City
Seleucia
Silifke am Göksu
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A steep rock, inaccessible on three sides and reachable only from the sea by a stairway cut into the stone: so the Greek historian Polybius described Seleucia, the chief fortress that Seleucus founded in the district of Pieria. The geographer Strabo called it impregnable, and after the town stubbornly held out against King Tigranes, Rome granted it freedom. By the sixth century it lay largely in ruins, and remains of its walls and harbour moles survive near Mughajir, in southern Turkey. The map shows no road to nearby Antioch, probably because the city's elaborate drawing swallowed the line.