Benim müthiş duvarım by Honour TC Jale

‘DREAM OF THE GREAT ALEXANDER’

Alexander the Great Mount Pagos (Kadifekale)

“Alexander was hunting on Mount Pagos, and that after the hunt was over he came to a sanctuary of the Nemeses, and found there a spring and a plane-tree in front of the sanctuary, growing over the water. While he slept under the plane-tree it is said that the Nemeses appeared and bade him found a city there and remove into it the Smyrnaians from the old city . . . So they migrated of their own free will, and believe in two Nemeses instead of one.

Mount Pagos is the present day ridge of Kadifekale on the southeastern hill of Izmir (Smyrna), today marked by Turkish fortresses and historic vistas with occasional wooded park preserves. The Hellenistic city of Smyrna does not share the same locus as the earlier Archaic city was besieged and razed by Alyattes (seventh to sixth c. BCE), the Lydian Mermnad ruler, around 600 BCE; [2] the earlier city being on the north side of the old Hermes River across the bay and the newer city associated with Alexander on the south side of the bay, [3] which location, according to Strabo, was 20 stadia (roughly 4 kms) distant from the old Smyrna (see below). We know Alexander was at Smyrna and ordered at least its “restoration” after the Lydian takeover, [4] or that, more likely following the ideas of the legendary dream, his successors Lysimachos and Antigonus did the actual reorganizing (“reassembling”) according to Strabo

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