Antiquity

Antiquity
Main articles: Classical Anatolia and Hellenistic period

The theatre of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) was built in the 4th century BC by Mausolus, the Persian satrap (governor) of Caria. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Tomb of Mausolus) was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.[43]

The Library of Celsus in Ephesus was built by the Romans in 114–117.[44] The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, built by king Croesus of Lydia in the 6th century BC, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.[45]
Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was heavily settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. Numerous important cities were founded by these colonists, such as Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna (now İzmir) and Byzantium (now Istanbul), the latter founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 657 BC.[citation needed] The first state that was called Armenia by neighbouring peoples was the state of the Armenian Orontid dynasty, which included parts of eastern Turkey beginning in the 6th century BC. In Northwest Turkey, the most significant tribal group in Thrace was the Odyrisians, founded by Teres I.[46]

All of modern-day Turkey was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th century BC.[47] The Greco-Persian Wars started when the Greek city states on the coast of Anatolia rebelled against Persian rule in 499 BC. The territory of Turkey later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC,[48] which led to increasing cultural homogeneity and Hellenization in the area.[12]

Following Alexander’s death in 323 BC, Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms, all of which became part of the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC.[49] The process of Hellenization that began with Alexander’s conquest accelerated under Roman rule, and by the early centuries of the Christian Era, the local Anatolian languages and cultures had become extinct, being largely replaced by ancient Greek language and culture.[14][50] From the 1st century BC up to the 3rd century CE, large parts of modern-day Turkey were contested between the Romans and neighbouring Parthians through the frequent Roman-Parthian Wars.