aboUt H@LicarNassus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus hereby publishes the results of his inquiries, hoping to do two things: to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of the Greek and the non-Greek peoples; and more particularly, to show how the two races came into conflict.
These are the confident opening lines of Herodotus' Histories, and the Greeks who heard them must have been surprised. Preserving the memory of the past by putting on record certain astonishing achievements was not unusual, but the bards who had been singing legendary tales had been less pretentious. Even the great poet Homer had started his Iliad in a more modest way:
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles, that brought endless harm upon the Greeks. Many brave men did it send down to the Underworld, and many heroes did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures. In this way, the counsels of Zeus were fulfilled, from the day on which Agamemnon -king of men- and great Achilles first fell out with one another. And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel?
The similarity between these two prologues is obvious: we are about to hear a tale about a terrible conflict and the speaker wants us to understand how the two sides came into conflict. The difference is striking, too: Homer invites a goddess to relate the story; Herodotus does not need divine aid. Who was this man, who so proudly gave his personal opinion about the past?

In the year 26 CE, the inhabitants of the Roman province Asia wanted to build a temple for the emperor Tiberius. The historian Tacitus tells that when the representatives of several towns were arguing that their city offered the best location, the embassy from Halicarnassus declared that in their city, the temple could be built on a rock that had been solid for twelve hundred years. It is obvious that the embassadors believed that their town was founded in about 1175 BCE, seventeen years after the legendary Trojan war.

This argument failed to convince the senators who had to decide about the location. One reason may, perhaps, have been that the claim was implausible. Most legends told that Halicarnassus was founded by Dorians from the Peloponnese, and these legends also told that this tribe had conquered the Peloponnese eighty years after the fall of Troy. The Halicarnassians were clearly overstating the antiquity of their city.


The theater and acropolis of Halicarnassus
Yet, their town was very, very old indeed. It may have been founded in the late eleventh or early tenth century, when many Greeks left their homeland and settled on the coast of Asia Minor (the Ionian migration). The leader of the colonists may have been a man named Anthes of Troezen. The native Carians, or Leleges, were either expelled or appeased with a treaty. Usually, the two groups went along pretty well and there is evidence for both intermarriage and religious fusion. Nevertheless, the ethnic opposition was still recognizable in the fourth century BCE.

Usually, Greek settlers first occupied an island near a native settlement; later, they settled on the mainland. We may assume that the first Greeks built their houses on the island that was later known as the Royal Island. Today, it is no longer an island, but an impressive castle built in the age of the Crusades. The native settlement probably was at the Salmacis hill, which was crowned by a sanctuary of Hermaphroditus. It will not be easy to excavate this part, because it is partly overbuilt with modern houses, and partly occupied by a military base.
The siege of Halicarnassus by Alexander the Great.
Later, the Greeks settled on the mainland. To the northeast of the island, they founded a marketplace to trade with the natives. (Today, this is the entertainment district of Bodrum.) The new settlement itself was to the northwest. When the Halicarnassians had to trade something between themselves, they did so on the agora, which was close to harbor. The residential quarters were built on terraces above the agora; later observers compared the town to a theater, in which the harbor between the Salmacis hill and the Royal island was the dance floor. Reportedly, traces of an early city wall have been discovered to the northeast of the fourth-century walls that are still visible today (see map). The remains of the temple of Athena were found in modern Konacik, along the road from Bodrum to the west.