KORAKESION
（Alânya) Turkey.
City in
Cilicia Aspera, recorded by Pseudo-Skylax in the mid
4th c. B.C., but never a place of much importance. About
197 B.C. it successfully resisted capture by Antiochos III,
and in the mid 2d c. was used as headquarters by Diodotos Tryphon (Strab. 668). Later it was the scene of
the decisive sea battle in which Pompey defeated the
pirates, who had used the place as a major stronghold.
Korakesion and the neighboring area were presented by
Antony to Cleopatra to supply timber for shipbuilding
(Strab. 669). Coinage begins under Trajan.
Very little remains of the ancient city. The walls of
the citadel erected on the great rock by Keykûbad I in
the 13th c. stand in part on the Hellenistic walls, which
are of regular ashlar masonry. Otherwise only scattered
ancient blocks and a few inscriptions have been found
in the suburbs of AIânya.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Heberdey & A. Wilhelm,
Reisen in
Kilikien (1896) 136-37; G. E. Bean,
Turkey's Southern
Shore (1968) 101-2.
G. E. BEAN
