Strabo, Geography

There are twenty-three cities that share in the vote. They come together from each city to a general congress, after choosing whatever city they approve of. The largest of the cities control three votes each, the medium-sized two, and the rest one. In the same proportion, also, they make contributions and discharge other liturgies.¹ Artemidorus said that the six largest were Xanthus, Patara, Pinara, Olympus, Myra, and Tlos, the last named being situated near the pass that leads over into Cibyra. At the congress they first choose a "Lyciarch," and then other officials of the League; and general courts of justice are designated. In earlier times they would deliberate about war and peace and alliances, but now they naturally do not do so, since these matters necessarily lie in the power of the Romans, except, perhaps, when the Romans should give them permission or it should be for their benefit. Likewise, judges and magistrates are elected from the several cities in the same proportion. And since they lived under such a good government, they remained ever free under the Romans, thus retaining their ancestral usages; and they saw the pirates utterly wiped out, first by Servilius Isauricus, at the time that he demolished Isaura, and later by Pompey the Great, when he set fire to more than thirteen hundred boats and laid waste their settlements. Of the pirates who survived the fights,² he brought some down to Soli, which he named Pompeïopolis, and the others to Dyme, where there was a dearth of population; it is now occupied by a colony of Romans. The poets, however, and especially the tragic poets, confuse the tribes, as, for example, the Trojans and the Mysians and the Lydians, whom they call Phrygians; and likewise the Lycians, whom they call Carians.