page_title: Stratonicea (Caria)
section_title: Foundation and Seleucid era
hierarchical_section_title: Stratonicea (Caria) / Foundation and Seleucid era
caption_attribution_description: The Late Hellenistic Bouleuterion, built around 130 BC, Stratonicea Caria, Turkey
context_page_description: Stratonicea – also transliterated as Stratonikeia, Stratoniceia, Stratoniki, and Stratonike and Stratonice; a successor settlement to Chrysaoris; and for a time named Hadrianopolis – was one of the most important towns in the interior of ancient Caria, Anatolia, situated on the east-southeast of Mylasa, and on the south of the river Marsyas; its site is now located at the present village of Eskihisar, Muğla Province, Turkey. It is situated at a distance of 1 km from the intercity road D.330 that connects the district center of Yatağan with Bodrum and Milas, shortly before Yatağan Power Plant if one has taken departure from the latter towns.
context_section_description: According to Strabo, it was founded by the Seleucid king Antiochus I Soter (281–261 BC), who named it after his wife Stratonice.  Or at least this is what has been generally told; some historians have contested this date as too early, and proposed to consider the city's founder Stratonice's son, Antiochus II Theos, or, later still, Antiochus III the Great.
  What seems certain is that the city was founded on the site of an old Carian town, Idrias, anciently called Chrysaoris, said to be the first town funded by the Lycians. Later it passed under the control of the Achaemenid Empire. According to Athens' tribute "assessment" of 425 BC Idrias was supposed to be responsible for the payment of the considerable sum of six talents. Like many other non-Greek cities on the 425 BC assessment Idrias is never recorded actually paying any tribute to Athens and was never a member of the Delian League. In early Seleucid times, Stratonikeia was a member of the Chrysaorian League, a confederation of Carian towns. The Stratonikeians, though not of Carian origin, were admitted into the confederacy, because they possessed certain small towns or villages, which formed part of it. The league is attested by an inscription already in 267 BC, but was probably older still. Near the town was the temple of Zeus Chrysaoreus, at which the League's assembly met; at these meetings several city-states had votes in proportion to the number of towns they possessed.
  Under the succeeding Seleucid kings, Stratonikeia was adorned with splendid and costly buildings. At a later time in the 3rd century BC it was ceded to the Rhodians.  Rhodes seems to have then temporarily lost it, possibly during king Philip V of Macedon's Carian campaign (201–198 BC), but it retook control of the place in 197 BC, keeping it until 167 BC when the whole of Caria was declared free by the Roman Republic. From this point starts the city's independent coinage, which was to last until the times of the emperor Gallienus (253–268). In 130 BC the city had a central role in the revolt led against the Romans, since here the self-proclaimed king Aristonicus made a last stand before falling in the hands of his enemies with the fall of the city.
caption: The Late Hellenistic Bouleuterion, built around 130 BC, Stratonicea Caria, Turkey
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