University of Heidelberg

The Formation of the Early Hellenistic polis in Lycia: Between Local Identity and Hellenistic koine

Martin Zimmermann

(University of MunichLMU)

It is due to the excavations that have taken place within the last decades, to current excavations and to a wealth of epigraphic findings that the landscape of Lycia is the region in Asia Minor which allows us best to give new answers to major questions of ancient cultural history. This also applies to the Hellenistic period and to the questions of how indigenous local cultures confronted the influence of Greek constitutional models such as the polis, what conditions existed that were favorable for the adaptation of those models and which forms of adaptation turned out to be successful. It is here in Lycia that Early Hellenistic poleis evolved under the influence of Hekatomniden and Diadoches. The structure of these early communities suggest that the local aristocracy did not only support those transformatory processes, but that the Lycian communities were in fact well-prepared for the constitutional innovations. Thus, the regime of local dynasts was relatively quickly replaced by poleis following the Greek model. Even smaller towns tried to follow suit and developed very small poleis. In a second step, the organizational structure of these political communities changed massively, since numerous small poleis merged with their more significant neighbors. Lycia’s landscape therefore shows how an efficient polis-structure evolved over time. Epigraphic findings from Tlos that have not been published so far enable us to study these processes in even more detail. Moreover, they suggest that the formation of the poleis also led to the formation of considerable urban structures. These urban centers combined indigenous settlement patterns with Hellenistic standards such as eminent civic centers. Thus, Lycia’s landscape is also perfectly suited to study the reciprocity of political renewal and urban structural change.