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The Site of Isaura Nova
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
An article in J.R.S. xii. 1922, p. 44, stated, on the authority of J.H.S. xxv. 1905, p. 163 ff., that Isaura Nova has been located with certainty at Dorla. My friend Professor Ormerod, the writer of the article, assures me (confirming my own recollection) that I had no responsibility either for the emphasis of this assertion or for its form. Another friend, who speaks with high authority, but who adduces no evidence, has maintained the contrary opinion, not only in J.H.S. xlviii. 1928, p. 49, but even—flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta mouebo—in Klio, Beiträge zur alten Geschichte, xxii. 1928, p. 382. I am content to leave the question of responsibility open; if I had any part in the assertion that Isaura Nova was at Dorla, the more pressing becomes my duty to correct it.
The village of Dorla consists of fifty houses, which lie on either side of a small stream flowing northwards from the Isaurian hills (the general direction of the valley at Dorla is 5° E.). About thirty of the houses lie on and around a hillock on the western side of the stream, about twenty lie on the rising ground near the eastern bank. The ancient site, covered in part by the eastern half of the modern village, extends from the stream for some 500 or 600 yards towards the east and north-east; it probably also extends to the western side of the stream, on the south of the hillock.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1928
References
1 Professor Ormerod says ‘at Dorla,’ quoting textually from J.H.S. loc. cit., p. 164 (Ramsay). He may also have been in fluenced by Jahresh. Oest. Arch. Inst. vii, 1904, Beibl. col. 77: “Isaura Nea, the site of which we found at Dorla” (Ramsay). This convenient description is sufficiently accurate for practical purposes, although strictly speaking the modern village coincides only in part with the ancient site. See below. Professor Ormerod has not seen Dorla.
2 Cf. J.H.S. loc. cit., p. 50, 1. 1. The theory propounded in Klio, loc. cit., p. 396 ff., that Lake Trogitis has been emptied by the diversion (about 1914) of the Beyshehir River, and ‘must be expunged from the map of Asia Minor,’ is fanciful. In June 1924, when Mr. C. W. M. Cox and I visited (and sketched) it, this ‘geographical feature of the past’ was roughly of the size shown on Kiepert's Karte, von Kleinasien, 1: 400,000.
3 Statement of the Ikhtiar in 1924—doubtless a round number. He added that no new houses had been built since my last visit in 1909.
4 Cf. the description in J.H.S. xxv. 1925, p. 164: ‘The ancient town of Isaura was situated on the high ground on the right side of the stream … and extended at least down to the river bank.’ Substituting ‘settlement’ for ‘town of Isaura,’ I agree. The statement in J.H.S. xlviii. 1928, p. 47: ‘The town of Isaura was situated on a tongue of land, now uninhabited, on the east side of the stream,’ shifts the ground both of the town and of the argument.
5 montem ex quo in † fugam † oppidi teli coniectus erat occupauit (Seruilius). For fugam, forum and iuga have been conjectured.
6 The statement on this pivotal point in J.H.S. xxv. 1905, p. 164, is presumably based on village reports. It is incorrect.
7 In J.H.S. xxv. 1905, p. 163, Sterrett's location of Isaura Nova at Dinorna is rightly rejected on the ground that the two brooks at Dinorna are dry in summer. On May 14th, 1926, there was a fair amount of water in the northern brook at Dinorna; but the brooks here are too small to have supplied the ancient settlement with water.
8 J.H.S. xxv. 1905, p. 164, quoted above.