Büyük Menderes River

Büyük Menderes River
Origin	Dinar
Mouth	Aegean Region, Turkey
Basin countries	Turkey
Length	548 kilometres (341 mi)
Mouth elevation	0

The Büyük Menderes River (historically the Maeander or Meander); Turkish: Büyük Menderes Irmağı, Ancient Greek: Μαίανδρος, Maíandros) is a river in southwestern Turkey. It rises in west central Turkey near Dinar before flowing west through the Büyük Menderes graben until reaching the Aegean Sea in the proximity of the ancient Ionian city Miletus. The word "meander" is used to describe a winding pattern, after the river (see below).

Modern geography

Ancient geography

The Maeander was a celebrated river of Caria in Asia Minor. It appears earliest in the Catalog of Trojans of Homer's Iliad along with Miletus and Mycale.

Source

The river has its sources not far from Celaenae in Phrygia (now Dinar),^[1] where it gushed forth in a park of Cyrus.^[2] According to some^[3] its sources were the same as those of the river Marsyas; but this is irreconcilable with Xenophon, according to whom the sources of the two rivers were only near each other, the Marsyas rising in a royal palace.^[4] Others^[5] state that the Maeander flowed out of a lake on Mount Aulocrene. William Martin Leake^[6] reconciles all these apparently different statements by the remark that both the Maeander and the Marsyas have their origin in the lake on Mount Aulocrene, above Celaenae, but that they issue at different parts of the mountain below the lake.

Course

Map of the river's mouth and the evolution of silting of Miletus Bay during Antiquity.

The Maeander was so celebrated in antiquity for its numerous windings, that its classical name "Maeander" became, and still is, proverbial.^[7] Its whole course has a southwesterly direction on the south of the range of Mount Messogis. South of Tripolis it receives the waters of the Lycus, whereby it becomes a river of some importance. Near Carura it passes from Phrygia into Caria, where it flows in its tortuous course through the Maeandrian plain,^[8] and finally discharges itself in the Gulf of Icaros (an arm of the Aegean Sea), between Priene and Myus, opposite to the Ionian city of Miletus, from which its mouth is only 10 stadia distant.^[9]

Tributaries

The tributaries of the Maeander include the Orgyas, Marsyas, Cludrus, Lethaeus, and Gaeson, in the north; and the Obrimas, Lycus, Harpasus, and a second Marsyas in the south.

Physical description

The Maeander is a deep river,^[10] but not very broad. In many parts its depth equals its breadth and, so, it is navigable only by small craft.^[11] It frequently overflows its banks and, as a result of the quantity of mud it deposits at its mouth, the coast has been pushed about 20 or 30 stadia further into the sea and several small islands off the coast have become united with the mainland.^[12]

Mythology

There was a legend about a subterraneous connection between the Maeander and the Alpheus River in Elis.^[13]

Notes

1. ^ Herodotus, Histories, Book 7 section 26.
2. ^ Xenophon, Anabasis, Book 1 Chapter 2.
3. ^ Strabo xii. p. 578; Maximus of Tyre viii. 38.
4. ^ Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.8.
5. ^ Pliny (v. 31), Solinus (40. § 7), and Martianus Capella (6. p. 221).
6. ^ Asia Minor, p. 158, &c.
7. ^ Hesiod, Theogony, line 339; Strabo, Geography, Book 12, Chapter 8, Section 15; Pausanias viii. 41. § 3; Ovid Met. viii. 162, &c.; Livy xxxviii. 13; Seneca Herc. Fur. 683, &c., Phoen. 605.
8. ^ comp. Strabo xiv. p. 648, xv. p. 691
9. ^ Pliny l. c.; Pausanias ii. 5. § 2.
10. ^ Niketas Choniates, p. 125; Livy l. c.
11. ^ Strabo xii. p. 579, xiv. p. 636.
12. ^ Pausanias viii. 24. § 5; Thucydides viii. 17.)
13. ^ Pausanias il. 5. § 2; comp. Hamilton, Researches, vol. i. p. 525, foll., ii. p. 161, foll.

References

• Herodotus (1910).  History of Herodotus. Trans. George Rawlinson. Wikisource. 
• Hesiod (1914).  Theogony. Trans. Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White. Wikisource. .
• Strabo; H.C. Hamilton, W.Falconer, Editors. "Geography". Tufts University: The Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239&layout=&loc=1.1.1. 
• Xenophon.  Anabasis. Trans. Henry Graham Dakyns. Wikisource. .
• Xenophon, Anabasis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1980. OCLC 10290977. ISBN 0674991001.
• Thonemann, P., The Maeander Valley: A historical geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge, 2011) (Greek Culture in the Roman World Series)
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed (1854–57). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray. 

See also

• Meander
• Battle of the Meander