Milyas

Milyas (Ancient Greek:) was the mountainous country in the north of ancient Lycia, the south of Pisidia, and a portion of eastern Phrygia.^[1] The boundaries of this country, however, were never properly fixed, and the whole of it is sometimes described as a part of Lycia.^[2] After the accession of the dynasty of the Seleucidae in Syria, the name Milyas was limited to the south-western part of Pisidia, bordering upon Lycia, that is, the territory extending from Termessus northward to the foot of Mount Cadmus.^[3]

This district, the western part of which bore the name of Cabalia, is afterwards described, sometimes as a part of Lycia (as by Ptolemy)^[4] and sometimes as part of Pamphylia or Pisidia (as by Pliny the Elder).^[5] After the conquest of Antiochus the Great, the Romans gave the country to Eumenes,^[6] though Pisidian princes still continue to be mentioned as its rulers.

The greater part of Milyas was rugged and mountainous, but it also contained a few fertile plains.^[7] The inhabitants were called Milyae (Μιλύαι).^[8] This name, which does not occur in the Homeric poems, probably belonged to the remnants of the ancient Solymi, the original inhabitants of Lycia, who had been driven into the mountains by the immigrating Cretans. The host important towns in Milyas were Cibyra, Oenoanda, Balbura, and Bubon, which formed the Cibyratian tetrapolis. Some authors also mention a town of Milyas, which must have been situated north of Termessus in Pisidia.^[9]

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