Lycia, on the southern coast of Anatolia, was first recorded in the Late Bronze Age records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire. Lycia was totally Hellenized under the Macedonians. The Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage. On defeating Antiochus III in 188 the Romans gave Lycia to Rhodes for 20 years, taking it back in 168 B.C. The Romans allowed home rule under the Lycian League, a federation with republican principles, which later influenced the framers of the United States Constitution. In 43 A.D. Claudius dissolved the league and made Lycia a Roman province. It was an eparchy of Byzantine Empire. A substantial Christian Greek community lived in Lycia until the 1920s when they were forced to migrate to Greece following the Greco-Turkish War. | |