SELINOS
(Gazipaşa, formerly Selinti) Turkey.
City in Cilicia Aspera, among the principal ones on this
coast and mentioned by most of the ancient geographers
from Pseudo-Skylax on. It was one of the towns taken by
Antiochos III in 197 B.C. (
Livy 33.20), but is best known
as the place where Trajan died in A.D. 117 on his way
back from the East. After this event Selinos took for a
time the name of Trajanopolis, which occurs on coins
and inscriptions. The coinage begins under the kingdom
of Antiochos IV of Kommagene, and continues later
from Trajan to Philip. A bishop of Selinos is recorded,
under the metropolitan of Seleukeia.
The city stood on the slopes and at the foot of a
steep hill with a perpendicular cliff on the seaward side.
A fortification wall, mostly of rubble, descends the landward side, but the ruins lie chiefly on the level ground
below. An aqueduct of inferior masonry crosses the
marsh near the mouth of the neighboring stream. Conspicuous is a large rectangular building surrounded by
a colonnade, sometimes wrongly supposed to be a mausoleum of Trajan; though the colonnade is ancient, the
building itself is apparently a mediaeval caravanserai.
There are some undistinguished remains of a theater, and
a necropolis extends along the foot of the hill; most of
the tombs are constructed of masonry. Numerous column shafts, partly buried, mark the line of a street from city to harbor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Heberdey & A. Wilhelm,
Reisen in
Kilikien (1896) 149-51; G. E. Bean & T. B. Mitford,
AnatSt 12 (1962) 206-7; id.,
Journeys in Rough Cilicia
1964-1968 (1970) 153-55.
G. E. BEAN
