City
Heraclea
Erikli
Listen to the story
Heraclea gets a proud pair of towers on the map, yet the record finds the drawing too grand for so modest a town; it may really belong to ancient Teiristasis, today's Şarköy, a few kilometres away and perhaps forgotten by the copyist, along with the road line itself. The name means city of Heracles, the hero of the twelve labours. The town lay on the Sea of Marmara coast of Thrace, at the foot of the Holy Mountain, which a mountain symbol nearby hints at. Later called little Heraclea, to tell it apart from its larger namesake further east, it survives as the Turkish village of Erikli.