page_title: Lycia
section_title: Age of legend
hierarchical_section_title: Lycia / History / Age of legend
caption_attribution_description: English: Lycia coin Circa 520-470 BCE
context_page_description: Lycia was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope.
  Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, but on the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks, it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent, was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria, returned to the Persians, and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great.
context_section_description: According to Herodotus, the earliest known name for the area was Milyas, and its original inhabitants, who spoke the Milyan language, were the Milyae (Μιλύαι), or Milyans, also known by the exonyms Sólymoi (Σόλυμοι), Solymi, and Solymians.
  In Greek mythology, Solymus or Solymos  was the ancestral hero and eponym of the Solymi. He was a son of either Zeus or Ares; his mother's name is variously given as Chaldene, Caldene ("daughter of Pisidus"), Calchedonia, or Chalcea "the nymph". Meanwhile, Europa had (at least) two sons, Sarpedon and Minos, who vied for the kingship of their native land, Crete. Minos drove Sarpedon and his people, the Termilae, into exile and they settled in Milyas. Subsequently, Lycus of Athens (son of Pandion II), who was driven into exile by his brother, King Aegeus, settled in Milyas among the Termilae. The name Lycia was adopted subsequently in honor of Lycus. Herodotus ends his tale with the observation that the Lycians were matrilineal.
  Lycia appears elsewhere in Greek myth, such as in the story of Bellerophon, who eventually succeeded to the throne of the Lycian king Iobates (or Amphianax). Lycia was frequently mentioned by Homer as an ally of Troy. In Homer's Iliad, the Lycian contingent was said to have been led by two esteemed warriors: Sarpedon (son of Zeus and Laodamia) and Glaucus (son of Hippolochus).
caption: Lycia coin, c. 520–470 BC.
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