Caria

Caria, ancient district of southwestern Anatolia. One of the most thoroughly Hellenized districts, its territory included Greek cities along its Aegean shore and a mountainous interior bounded by Lydia in the north and by Phrygia and Lycia in the east. The non-Greek Carians of the interior considered themselves an indigenous people and claimed kinship with the Lydians and Mysians, with whom they shared a common worship. Caria passed from Lydian to Persian rule about 546 bce. West Carian dynasts joined in the unsuccessful Ionian revolt against the Persian king Darius I (c. 499–493 bce), and the coastal cities were later drawn into the Greek Delian League. Early in the 4th century bce all of Caria was rejoined to Persia’s Achaemenian Empire as a separate satrapy under the rule of the native Hecatomnid dynasty. One of the rulers, Mausolus (c. 377–353 bce), transferred the capital from Mylasa to Halicarnassus, where his tomb came to rank as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After Alexander the Great, the history of Caria is one of autonomous cities and communes under the suzerainty of a succession of Hellenistic rulers until the entire region was incorporated into the Roman province of Asia (129 bce).