City
Smyrna
İzmir · Izmir
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Smyrna, today İzmir on the Turkish coast, is marked with the usual pair of towers, yet its setting is bent out of shape: to save space the map folds the whole western coast of Asia Minor sideways, and the Gulf of İzmir is not drawn at all. The name is native Anatolian, though Greeks heard in it their word for myrrh. The city meant is probably the new foundation of Alexander's successors, which the Greek travel writer Pausanias said Alexander ordered after a dream. Its older predecessor nearby was claimed as Homer's birthplace, and Smyrna later received one of the seven letters in the Book of Revelation.