Some sites of the Milesian territory

Abstract

The territorial possessions of Miletus were acquired piecemeal over a number of centuries. They amounted to six or seven distinct pieces of land on the Asiatic mainland (apart from the adjacent islands, which again seem to have presented differences of status). A triple division of the Milesian territory on the mainland is already made by Herodotus. In the first place, in i. 18 he records that the Milesians suffered defeats at the hands of Sadyattes ἔν τε Λιμενηίῳ χώρης τῆς σφετέρης καὶ ἐν Μαιάνδρου πεδίῳ It might at first sight appear that the Maeander plain here referred to was not Milesian territory. But Strabo (xiv. 647) seems to indicate that Magnesia, which lay far up the plain, suffered Milesian occupation after its destruction by the Treres in the seventh century; and there are various testimonies to Milesian possession of the lower Maeander plain in later times. Again, in vi. 20, Herodotus tells us that after the fall of Miletus (c. 494 B.C.) the captive citizens were removed by the Persians: The distinction between the part round the city and that in the plain evidently corresponds to that already observed in i. 18; and it is matched by the distinction drawn in an inscription of Miletus (of the first half of the second century B.C.) between the ‘Milesia’ proper and the Μιλησίων χώρα lying across the Latmic Gulf. Herodotus' triple division is thus clear: the ‘home territory’ around Miletus itself, the Milesian land in the plain, and third the mountain land, which is evidently Grion.