Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus (hăl'ĭkärnă`səs), ancient city of Caria, SW Asia Minor, on the Ceramic Gulf (now the Gulf of Kos) and on the site of the modern city of Bodrum, Turkey. Halicarnassus was Greek in origin, but there were Carian inhabitants. Except for a brief period in the 5th cent. B.C., the city was not intimately concerned with Greek affairs. As a Persian vassal it was ruled by tyrants and participated in Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 B.C.), but after the expulsion of the tyrants (460–455) it joined the Delian League. A dynasty of Carian kings in the 4th cent. B.C. was made famous by Mausolus, whose wife, Artemisia, built him a magnificent tomb (see mausoleum), considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Alexander the Great conquered the city (c.334 B.C.). It was the birthplace of Herodotus and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

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Halicarnassus

 modern Bodrum

Ancient Greek city, western Anatolia. Located in modern Turkey on a peninsula in the Aegean Sea, it became the capital of Caria (c. 370 BC) under the Persian satrap Mausolus, who built a great wall, public buildings, and a secret dockyard and canal. His widow erected (c. 350 BC) a great tomb (the Mausoleum) in his memory. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, and its remains are now in the British Museum. Halicarnassus was the birthplace of the Greek historian Herodotus. It came under Roman rule in 129 BC, and in early Christian times was a bishopric. The ruins of the castle of the Knights of St. John, founded c. AD 1400, dominate the ancient site.

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Halicarnassus

a Greek colony on the SW coast of Asia Minor: one of the major Hellenistic cities