Road station

Perge

nördl. von Aksu

Perge appears in a Hittite border text of 1235 BC as Parha, and its flat-topped hill had been settled since the fourth millennium BC; Greek tradition credited the seers Mopsos and Kalchas with founding it after the Trojan War. On a height nearby stood the shrine of Artemis of Perge, whose yearly festival Strabo mentions and which, Cicero says, Verres plundered. The apostle Paul came here, and around AD 73 it became capital of the province of Lycia and Pamphylia. Yet the map, which gives its rival Side a picture, leaves Perge without one, perhaps a sign that its source predates the city's heyday.

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