TLOS
Lycia, Turkey.
Near the village of Dilver,
24 km N of Xanthos on the E side of the Xanthos river.
One of the six cities possessing three votes in the Lycian
League; the name appears in the Lycian language as
Tlava or Tlave, and eight or ten Lycian inscriptions have
been found on the site. Panyassis mentions Tlous as one
of the sons of Tremiles, Termilae (Tremili) being the
name by which the Lycians called themselves. At an uncertain date in the 2d c. B.C. a certain Eudemus attempted
to establish a tyranny at Tlos, but was suppressed by the
forces of the League. Otherwise the city has no recorded
history. The citizens were divided into demes, named
mostly after local heroes, Bellerophon, Iobates, Sarpedon. Coinage, of League types, begins after 168 B.C.; imperial coinage, as elsewhere in Lycia, is confined to Gordian III.
The ruins consist chiefly of a theater and tombs. The
theater, outside the city on the E, is of very fine Roman
work excellently preserved, but at present badly overgrown. It is large and purely of Roman type, standing
on almost level ground with a surrounding wall of
masonry; the cavea is an exact semicircle, except that
the ends of the retaining wall are straight for a few
meters. Much of the stage building survives. Numerous
Lycian rock tombs, of house and temple types, are cut
in the N and E faces of the hill on which the city stands;
the most remarkable is a temple tomb carrying a number
of reliefs, one of which represents Bellerophon on Pegasos.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Fellows,
Lycia (1840) 132-37; T.A.B.
Spratt & E. Forbes,
Travels in Lycia (1847) I 32-36;
E. Petersen & F. von Luschan,
Reisen in Lykien (1889)
138-40;
TAM II.2 (1930) 204-5.
G. E. BEAN