Aphrodisias (; ) was a Hellenistic Greek city in the historic Caria cultural region of western Asia Minor, today's Anatolia in Turkey. It is located near the modern village of Geyre, about east/inland from the coast of the Aegean Sea, and southeast of İzmir.
Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, who had here her unique cult image, the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. According to the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedic compilation, before the city became known as Aphrodisias () it had three previous Greek names: Lelégōn Pólis (Λελέγων πόλις, "City of the Leleges"),For Greeks, "Leleges" denoted an ancient pre-Greek people. Megálē Pólis (Μεγάλη Πόλις, "Great City"), and Ninóē (Νινόη).Pleiades s.v. 'Aphrodisias/Ninoe', http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/638753/ (accessed 7 August 2021); see Suda Online s.v. Ninoe, (accessed 25 December 2006); the elite of Aphrodisias linked their founding to the Assyrian ruler called in Greek Ninus, the eponymous founder also of Nineveh.
Sometime before 640, in the Late Antique period when it was within the Byzantine Empire, the city was renamed Stauropolis (Σταυρούπολις, "City of the Cross").Siméon Vailhé, "Stauropolis" The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912 full text, citing Heinrich Gelzer, Ungedruckte ... Texte der Notitiæ episcopatuum, 534. The name Tauropolis, said to have been borne by the town prior to that of Stauropolis, is an error of several scholars, e.g. Revue des études grecques 19:228-30; the error 'Tauropolis' derives from inscription IAph 42: see discussion by Roueché at ALA VI.48
In 2017, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.
History
Aphrodisias was the provincial capital (metropolis)of the region and the Roman province of Caria.
White and blue-grey Carian marble was extensively quarried from adjacent slopes in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, for building façades and sculptures. Marble sculptures and sculptors from Aphrodisias became famous in the Roman world. Many examples of statuary have been unearthed in Aphrodisias, and some representations of the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias also survive from other parts of the Roman world, as far afield as Pax Julia in Lusitania.Peter Noelke, "Zwei unbekännte Repliken der Aphrodite von Aphrosias in Köln" Arkäologischer Anzeiger 98.1:107-31.
The city had notable schools for sculpture, as well as philosophy, remaining a centre of paganism until the end of the 5th century. It was destroyed by earthquake in the early 7th century, and never recovered its former prosperity, being reduced to a small fortified settlement on the site of the ancient theatre. Around the same time, it was also renamed to Stauropolis (, "city of the Cross") to remove pagan connotations, but already by the 8th century it was known as Caria after the region, which later gave rise to its modern Turkish name, Geyre. In Byzantine times, the city was the seat of a fiscal administrative unit (dioikesis).
Caria and the neigboring settlement of Tantalos became the target of multiple Seljuk raids in the decades following the Battle of Manzikert, leading to a massive loss of population. Caria was sacked by the rebel Theodore Mankaphas in 1188 with Turkish support. It was sacked again by the Seljuks in 1197 and its population was captured and relocated close to Philomelion.Vryonis, Speros (1971). The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamisation from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley: California University Press. p. 184 The town permanently fell under Turkish control towards the end of the 13th century.
Geological history The site is in an earthquake zone and has suffered a great deal of damage at various times, especially in severe tremors of the 4th and 7th centuries. An added complication was that one of the 4th century earthquakes altered the water table, making parts of the town prone to flooding. Evidence can be seen of emergency plumbing installed to combat this problem.
The city of Aphrodisias never fully recovered from the 7th-century earthquake, and fell into disrepair. Part of the town was covered by the modern village of Geyre; some of the cottages were removed in the 20th century to reveal the older city. A new Geyre has been built a short distance away.
Ecclesiastical history
Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 899–904) mentions twenty bishops of this see. In the 7th century Stauropolis had twenty-eight suffragan bishops and twenty-six at the beginning of the 10th century.
Stauropolis is also a Roman Catholic titular metropolitan see, under the name Stauropoli (Latin: Archidioecesis Stauropolitana).
Buildings and structures
Monumental gateway
A monumental gateway, or tetrapylon, stands at the end of a road that leads from the main north–south street of the town into a large forecourt in front of the Sanctuary of Aphrodite Aphrodisias. The gateway was built ca. AD 200.
Temple of Aphrodite
The Temple of Aphrodite was a focal point of the town. The Aphrodisian sculptors became renowned and benefited from a plentiful supply of marble close at hand. The school of sculpture was very productive;Kenan T. Erim, "The school of Aphrodisias, " Archaeology 20.1:18-27. much of their work can be seen around the site and in the Aphrodisias Museum. Many full-length statues were discovered in the region of the agora, and trial and unfinished pieces pointing to a true school are in evidence. Sarcophagi were recovered in various locations, most frequently decorated with designs consisting of festoons and columns. Pilasters have been found showing what are described as "peopled scrolls" with figures of people, birds and animals entwined in acanthus leaves.
The character of the temple building was altered when it became a Christian basilica. The building is believed to have been dismantled in c. 481–484 by order of Emperor Zeno, because the temple had been the focus of Pagan Hellenic opposition against Zeno in Aphrodisias, in support of Illus, who had promised to restore Hellenic rites, which had been suppressed during the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, to the temples that were still standing.Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370-529
Bouleuterion
The Bouleuterion (council house), or Odeon, is centered on the north side of the North Agora. As it stands today, it consists of a semicircular auditorium fronted by a shallow stage structure about 46 m wide. The lower part of the auditorium survives intact, with nine rows of marble seats divided into five wedges by radial stairways. The seating of the upper part, amounting to an additional twelve rows, has collapsed together with its supporting vaults. The plan is an extremely open one, with numerous entrances at ground level and several stairways giving access to the upper rows of seats. A system of massive parallel buttresses shows that the building was originally vaulted. The auditorium would have been lighted by a series of tall, arched windows in the curved outer wall. Seating capacity is estimated at 1,750.
The available evidence indicates a construction date in the Antonine or early Severan period (late 2nd or early 3rd century AD). The scaenae frons (stage front) was certainly put up at this time, as the style of both sculpture and architectural ornament suggest. Statue bases terminating the retaining walls of the auditorium bore the names of two brothers, senators in the early Severan period, and two inscribed bases placed symmetrically against the exterior facade held statues of Aphrodisian benefactors, Claudia Antonia Tatiana and her uncle Lucius Antonius Dometinus, who were active at the end of the 2nd century.Sculptures of the Bouleuterion. Tatiana is known to have had close ties with Ephesus, and it is possible that the striking similarities between this building and the bouleuterion on the civic agora there, dated by inscription to the mid-2nd century, are due to some initiative on her part. We do not know what stood here before the 2nd century AD, but it is likely that the present building replaced a smaller one contemporary with the laying out of the agora in the late 1st century BC.
The bouleuterion at Aphrodisias remained in this form until the early 5th century, when a municipal official had it adapted as a palaestra, recording his achievement in an inscription on the upper molding of the pulpitum (stage). Palaestra usually refers to a wrestling ground, but in the 5th century it could be used to describe a hall for lectures, performances, and various kinds of competitive displays, as suggested by a number of factional inscriptions carved on the seats. Numerous additional cuttings in the surviving seats, probably for poles supporting awnings, suggest that by this time the building had lost its roof. The orchestra was lowered and provided with a marble pavement, reused, perhaps, from the earlier phase.The architecture of the Bouleuterion is examined by Lionel Bier, "The Bouleuterion at Aphrodisias", Aphrodisias Papers 4
Sebasteion
The Sebasteion,Sebastós is the Greek equivalent of Latin Augustus. or Augusteum, was jointly dedicated, according to a 1st-century inscription on its propylon, "To Aphrodite, the Divine Augusti and the People". A relief found in the ruins of the south portico represented a personification of the polis making sacrifice to the cult image of Aphrodite of Aphrodisias, venerated as promētōr ("foremother" or "ancestral mother"). "Aphrodite represents the cosmic force that integrates imperial power with the power of local elites", a reader of Chariton romance has noted.Douglas R. Edwards notes in, "Defining the Web of Power in Asia Minor: The Novelist Chariton and His City Aphrodisias" Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62.3 (Autumn 1994:699-718) p. 711. This connection between the goddess and the imperial house was also a particularly politic one at the time, as the Gens Julia – the family of Julius Caesar, Octavian Augustus, and their immediate successors – claimed divine descent from Venus/Aphrodite.
Stadium
The stadium was built in the 1st century AD and was used for athletic events until the theatre was badly damaged by a 7th-century earthquake, requiring part of the stadium to be converted for events previously staged in the theatre.
The stadium measures approximately by . With 30 rows of seats on each side, and around each end, it would have had a maximum capacity for around 30,000 spectators. The track measures approximately by .
As the stadium is considerably larger and structurally more extensive than even the Stadium of Delphi, it is probably one of the best preserved structures of its kind in the Mediterranean.
The meetings held in the stadium were based on those of Delphi, where artistic contests were more important that that of the Olympic Games. A large number of inscriptions at the site prove that there was persistent use up to the 3rd century AD. Later the eastern portion was converted into a circus to hold Roman gladiatorial games.
Archaeology The first formal excavations were undertaken in 1904–5, by a French railroad engineer, Paul Augustin Gaudin. Some of the architectural finds (mostly friezes, pilasters and capitals) he discovered at the site are now in the British Museum.
Ongoing excavations were begun by Kenan Erim under the aegis of New York University in 1962.
Turkish photojournalist Ara Güler (1928-2018), during his time with Magnum Photos in the early 1960s, introduced the world to the ancient city of Aphrodisias.