Asarkale, the Antique Myus, probably once a peninsula connected to the mainland, seen here from the North, towards the Menderes River. Where once “Twohundred Triremes” could be at anchor today seas of cotton create the wealth of the Söke plains.

Skylax reading Freely in the Byzantine Tower.

View from the Byzantine Tower towards the North, over the old isthmus towards the Latmus.

“[10] The Ionians who settled at Myus and Priene, they too took the cities from Carians. The founder of Myus was Cyaretus the son of Codrus, but the people of Priene, half Theban and half Ionian, had as their founders Philotas, the descendant of Peneleus, and Aepytus, the son of Neileus. The people of Priene, although they suffered much at the hands of Tabutes the Persian and afterwards at the hands of Hiero, a native, yet down to the present day are accounted Ionians.
The people of Myus left their city on account of the following accident.

[11] A small inlet of the sea used to run into their land. This inlet the river Maeander turned into a lake, by blocking up the entrance with mud. When the water, ceasing to be sea, became stagnant(?), gnats in vast swarms bred in the lake until the inhabitants were forced to leave the city. They departed for Miletus, taking with them the images of the gods and their other movables, and on my visit I found nothing in Myus except a white marble temple of Dionysus. A similar fate to that of Myus happened to the people of Atarneus, under Mount Pergamus.”

Pausanias 7.2.10

“[10] The voyage from Pyrrha to the outlet of the Maeander River is fifty stadia, a place which consists of shallows and marshes; and, travelling in rowboats thirty stadia, one comes to the city Myus, one of the twelve Ionian cities, which, on account of its sparse population, has now been incorporated into Miletus. Xerxes is said to have given this city to Themistocles to supply him with fish, Magnesia (ad Meandrum) to supply him with bread, and Lampsacus (today’s Lapseki in the Dardanells) with wine.”

Strabo, 14.1.10

“[3] They do not all have the same speech but four different dialects. Miletus lies farthest south among them, and next to it come Myus and Priene; these are settlements in Caria, and they have a common language; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, all of them in Lydia,
[4] have a language in common which is wholly different from the speech of the three former cities. There are yet three Ionian cities, two of them situated on the islands of Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, on the mainland; the Chians and Erythraeans speak alike, but the Samians have a language which is their own and no one else’s. It is thus seen that there are four modes of speech.”

Herodotus, 1.142.3

You can link to any of the hotspots on the map above: 1: Miletos, 2: Myus, 3: Priene, 4:Herakleia under the Latmos, 5: Domatia, Eski Doganbey

References:

Mursilis II, King of the Hethites, son of Subbiluliuma (14. Century BC) The Annals

Homeros (9. Century BC) The Iliad

Herodotos ( 5. Century BC) The Histories

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus, (AD 23–79) The Natural History

Strabo (born 63 BC or 64 BC, died ca. 24 AD), Geography

Pausanias,( 2. Century AD) Periegesis tes Hellados

Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, Le Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (1782-1822),
Maps from: Eski Haritalarda Bati Anadolu, Nezih Basgelen, Istanbul, 2005,
Engraving from: Gravürlerle Türkiye, Volume IV, Rep. of Turkey, Ministry of Culture, Ankara 1996

Miletus Model

Related Pages in this site:

The Carian Language

The ‎Hittites

Skylax