Loryma was a small fortified town and harbour on the coast of Caria, not far from Cape Cynossema, at the western extremity of the peninsula known as Rhodian Chersonesus, opposite to and twenty Roman miles from Rhodes island.[11] It was a fortified and was belonging to the Rhodians.[8]
Its ruins, west of Port Aplothiki, with towers, tombs and ramparts are described by William Martin Leake (Asia Minor, 223).[12] The site was later explored by the British antiquaries Theodore and Mabel Bent in March 1888.[13]
Above the bay of Loryma (modern Bozuk Bükü) lie the ruins of a curtain wall surrounding the top of the hill. Constructed from large blocks of stone shaped in-situ, the remaining walls (up to several metres high on the outside) retain very precise corners and sheer faces.
The British traveler and writer Freya Stark visited Loryma and wrote concerning the historical significance of its sheltered harbor:
In the stillness of Loryma we spent the night. The wind could be heard howling outside, against the hills that enclosed our sheltered water as if it were a mountain tarn. Only a fanning ripple touched the centre. The sound of the wind, inarticulate and busy like the world’s voice, gave an illusion of safety, of an unassailable peace. If it could penetrate, how many sleeping echoes would it waken? Athenians from Samos, dodging the Dorian Cnidus, picking up ship’s tackle at Syme, sheltering at Loryma; Conon, before the battle, with his ninety ships; the Roman fleet that dared not face Hannibal in the offing; Cassius, gathering forces against Rhodes, twenty miles away. Each in their turn passed through the narrow opening and felt the sudden calm. In these places, the natural features have remained unaltered; the moments that visit them, fashioned to one pattern by nature itself, drop like beads on a string, through long pauses, one after the other, into the same silence.[16]
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References
^Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN978-88-209-9070-1), p. 918
^J.T. Bent, ‘Discoveries in Asia Minor’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1888, Vol. 9, pp. 82-7; The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent, vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, pp. 225-54.
