Tralles

Tralles (mod. Giizel Hissar), an ancient town of Caria, Asia Minor, situated on the Eudon, a tributary of the Maeander. It was reputed an Argive and Thracian colony, and was long under Persian rule, of which we hear in the history of Dercyllidas' raid from Ephesus in 397 B.C. Fortified and increased by the Seleucids and Pergamenians, who renamed it successively Seleucia and Antiochia, it passed to Rome in 133. Though satirized in a famous line (Juv. Sat. iii. 70) as a remote provincial place, it had many wealthy inhabitants in the Roman period and, to judge by objects discovered there, contained many notable works of art. Two of the best marble heads in the Constantinople museum came from Tralles; and both in the excavations conducted for that museum by. Edhem Bey (1904), and by chance discoveries, fine-art products have come to light on the site. Rebuilt by Andronicus II. about 1280, it was superseded a few years later, after the Seljuk conquest, by a new town, founded by the amir Aidin in a lower situation (see AIDIN). (D. G. H.)