but likely to have been composed far earlier, carved on the internal walls of some pyramids. These textual references to iron connect it with aspects of the sky and with the bones of the dead king who will live for ever as an undying star in the sky.

From the beginning of the 19th Dynasty (approximately 1295 BC) a new hieroglyphic word for iron appeared: “bi-A-n-pt”, which literally translates as “iron from the sky”. Why this new word appears in this exact form at this time is unknown but it was later applied to all metallic iron. An obvious explanation for the sudden emergence of the word would be a major impact event or large shower of meteorites.

This would have been witnessed by much of the ancient Egyptian population, leaving little uncertainty as to where exactly the mysterious iron came from. One possible candidate event is the Gebel Kamil meteorite impact in southern Egypt. Although its exact date remains unknown, based upon nearby archaeology we know it occurred within the past 5000 years.

Ritual significance

Iron is also connected to ritual artefacts such as those used in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, a ritual performed at the entrance of a tomb designed to transform the mummy into a latent being with the potential for life. Later texts, including temple inventories, that reference the equipment used in this ceremony refer to the iron blades used as “the two stars”. It may be that iron was allowed an important role in this ceremony because of the association of iron with meteorites, powerful natural phenomena whose own inherent power might increase the potency of the ritual.

We also know that iron dagger blades were important enough to be mentioned in diplomatic correspondence. The best-known example is a letter from King Tushratta of Mitanni (today in northern Iraq and Syria) detailing a dowry of his daughter who was to be sent as a bride to Tutankhamun’s grandfather, king Amenhotep III. This letter intriguingly refers to a dagger blade of “habalkinu”, a poorly documented word derived from the ancient Hittite language which some linguists have translated as “steel”.

Only further detailed analysis of the chemistry and microstructure of other artefacts will tell us if meteorites were a common source of the iron that the ancient Egyptians produced. We also need to determine when where and how the smelting of terrestrial iron ores started in Egypt to further guide us in our knowledge on the origins, evolution and specific techniques of ancient Egyptian metalworking technology. By combining this with our knowledge of the cultural importance of iron, we can start to develop a realistic understanding of the true value of this metal in ancient Egypt.

Diane Johnson, Post Doctoral Research Associate, Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rainfall clues link climate change to Maya collapse

Pyramid of the Magician in Uxmal, ancient Maya city. Yucatan, Mexico.
Image: Dreamstime.com - @Publicdomainphotos ID 116733902

Ancient Central American rainfall records suggest climate change was linked to the rise and fall of the Maya civilisation between AD 300 and 1000, a new study has found. Giant stone structures throughout the region hint at the strength of the Maya economy and its kings in its heyday, when plentiful rains led to an an abundance of food and a population explosion.The study, published today in the journal Science, compared rainfall patterns reconstructed from stalagmites inside Yok Balum Cave in Belize with historical clues carved into local monuments.
While rain brought prosperity, the drought that followed brought disaster.
“We propose that anomalously high rainfall favoured unprecedented population expansion and the proliferation of political centres between 440 and 660 C.E,” the authors wrote.
“This was followed by a drying trend between 660 and 1000 C.E. that triggered the balkanisation of polities, increased warfare, and the asynchronous disintegration of polities, followed by population collapse in the context of an extended drought between 1020 and 1100 C.E.”
The droughts were linked to crop failures, death, famine, and migration in Mexico, the study said.
“Over the centuries, the cities suffered a decline in their populations and Maya kings lost their power and influence,” lead author Dr Douglas Kennett, a professor of anthropology at Penn State University, said in a statement.
Dr Andrew Glikson from the Climate Change Institute and the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University said the new paper “builds up on previous studies, confirming a collapse of Maya civilisation due to combined regional warming and deforestation.”
“The ensuing severe droughts and agricultural collapse were caused by aggravation of natural warming trend due to extensive deforestation and thus loss of moisture, droughts and depletion of the ground water the Maya tapped from water holes,” said Dr Glikson, who was not involved in the study.
“The parallel with modern climate change is evident – global warming associated with deforestation, leading to droughts in extensive areas and floods in other regions.”
Sunanda Creagh, Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Claros Prophecy Centre

Claros(Prophecy Centre), a place where the concept of world citizenship adopted.Claros was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia. It contained a temple and oracle of Apollo, honored here as Apollo Clarius. Claros, The Godhead God Apollo is one of the two important prophecy centers in Anatolia. İzmir is located at Menderes District at the base of Ahmetbeyli Valley, 13 km to the north of Kolophon and 2 km to the south of Notion.

There had been many applications this Prophecy Centre of Apollo Clarios from Anatolia(Bithynia, Mysia, Troas, Aiolis, Ionia, Lydia, Phygria ve Karia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia, Cappodacia),Greece, Thrace, Macedonia, Islands(Such as Chios, Crete) and Syria Cities. In short, these applications could had been as individually or municipally from many parts of the Ancient World.

Alexander The Great applied to this center for the interpretation of a dream he had seen and set up the new town of Smyrna in Pagos upon receiving the answer that the new people to sit in Pagos would be 3-4 times more happy. Alexander's application to this center is the first individual application made here.Like the Hellenes, communities seen as Barbarians could apply to this center.This made Claros famous. It was a place where the concept of world citizenship is adopted.

Replicas of many statues found here is exhibited in this center. Many important figurines such as Artemis and homeros are in here. Original sculptures are in the surrounding museums. While you are walking here you can come across the foot pieces of the gigantic sculptures. There is entrance fee in Claros. If you visit during winter time, do not forget that some parts may be full of water because it is below the clathose floor. Since this city is in the Ionia region, you can also visit the neighboring cities which are Kolophon, Notion, Teos and Ephesus.

Alexander The Great

Alexander The Great, İstanbul Archaeological Museums.

Alexander The Great was King of Macedonia, Pharaoh of Egypt and Monarch of Asia.

Alexander was educated by the great philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle was a student of Plato whose teacher was Socrates. Aristotle, Plato and Socrates called as big three in philosophy. So Alexander had been equipped with the latest scientific ideas of the period, built in nearly a century, in 3 generations. He conceptualized the importance of science and philosophy.

His some interesting quotes about the one united world:

-This may originate from Plutarch's essay On the Tranquility of Mind, part of the essays Moralia: Alexander wept when he heard Anaxarchus discourse about an infinite number of worlds, and when his friends inquired what ailed him, "Is it not worthy of tears," he said, "that, when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?"

-There are no more other worlds to conquer!

The unification of all the nations of the world under one single state was a dream of him. He did not harm the religious temples which he captured, equated the Egyptian gods to the Greek gods and respected the cultures of other societies. His these features made him a popular ruler in lands outside of Macedonia.

Nearly Seventy cities were builded in new conquered lands and some of their names were Alexander. During his campaign he was taking along important people like scholars.

During the reign of his, Greek culture and greek language spread over a very wide area. Alexander became the pioneer of the Helenistic Period and prepared the foundations of the Roman Empire.

Alexander lost his life in Babylon at the age of 33. Without this surprise death, Our world would look very different from now. There could be the same language and religion in all other continents, except for the American continent in the world. Due to the importance given to informatics, maybe the world would not experience with medieval era. We could enter the industrial revolution era instead of entering the middle ages.

Teos Ancient City Olive Trees

Teos is located in Sığacık Neighborhood, Seferihisar District, İzmir Province of Turkey. It is one of the twelve Ionian Cities on the Aegean Coast and approximately 50 km away from the city center of Izmir. It can be reached by public transport. The entry to this ancient city is a fee and archaeological excavations continue in the ancient city. Dionysus temple, bouleuterion(council house), theater, cistern(fountain), acropolis, ancient port and ancient olive trees which are thousands years old must be seen. It is thought that this olive tree which I shot above and share with you is 1800 years old.

More than 200 old olive trees aged over 500-years-old are thought to be in the ancient city of Teos. The olive oil is obtained from these old trees by traditional methods in the lead of Seferihisar municipality. These oils are sold at auction held later. On October 16, 2017, auction was held for the second time under this 1800-year-old tree. Half a liter of olive oil, which can be obtained from this 1800 year old tree, was sold to 22 thousand Turkish liras (Approximately 6,000 American Dollars). This tree is located in the eastern of the Dionysus Temple in Teos Ancient City, a few hundred metres away from temple. In This auction, the oils were priced according to the age of the trees from which they were obtained. In total 137 liters of oil were sold to 49,200 Turkish Liras.

These olive trees are real monuments made by nature. These have bloomed for thousands of years and they continue to feed people. They saw Romans, Byzantines, Selchuks and Ottomans. Despite the fact that a lot of human beings generations have passed away from this world, they are still in the same place and alive like it was thousands of years ago. They are living witnesses in many historical events. I wish they could tell us what they saw.

1800 years old olive tree

Magnesia Ancient City

Magnesia Ancient City Stadion

Magnesia Ancient City reffered as "Magnesia ad Maeandrum" or "Magnesia on the Maeander". Maeander(Büyük Menderes) is a river where this city founded on one of the tributaries of Maeander. At the same time, Magnesia is a city which referred as Manisa Province of Turkey. A city called with its river helps to prevent misunderstanding. According to Strabo, Magnets founded Magnesia.

It is located in Tekin Village, Ortaklar Area, Germencik District, Aydın Province of Turkey. Magnesia nearly 80 km and 1 hour away from Adnan Menderes Airport in İzmir Province of Turkey. It is on the road between the Ortaklar and Söke. It was neighbour of crucial cities which included Ephesus, Priene and Tralleis Ancient Cities. 

The principal deity of the City is Artemis. There is a Temple and sacred area dedicated to Artemis. According to  Anciet Roman Period Writer Vitruvius, Architecture of Artemis Temple was Hermogenes, he was the first architect to apply the octagonal pseudodipteros temple plan. Vitruvius tells us that the main work of Hermogenes was the temple of Artemis Leukophryene in Magnesia. This temple was one of the greatest Artemis temples in Anatolia.

After walking around the sanctuary of Artemis, you can visit theatron, gymnasium and stadion, respectively. The City has one of the biggest stadions on the world. If you are going to this city, it is the stadion building you should definitely see. According to the entrance of the ancient city, the stadion remains far away. It may take some time to reach. The stadium is huge and magnificent. It has the capacity to allow monitoring of tens of thousands of people. The seats are made of marble. The city was known as the "city of races" due to many sports events were organized in antiquity times.

Swampy areas caused by alluviums carried by Maeander River led to formation of diseases, and the population gradually decreased over time. The artifacts found in Magnesia are exhibited in the Paris, Berlin and İstanbul Museums. Today, Archaeologiacal excavations continues in the city.

Miletus Ancient City

Theatre, Miletus Ancient City

It is located in Didim district of Aydın Province of Turkey. It is approximately 130 km and 1,5 hours away from Adnan Menderes Airport in İzmir Province of Turkey, one of the twelve Ionians States on Aegean Sea Coast of Western Anatolia and one of the strongest in the ionian States. Carians and Lelegians people lived here before the Greek peoples settled in Miletus. Hittites called it as Millawanda. Miletus was a very advanced city state in maritime. They set up colonies close to a hundred from Egypt to the Black Sea.

It was on the seaside when it was first founded. But, today, it is 10 km away from the sea shore, as a result of filling the sea of the great meander river. Because of Miletus's being away from the sea, the city lost his former splendor, over time his population gradually decreased, eventually the city became a village.

Thales, Hippodamus, Hecataeus, Anaximander and Anaximenes are famous people who grew up in the city. The famous mathematician Thales has laid the foundations of scientific work, suggesting that nature itself should be sought instead of searching for the cause of every event in mythological beings. Thales and his students are referred to as the "school of physicists" in the history of science. Hippodomus is one of the first city planners in history. He has systematized the grid-type city planning, which allows the city-forming structures to be placed on the intersecting streets

The Fauistina (name of Marcus Aurelius's wife) Baths, one of the largest Roman baths in Anatolia, Ionic Stoa and its theatre are worth seeing. The Miletus Archaeological Museum is located a few hundred meters from the ancient city. In addition to the arifacts inside museum, I also recommend you to see the artifacts in the museum garden. The ancient cities of Myus and Priene are the neighboring cities of Miletus. You can also visit them without too much time for transportation.

Miletus has a oracle center like Delphi and Claros, its name is Didymeion which dedicated to Apollo. Temple of Apollo wahich called as Didymeion is 20 km away from Miletus Ancient City, in the center of Didim District of Aydın Province. It is known that the construction of this temple was not completed. If it had been completed, it could be evaluated as one of the seven wonders of the world.

Priene Ancient City

Temple of Athena, Priene Ancient City

Priene Ancient City is located in Söke District of Aydın Province of Turkey. The City is one of the twelve Ionian city states established on the coast of the aegean sea in western Anatolia. Güllübahçe is modern name of here. Priene is approximately 103 km and 1 hour-20 minutes away from Adnan Menderes Airport in Izmir. Bias, one of the Seven Sages of antiquity, grew up here.

Despite being a sea-front city in the past, it is today a large plain viewing area as a result of the alluviums brought by the Meander river. According to Eflatun, the city is the city where the moonlight shines most beautifully. (Of course, when the view of the sea is not the view of the plain.)

Priene, one of the world's first known grid-planned (hippodamos) city. It is the most beautiful example of old city planning. The city was built with the grid system developed by the architect of Miletus hippodamos.The streets of the city, which is generally 3.5 meters wide, have stairs because of the slope of the grounds. All the streets cut each other upright.

Priene is a member of the Ion union of 12 cities.The place chosen for the Panionion (the community in which the 12 Ionian government decisions are taken) is located in the territory of Priene. This has given them political power. Since the Samos claim their rights on the coastal belt that this state has established, they have been in dispute with the Samos for centuries. 

The construction of today's city began with the meander river filling the settlement with alluvium. The construction of this new city came upon Alexander's arrival. He has paid the expenses of the Temple of Athena of Alexandria, and he has the right to dedicate himself. The architect of the Priene Athene Temple is Pythius, who designed the Halicarnassus Mozeles, one of the seven wonders of the world.

Multiple periods have been experienced in this city. It hosts the Byzantine Church, the Temple of Athena and a synagogue. The well preserved 5000-seat theater, water canals, fortification walls, agora, gymnasionu, 5-column standing athena temple, roman bath complex, parliament building, Alexander House and great Meander river delta view are worth seeing.

Teos Ancient City

Bouleuterion(Council House), Teos.

To Arrive Teos

Teos Ancient City is located in İzmir Province of Turkey. Teos Antique City is one of the twelve Ionian city states established on the coast of the aegean sea in western Anatolia. Sığacık is modern name of here.

The city is located in Sığacık neighbourhood of Seferihisar district of İzmir province. The town of Seferihisar is approximately 47 km away from İzmir city center and 1 hour away. Teos Antique City is approximately 63 km and 1 hour away from Adnan Menderes Airport in Izmir. You can reach Seferihisar from İzmir by public transports (no: 985 ESHOT-Seferihisar&Üçkuyular Port) and private dolmushes. 

When you get to the center of Seferihisar district, you have to travel about 8 km to go to the ancient city of Teos. There are public transports (no:640 ESHOT-Sığacık&Seferihisar) and private dolmushes in Seferihisar town center for reach Teos. The entrance fee to the ancient city of Teos is 5 Turkish Liras. 

Buildings in Teos

Theater, Cistern, Acropolis, Temple of Dionysus(Ruins), Bouleuterion(Council House) and Southern Port of the ancient city are worth seeing. It is Council House that must be seen in them. From the city's acropolis you can see both the north and south ports of the city.

Theatre

Its theater has a wonderful sea landscape. There is an island on scenery. It is located on a hill. The view of phosphorescence would be very nice here on the full moon. It's scene is well-preserved but seating part has lost most of pieces. Dionysus is god of wine and theatre, so there should had been losts of entartainments about Dionysus in this theatre.

Dionysus Temple

The Roman writer Vitruvius describes this temple built by architect Hermogenes. It is one of the largest Dionysus Temples in the world. The principal deity of Teos was Dionysus(god of fertility,wine, theatre - Bacchus in Rome) so this temple dedicated to Dionysus.

Persons of Teos

The Asiatic branch of the Artists of Dionysus(Poet, musician, theater and singers) performed here a particular period. Poet Anacreon, philosophers Epicurus and Nausiphanes(Epicurus was for three years a student in the Ionian city of Teos, where his teacher was Nausiphanes), Apellicon(a wealthy Greek book collector who rescued Aristotle's manuscripts), Antimachus, historian Hecataius were born or studied in Teos Ancient City.

Pergamon Ancient City

Pergamon Theatre and Scenery from Acropolis

Pergamon

The ancient city of Pergamon is where the parchment paper is invented and the name comes from the parchment. The library of the city has an important place in history. Pergamon Antique City is one of the twelve aeolians city states established on the coast of the aegean sea in western Anatolia. It is located on the Caicus River, today Bakırçay River which flows into the aegean sea. 

To Arrive Pergamon

Pergamon Ancient City is located in İzmir Province of Turkey. The city is located in Bergama district of İzmir province. The town of Bergama is approximately 110km and 1 hour 40 minutes away from İzmir city center. You can go directly to Bergama via motorway from the center of Izmir. If you want to go by a suburban train, you can go as far as neighboring district Aliağa. You can get on this suburban train in the Adnan Menderes Airport. This suburban train call as İZBAN. Pergamon Antique City is approximately 135 km and 2 hours away from Adnan Menderes Airport in Izmir.

When you get to the center of Bergama district, Because of Pergamon is a very big city, you have to spend a lot of time to visit all the buildings. It is in extreme and uncomfortable temperature during summer days.

Bergama Museum, Asklepion Healing Centre of Pergamon, Pergamon Acropolis and Red Hall (Red Basilica, Red Court) of Pergamon are worth seeing. The others except the acropolis are in the city center. It can be visited on foot. You can see many artifacts, especially the first tools used in medicine history in the Bergama Museum. There ıs a statue of Egyptian God Sekhmet in Red Hall.

Pergamon Acropolis

The acropolis of Bergama is located on a hill 4 km away from the city center. You can go here by land or by cable car. If you go by cable car, you can see all the city and historical buildings very well. The view of the Acropolis is magnificent. 

In the acropolis of the city, the theater, the roman house, Sanctuary of Demeter, the gymnasium and the trajan temple are worth seeing. The theater of the ancient city of Pergamon is one of the steepest theaters in the world. If you do not pay attention when walking, you can easily roll down. There are many ornaments and figures in the Roman house. You can also see the bases of the Temple of Zeus, now exhibited in the Pergamon Museum in Germany.

Since the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon is built on a hill, you must walk downwards to see the roman house, and you must go upwards while you are back. This can make you very tired. Consider this situation on hot summer days.

Pergamon Asklepion

It is one of the first hospitals in the world. There is treatment building, temple, theater, tunnels, sleeping rooms and lots of other things. You can see the symbols of medicine, snake figures, on many stones. People from many parts of the ancient world came here to be treated. 

Ephesus Ancient City

Ephesus Library

To Arrive Ephesus

Ephesus Ancient City is located in İzmir Province of Turkey.
Ephesus Antique City is one of the twelve ionian city states established on the coast of the aegean sea in western Anatolia.
The city is located in Selçuk district of İzmir province. The town of Selçuk is approximately 80 km away from İzmir city center and 1 hour away. You can arrive by motorway and railway from İzmir city center. The train road starts from the Basmane Station in İzmir City Centre.
Ephesus Antique City is approximately 60 km and 45 minutes away from Adnan Menderes Airport in Izmir.
When you get to the center of Selçuk district, you have to travel about 3 km to go to the ancient city of ephesus. There are public transports within 3 km distance.

Buildings in Ephesus 

Because Ephesus is a very big city, you have to spend a lot of time to visit all the buildings. It is in extreme and uncomfortable temperature during summer days.
In the city, the library, the theater, the odeon, the terrace houses, the hadrian temple, the Mary church, the trajan fountain are worth seeing. It is also made of stone and has wide streets.

In order to enter the terrace houses, you must pay a separate fee from the entrance fee. The terrace houses are covered and protected. It's a wide and covered area.

The theater of ancient city of Ephesus has giant dimensions.

Other Places to Visit

The church of Saint Jean, one of the 12 apostles of Christ, is located in the city center of selcuk.

The temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world, was located in the ancient city of Ephesus. Today, the location of the temple is known and open to visitors, but nothing remains except a few columns behind the temple.

Saint Jean Church, Ruins of The Temple of Artemis and Ephesus Museum is located in the center of the Selçuk Town. When you arrive Selçuk city centre, you can visit these 3 places on foot. There is amazing Artemis Statues and lots of other things in Ephesus Museum.

Saint Jean and Virgin Mary lived in Ephesus. The house of virgin mary is about 9 km and 15 minutes away from selçuk city center. You can visit there too.

Socrates Quotes

• There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
• An honest man is always a child.
• I am not an Athenian nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
• I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
• When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
• Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
• The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
• I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing. 
• From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
• Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.
• Know thyself.
• True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
• Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
• Be as you wish to seem.
• Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind. 
• False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. 
• Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
• Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.  

Socrates is believed to be the founder of the Greek philosophy. He criticized the false beliefs of the living community and argued that the only guide is the mind. So, he was condemned to death as a result of deep criticism. Despite being a chance to escape, he preferred death.

In his living, there was a close harmony between his thoughts and actions. His this aspect gained respect him and provided the development of his ideas by followers.

Plato, the most famous student of Socrates, raised Aristotle. Aristotle also raised Alexander the Great who enabled the Greek philosophy to spread to the world.

He was constantly trying to reach the truth by asking hard questions and making definitions.This method of work has evolved from Aristotle to renaissance and forms the basis of today's formal logics and systematic ethics.