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"Between Phaselis and Cape Avora, a little north of it," says a modern traveller, "a belt of large and handsome pines borders the shore for some miles." From Lycia the Asiatic coast westward and north-westward was known as Caria; and here Phoenician settlements appear to have been numerous. The entire country was at any rate called Phoenice by some authors.
Before the Arab fleet had gone far it met the Christian fleet, commanded by the Emperor himself, off the town of Phaselis on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. A great battle followed. The Christian emperor, Constantine II, distinguished himself by personal courage throughout the action, but the day went sorely against the Christians.
The sea was divided between the two powers, Persian ships of war were not to sail to the west of Phaselis in the Levant, or of the Cyanean islands in the Euxine; and Greek war-ships, we may assume, were not to show themselves east of those limits.
The bulk of them had been sent to the markets of Delos and Phaselis, but the imperator had had the most valuable items amongst the human goods set aside for himself, and not a few choice pieces had found their way into the households of the aediles in charge of the sales: the State too had appropriated some hundreds of useful scribes, sculptors and mechanics, but there were still a thousand or so who in compliance with the original imperial edict would have to be sold by public auction in Rome for the benefit of the late censor's defrauded victims.
So long as only a small portion of the earth was known to the Western nations, partial views necessarily predominated, and tropical heat and a black skin consequently appeared inseparable. "The Ethiopians," said the ancient tragic poet Theodectes of Phaselis, "are colored by the near sun god in his course with a sooty luster, and their hair is dried and crisped with the heat of his rays."
At Phaselis he stayed some time, and finding the statue of Theodectes, who was a native of this town and was now dead, erected in the marketplace, after he had supped, having drunk pretty plentifully, he went and danced about it, and crowned it with garlands, honoring not ungracefully in his sport, the memory of a philosopher whose conversation he had formerly enjoyed, when he was Aristotle's scholar.
The high broad street upon which the giant causeway terminated was marked by the solemn cenotaphs of Mariamne and Phaselis and ended against the Tower of Hippicus a vast and unflinching citadel of stone. Under the shadow of this pile was the high place of the Herods; in sight was a second Herodian palace.
Phaselis was situated on a promontory projecting south-eastward into the Mediterranean, and was reckoned to have three harbours, which are marked in the accompanying chart. Of these the principal one was that on the western side of the isthmus, which was formed by a stone pier carried out for more than two hundred yards into the sea, and still to be traced under the water.
The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium of Troy; when there were statues of Minerva that could brandish spears, paintings that could blush, images that could sweat, and endless shrines and sanctuaries at which miracle-cures could be performed.
He landed at Phaselis, the frontier town of Pamphylia, and, having carried that by storm, he moved westward along the coast of Lycia. He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital, which was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then of Caunus, a strong place on the coast of Caria, with two citadels, one of which he gained by force and the other by surrender.
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