KELENDERIS,
later Gilindire (Aydincik) Rough Cilicia Turkey.
On the coast 46 km W of the modern
Anamur and the center of a region known to Pliny (
HN
5.92) as Kelenderitis. Said by Apollodoros to be a
foundation of Sandokos of Syria and therefore presumably of native origin, Kelenderis was colonized, doubtless
in the 8th c. B.C., by Samians. Included in the Delian
League between 460 and 454 as a way station on the
route to Egypt, with an assessment probably of one
talent, it thereafter has no recorded history. Its coinage
began in the mid 5th c. and continued until the time of
Decius. Survival into the 5th c. of our era is attested by
Hierocles and the
Notitia. Of the recorded inscriptions,
nearly all funerary and datable to the 2d and 3d c., not
one is now to be seen.
The ruins today are overlaid by the expanding modern
village. Fortifications may still be detected, nevertheless,
around the modern lighthouse on the small promontory
which forms and commands the harbor; but the chief
harbor was undoubtedly the fine, landlocked bay with
its famous spring 1.6 km to the W at Soğuk Su. Here
there are ancient ruins, notably a bath at the head of the
bay and archaeological debris on the peninsula at its
mouth. The most notable monument is the great built
tomb among olive trees to the E of the modern town.
There are handsome but much destroyed rock-cut tombs
at Duruhan 9.6 km to the N.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Heberdey & A. Wilhelm, “Reisen
in Kilikien,”
DenkschrWien 44 (1896) 1-168; A.H.M.
Jones,
Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (1937);
B. V. Head,
Historia Numorum (2d ed. 1911) 718;
Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Deutschland, Sammlung v. Aulock, Kilikien (1966) pl. 190.
T. B. MITFORD
