| The ancient town of Stratonikea is in the district of Yatagan, about 25 miles from Mugla, in the village Eskihisar. The town was founded in the 3rd century BC. The Syrian king Seleucos I gave the town and also his wife Stratonike to his son Antiochus, who named the settlement after his stepmother and future wife. According to travel writers from antiquity the town was placed under the rule of Rhodes, but when exactly this happened is not known. It was apparently generously and richly equipped.
The town‘s Acropolis (fortress) is situated on the hill in the south of the town. This hill was surrounded by a ring of castles. In the north, on a terrace situated on a slope (now directly by the side of the road) the remains of a small temple meet the eye. Inscriptions there show that it was used for the worship of the emperor. Underneath is a great theatre. The curve is subdivided by nine staircases and has just one diazoma or passage round. The remains of the stage structures were mostly recovered by excavations.
The town lies under the village Eskihisar, which was abandoned in recent times. Today the old mighty town walls only look out on insignificant remains. In the south east corner of the settlement, however, we see the ruins of a massive fortress. The bulwark was mainly built from stones and cement mixed with lime. The individual layers have been laid one on another very carefully, yet in repairs the stones of other buildings or pillar bases were also used.
The main gate on the north side was built of great stone blocks, which were connected with small, shallow stone walls. The remnants of a vault over the gate can still be seen. The gate had a double entrance, with a nymphaeon (temple of the nymphs) between the parts. Behind this is a field on which several pillars stood, and on which the basis of a road can still be clearly seen.
In the town centre the bouleterion (council chamber) immediately meets the eye; this was, as in ancient Greece, where the whole town assembled. It looks like a small theatre. The door on the west of the building was the entrance. It was long assumed that this belonged to the Serapis temple, but inscriptions have shown this to be wrong.
On the south facing wall of the bouleterion we find a price list of Diocletian with relevant explanations in Latin writing. The lower part of the building consists of rows of seats. Going by the fact that the Agora (market place) was west of the bouleterion, we can assume that the price list and the pillar remains that have been excavated were in an alley in the immediate surroundings of the Agora and the bouleterion. In the west of the town lay the gymnasium, used in Roman and Greek antiquity for the development of body and spirit. The palaistra (school building) of the gymnasium was divided by an exedra (a sort of cloister), forming two rooms on the left and right.
At the edge of the Holy Street beginning at the town gate there are also chamber graves. The holy street leads from the gate past the necropolis to the sanctuary of Hekate in Lagina. Regrettably the necropolis mentioned was lost in the course of mining for brown coal. The excavations in Stratonikea were continued under the leadership of Professor You Boysal. Excavated finds are exhibited in the court of the excavation hut.
The decayed mosque seen in the pictures was built on the foundation walls of an old church. Under the mosque building the old catacombs of the original church are still to be found.
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