In summary, the Karians lived in a close symbiosis with the Greeks, first the Mycenaeans, then especially the Ionians, for more than a millennium. Interestingly, Karian-Dorian contact was not that long-lived, nor was it as intensive as...
moreIn summary, the Karians lived in a close symbiosis with the Greeks, first the Mycenaeans, then especially the Ionians, for more than a millennium. Interestingly, Karian-Dorian contact was not that long-lived, nor was it as intensive as the Ionian-Karian one. This remains true until the Hellenistic period, when Rhodes established its large peraia on the Karian mainland.
The peninsula of Knidos existed as a Dorian Greek ‘island’ on the Karian mainland from at least Geometric times onwards. The Isthmos was surrounded by the other cities of the ‘Dorian Hexapolis’, and connected with them via the sea. The Triopion, the common sanctuary of the Dorian city league, was located at its western tip, Cape Tekir. The peninsula was easy to cut off from the hinterland, which allowed the Knidians to build a five stadia long ditch at its narrowest point to protect themselves from the advancing Persian army (Herodotus 1.174).
The ‘Dorian’ past of Halikarnassos receded in favour of a ‘Kekropid’-Ionian one early on, as is indicated in her foundation story in the Hellenistic Salmakis Epigram. The reason will have been Halikarnassos’ exclusion from the Dorian ‘Hexapolis’ in the sixth century BCE, henceforth a mere ‘Pentapolis’, comprising the Dorians concentrated on the adjacent islands of Rhodes and Kos, whose only mainland footings were Knidos and the Triopion.
From the fifth century BCE on, the Karians gradually gave up the main marker of Karian identity, their language and script, in favour of the Ionian one. Their closeness to the Ionian Greeks, as well as the will to widen their zone of influence, may have caused the Hekatomnids Maussollos and Idrieus to back the refoundation of the Ionian League and the common festival of the Panionia at Mt. Mykale. This is strongly supported by their involvement in the refoundation of New Priene, the city managing and protecting the Panionion (see § 6.3). At the same time, however, the parallel relocation of Knidos, again initiated by Maussollos, may have aimed at the simultaneous control of the adjacent Triopion. It is important to note that the new Karian capital at Halikarnassos was a former member of this league (see § 1). The Hekatomnids clearly aimed at establishing their influence on the Greek mainland also, again instrumentalising Greek as well as Karian cults: the relief from Tegea testifies to the translation of Zeus Labraundeus to the Peloponnese by Ada and Idrieus (Fig.17), while around 345 BCE, dependent Miletos erected statues of the ruling couple in Panhellenic Delphi, instead in her own oracle sanctuary in Didyma.
The Hekatomnids have this ambition in common with another Hellenized ‘barbarian’ people (Isocrates, Philippus 105–108), who were ultimately more successfull: the Macedonians. When Alexander the Great conquered Karia in 334/33 BCE, Ada adopted him. For this stroke of genius he made her satrap of Karia. Nevertheless the Hekatomnid dynasty came to an end, when she died in 324 BCE. After her death or slightly earlier, the Karian language was gradually replaced by Attic Koiné. This is evident from the recently found bilingual proxeny-decree in Kaunos, dated to c. 322-314 BCE, which was written in local Kaunian-Karian and in Attic Koiné.
I hope to have shown that the final assimilation of the Karian language and culture into the Greek, recognizable even in the loss of Karian personal names, is not the result of a cultural inferiority. This is simply the version of history that the Greeks have fostered, and passed on until today. They stylised the Karians as the prototypical ‘barbarians’ in the process of their own ethnogenesis as Hellenes. They did this with sayings like the following, which was still being repeated as late as the fifteenth century CE (Diogenianus Epicureus 6.24; Michael Apostolius, Paroemiae 12.37):
Λυδοὶ πονηροί, δεύτεροι δ’ Ἀιγύπτιοι, τρίτοι δὲ πάντων Κᾶρες ἐξωλέστατοι.
“The Lydians are base, second the Egyptians, but third and most abominable are the Karians”.
It was the failure of Karia to achieve political independence and unity that was decisive for the loss of its cultural identity. The central rule of the Hekatomnid dynasty (395/94 or 392/1 to 324 BCE) was too short-lived, and the cultural impact of Alexander and the Diadochi on Karia was too strong, while the Karian ‘Chrysaoric League’ (third/second century BCE) was too weak and active too late, and by no means purely Karian as it incorporated the Macedonian colonists in Stratonikeia (cf. Strabo 14.2.25)
The Karians, like many other ‘Luwic’ people of Asia Minor, disappeared in the Roman Imperial period at the latest. Only the name of the land survived as the Byzantine province of Karia up to the thirteenth century CE, signalling the remnants of some form of ‘regional identity’.
