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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Returning to Smyrna from a journey up the Aeolic coast in July 1960, I stopped at the village of Buruncuk, which lies at the foot of an ancient site on the north edge of the Hermus Plain. The site is the excavated one commonly identified as Larisa Phrikonis or Larisa Aegyptia.
It is not, however, certain that the identification is correct. In view of its position on the Hermus Plain and the sudden access of prosperity that the excavations show to have occurred there after the middle of the sixth century, we can confidently recognize the site as one of the two towns of the Hermus Plain that were given by Cyrus the Great to the soldiers of the Egyptian guard after the defeat of Croesus in front of Sardis; and we know that Larisa was one of the two towns. But the possibility remains that the Buruncuk site is the other of the two towns (i.e. Cyllene) and that Larisa itself was the more impressive site on the hill above Yanik Köy four miles further east. We shall return to this problem; but for the present purpose we may note that Larisa and Neon Teichos, which is commonly identified with the Yanik Köy site, lay close together in the vicinity of the Hermus Plain.
1 Xenophon, , Cyrop. vii. 1, 45.Google Scholar
2 It would be ungracious to dissimulate my indebtedness to M. Robert's learned compilation, on which (in the lack of a numismatic library) I have leaned heavily.
3 In Larisa am Hermos iii. 186 n. I attention is drawn to a note of Boehlau's about the discovery of the following coin in the year 1902: Obv. Head of Athena. Rev. Bull, ΛΑΡΙΣ. The implication is that the coin was found on the site; but it was not among those available for study, and an element of uncertainty thus clouds the information. The obv. type is unique among issues of the Asiatic Larisas; if, as would seem to be the case, it is a Larisa coin, the identification of Athena is likely to be false.
For the entry Erythrae in this list, see Robert, op. cit. 68.
4 For casual finds in the hands of villagers living on or by ancient sites and claiming to have found the coins on the spot I can give the following figures for fourth-third century bronzes from my own journeys in the Aeolic region: site of Gergis (thus identified), 5 of Gergis out of 6 coins seen; Lamponia, 1 out of 1; Assos, 8 out of 12 Hellenic; Cebren, 2 out of 8 classical, including no less than 3 of Assos (but Calvert counted 25 of Cebren out of about 50 classical coins seen, and so in fact identified the site). The sites of Ophryneion (14 out of about 20) and Neandria were also identified by the preponderance of their classical issues on the site.
At Buruncuk we seem to have 2 or 3 bronzes of Larisa out of about 50 from all mints, and no one mint is dominant. Two sites with similar coin patterns for the period under consideration are Ilion, which did not strike coins until the third century, and the Balli Dağ (cf. Robert, op. cit. 79 f.), where coins were perhaps not struck at all.
Oddly enough, it was by tracing the Roman coins of Ilion to their main find spot that E. D. Clarke in 1801 first identified the site at Hisarlik as Troy.
5 Besides nos. 17 and 18 above, Boehlau's coin, and the possibles nos. 19–20 above, it is conceivable that one (or two) of the rider coins attributed to Colophon in the excavation report might be of Larisa (Larisa iii. 187, nos. 10–11).
6 Cf. my discussion in BSA liii–liv. 20 f. n. 47, which was published before the discovery of the present lot of coins. For a clear statement of the problem see now Bean, G. E., Aegean Turkey 95 ff.Google Scholar (with a view of the Yanik Köy site, 103 fig. 14).
7 With Larisa at Yanik Köy Neon Teichos would have to be on the east edge of the Hermus Plain, and in fact the habitation pattern of classical times would seem to require a town there. But my searches south of Menemen around Ulucak and north of the river around Belen Köy and Haykiran have yielded nothing substantial. Menemen itself might be worth investigation.
8 A Larisa, presumably on Asiatic soil, seems to have sent theoroi to Samothrace in Hellenistic times (Samothrace ii. 1. 66 f. no. 23), and in publishing the inscription P. M. Fraser assumed that it was the Phrikonid Larisa. But there is no evidence to support the assumption (cf. my comment, CR. N.S. xii (1962) 100, preferring the Troadic Larisa).
9 Pliny, , NH v. 121 Google Scholar, mentions Neon Teichos in his difficult and disordered account of the Aeolis. The relevant passage is printed thus: ‘dein fuerat Larisa, sunt Cyme, Myrina quae Sebastopolim se vocat, et intus Aegaeae, Itale, Posidea, Neon Tichos, Temnos’ (the manuscripts read approximately ‘aegee itale (?) posideanheon hicostem nos’). This would seem to imply that Neon Teichos was regarded as extant; but we cannot believe this of Itale and Posidea, whose names are unheard of in this region. (Two known names of the region could be restored here, if desired: ‘Aegae et Olympos, Idea etc. For Olympos, the neighbour of Aegae, see most recently L. Robert, x. 179 ff.; for Idea, the lost city of Tantalus on Mt. Sipylus, Paus. vii. 24, 13).
10 Ramsay in 1881 noted a resemblance between the helmeted Athena heads of Pergamene coins and those of other places in the Southern Aeolic region (including Neon Teichos), and seeing in it a reflection of Attalid supremacy he suggested a second-century date, which passes without question (JHS ii. 284). A general similarity is not to be denied; but as far as Neon Teichos at least is concerned, it does not necessarily constitute an argument for a second-century date because Pergamene issues of pre-Attalid times are also comparable (as also are demonstrably fourth-century issues of places like Colone in the Troad, , BMC Troas, pl. 9 Google Scholar). Presumably Neon Teichos adopted its coin types before Pergamon was in a position to exert an influence.
11 Ét. num. gr. 36–68.
12 It is only fair to add that the Apollo head on these coins would fit with Strabo's special mention of the sanctuary of Apollo Larisenos at Ephesian Larisa (xiii. 620).
13 Strabo speaks of it as having once been a polis (xiii. 620). But it is clear from the context that he is referring to a native settlement which the Ephesians had annexed at the time of their early expansion (e.g. his mention of the Maeonians οὓς νῦν Λυδούς φαμέν, and the word αὐξηθέντες applied to the Ephesians). In Hellenistic times it was a kome of Ephesus.
14 Kleinas. Münzen ii. 511, pl. 19, 16.
15 The temple at Buruncuk was of Athena, which gives no connection with any of the coin series A–D. The only evidence for a cult at the Yamk Köy site is a dedication to Aphrodite by the ‘Aphrodisiasts with Aristonautas (?)’ ( Kontoleon, A. E., Ἀνέκδοτοι Μικρασιαναὶ Ἐπιγραφαί i (Athens, 1890) 13 Google Scholar, no. 23, copied by an amateur in Yamk Köy); this might connect with the obverse type of A.
16 The legend is cited as ΒΟΙΩΝΙΤΙΚΟΣ in SNG, Danish Nat. Mus., Aeolis–Lesbos, pl. 1. 28.
17 See BMC Troas p. lxi.
18 Topographical indications of this sort can be very valuable, as Robert has shown in connection with the amphora coins of Larisa mentioned above. They can also be very misleading (e.g. Gergis, where Calvert's observation about coin finds caused scholars to follow a false scent for a hundred years).
19 S. von Aulock v, no. 1658.
