Flood Tide by Alexander Geiger

Author:Alexander Geiger [Geiger, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780989258449
Published: 2019-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9 – Halikarnassos

In the end, the occupation of Miletos proved to be easier than appeared likely at our first approach to the city. On the other hand, the decisive showdown that Alexandros desired hadn’t materialize either. Most annoying of all was Memnon’s ability to inflict delays, costs, and losses on our forces and then move on, eluding death or capture.

The next big city, only two or three days’ march down the coast, was the capital of Karia, Halikarnassos.[13] Clearly, that’s where Memnon was headed and that’s where our next fight would take place. But Alexandros didn’t have us march directly down the coast; he had a more circuitous approach in mind.

Alexandros had had some previous history with Karia, which was a small kingdom squeezed in between the larger satrapies of Ionia, Pisidia, and Phrygia. Although always under the domination and thumb of Persia, until recently it had retained a semblance of autonomy under the Hekatomnid dynasty, founded by a local Karian of uncertain origins, named Hekatomnos. This soldier and adventurer managed to pick the right side in one of Persia’s civil wars and was subsequently rewarded for his acumen by being named satrap of his home region, a singular honor for a non-Persian. Hekatomnos ruled Karia for some seventeen years and managed to transform his position from being an appointed satrap of Karia to becoming the hereditary king and ruler of his small kingdom.

Hekatomnos had three sons and two daughters: Mausolos, Artemisia, Idrieos, Pixodaros, and Ada. To keep things in the family, Mausolos married his sister Artemisia and Idrieos married Ada. (There being no sister left for him, the third son, Pixodaros, was forced to marry a cousin.)

When Hekatomnos died (in 209 Z.E.), Mausolos and Artemisia became king and queen of Karia. They decided to move their seat of government to a sleepy port on the Aegean coast, named Halikarnassos, and turn it into a naval base for their rapidly expanding maritime empire. They dredged and enlarged the small harbor and built two fortresses to protect it. One, called King’s Castle, was built on a small island in the harbor; the other one, named after the naiad Salmakis, was situated on a promontory jutting into the harbor. They also rebuilt and greatly enlarged the original fortress located farther inland, on the akropolis. Then they surrounded their burgeoning city with tall, impregnable walls, punctuated at regular intervals by forbidding watchtowers and by fortified, easily defensible gates.

After seeing to security arrangements, Mausolos and Artemisia embarked on a spectacular building program, turning the small, albeit venerable, town into the greatest and most magnificent city on the coast of Anatolia. For their residence, they built themselves a huge, gleaming, marble-clad palace, with beautiful decorations inside and out. The palace adjoined Salmakis Fortress and took up the rest of the space on the promontory overlooking the harbor.

Between the harbor and the akropolis, they laid out a rectilinear grid of wide, paved streets, lined with homes for ordinary people, temples for the gods, agoras, colonnades,

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