Miletus

Miletus, ancient Greek city of western Anatolia, some 20 miles (30 km) south of the present city of Söke, Turkey. It lies near the mouth of the Büyükmenderes (Menderes) River.

Before 500 bce, Miletus was the greatest Greek city in the east. It was the natural outlet for products from the interior of Anatolia and had a considerable wool trade with Sybaris, in southern Italy. Miletus was important in the founding of the Greek colony of Naukratis in Egypt and founded more than 60 colonies on the shores of the Black Sea, including Abydos, Cyzicus, Sinope (now Sinop), Olbia, and Panticapaeum. In addition to its commerce and colonization, the city was distinguished for its literary and scientific-philosophical figures, among them Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Hecataeus. Together with the people of the other two Ionian cities of Caria, Myus and Priene, the Milesians spoke a distinctive Ionian dialect. Little is known about Milesian government before 500 bce. At the beginning and end of the 6th century bce, however, the city was ruled by the tyrants Thrasybulus and Histiaeus, respectively.

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In the 7th century bce Miletus came into conflict with the neighbouring state of Lydia, and it probably acknowledged Lydian overlordship in the mid-6th century. In the latter part of the 6th century, it came under Persian rule, along with the other Greek cities of Anatolia. About 499 bce the Milesians led the Ionian revolt that marked the beginning of the Greco-Persian Wars. The city was stormed and sacked by the Persians in 494. After the Persian defeat by the Greeks (479), Miletus joined the Athenian-dominated Delian League. By the mid-5th century the city had been weakened and impoverished by internal divisions, and in 442 it was defeated in war by neighbouring Samos.

Its fortunes soon revived, however, and the Milesians set about rebuilding their city on a new grid plan of the type invented in this period by Hippodamus of Miletus. In 412 the city sided with Sparta against Athens; before 350 Mausolus of Caria ruled it, and it fell to Alexander in 334 after a siege. Hellenistic rulers who competed for influence at Miletus included the Seleucid Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Eumenes II of Pergamum, both about 170 bce. Miletus retained its commercial importance and received special attention from the Roman emperors Augustus and Trajan. By the 6th century ce, however, its two harbours had silted up, and it was eventually abandoned.

The ruins occupy the former peninsula crowned by the hill of Kalabak Tepe. The total area of the archaic city is unknown, but Hellenistic town walls and foundations have been uncovered. There also are extensive remains of the classical city from the 5th century bce to Roman imperial times. The Greco-Roman theatre and its adjoining Byzantine castle are the most visible of the site’s ruins.