Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/490

 456 plint's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book V. flows, Mount Masy cites', the state of Andriaca^, Myra^, the towns of Aperrse* and Antiphellos*, formerly called Ha- beasiis, and in a corner Phellos^ after which comes P}T:'ra, and then the city of Xanthus', fifteen miles from the sea, as also a river known by the same name. We then come to Patara*, formerly Pataros, and Sidyma, situate on a moun- ^ The modern Akhtar Dagh. 2 Now Andx-aki. Tliis was the port of Myi'a, next mentioned. It stood at the mouth of the river now known as the Andraki. Cramer observes that it was here St. Paul was put on board the ship of Alexandria, Acts xxvii. 5, 6. ^ Still called Myra by the Greeks, but Dembre by the Turks, It was built on a rock twenty stadia from the sea. St. Pavd touched here on his voyage as a prisoner to Rome, and from the mention made of it in Acts xxvii. 5, 6, it would appear to have been an important sea-port. There are magnificent ruins of this city still to be seen, in part hewn out of the sohd rock. From an inscription found by Cockerell at the head of the Hassac Bay, it is thoiight that Aperlce is the proper name of tliis place, though again there are coins of Gordian which give the name as Aperrce. It is fixed by the Stadismus as sixty stadia west of Somena, which Leake sup- poses to be the same as tlie Simena mentioned above by Phny. the head of a bay. Its theatre is still complete, with the exception of the proscenium. There are also other interesting remains of antiquity. ^ Fellowes places the site of PheUos near a village called Saaret, west- north-west of Antiphellos, where he fovmd the remains of a town ; but Spratt considers this to mark the site of the Pyrra of Phny, mentioned above — -judging from PHny's words. Modern geographers deem it more consistent with liis meamng to look for Pliellos north of Antiphellos than in any other du'ection, and the ruins at Tchookoorbye, north of Anti- phellos, on the spur of a mountain called FeUerdagh, are thought to be those of PheUos. ' The most famous city of Lycia. It stood on the western bank of the river of that name, now called the Echen Chai. It was twice besieged, and on both occasions the inhabitants destroyed themselves with their property, first by the Persians under Harpagus, and afterwards by the Romans mider Brutus. Among its most famous temples were those of Sarpedon and of the Lycian Apollo. The ruins now kno^vn by the name of Gunikf have been explored by Sir C. Fellows and other travellers, and a portion of its remains are now to be seen in the British Museum, under the name of the Xanthian marbles. ® Its ruins still bear the same name. It was a flourishing seaport, on a promontory of the same name, sixty stadia east of the mouth of the Xanthus. It was early colonized by the Dorians from Crete, and became a chief scat of the worsliip of Apollo, from whose son Patarus it was said to have received its name. Ptolemy Pliiladelphus enlarged it, and called
 * Now called Antephelo or Andifilo, on the south coast of Lycia, at