Posts Tagged ‘Asclepion’

24
Feb

Week 48: Ruined!

   Posted by: Rhona    in Turkey

It’s been a week full of randomly placed marble blocks, stepping over broken terracotta pipes and trying to visualise what used to stand in the grassy area that’s now home to skittering lizards and brightly coloured spring flowers. We’ve seen Ancient Roman ruins galore and discovered a Christian history in this part of the world that kind of took me by surprise. Shows you how little I know about these things…

From Ayvalik we went south to Bergama, our base for exploring the ruins of Pergamum. After Alexander the Great’s death in 323BC at the age of 32 (which reminds me of a Tom Lehrer quote: “it’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age he’d been dead for two years”) without a son or appointed heir, one of his generals, Lysimachus, took control of much of the Aegean region. He then promptly died himself, leaving a massive amount of captured treasure in the hands of his commander in Pergamum. Who did what anyone in his position would do:  he set himself up as governor. The dynasty continued until 129BC when the last king bequeathed the kingdom to Rome upon his death, though the peak of Pergamum’s power came between 197 to 159BC when it was a cultural and intellectual centre.

We wandered around the Acropolis, the ancient city that sits perched on top of a hill surrounded by defensive walls. There are remains of the royal palace, residential houses, water and sewage systems (water came from 45km away), an arsenal, a bazaar, the library, a gymnasium, bathhouses and various temples. The 10,000 seat 3rd century BC theatre is cut into the hillside and gives a fantastic view over the surrounding landscape. Some of the temples are still impressive but the mound of rubble left at the altar of Zeus gives no indication of the splendour that now adorns a museum in Berlin. The library in Pergamum was rivalled only by that in Alexandria but Mark Anthony later gave all its volumes to Cleopatra as a wedding present.

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