I’ve profiled the spectacular Hellenistic walls of Herakleia elsewhere on this site. Here, I focus on my two attempts to reach the citadel on the mountainside high above those walls.
8-14-13
For thousands of years, Mount Latmos has been a sacred place. The Greeks thought that Selene, goddess of the moon, came there nightly to lie with her mortal lover Endymion. Centuries later, hundreds of Byzantine monks lived in the caves that pock its slopes, praying away the years in a landscape grim as the wrath of God.
The mountain even looks otherworldly. One approaches along the shore of Lake Bafa, an ancient arm of the Aegean silted off from the sea. As the potholed, not-quite-two-lane road rounds the northern shore, boulder-strewn hills begin to rear up on either side. A sharp turn brings into view impossible piles of pinnacles and tumbled stone: the slopes of Latmos. The mountain seems to be actively thrusting upward, and throwing off cascades of boulders in its ascent.
The little town of Kapikiri, below Latmos, is a fairly typical Turkish village. It stands, however, in the ruins of Herakleia, an ancient Greek city surrounded by a spectacular set of walls. I stayed in Kapikiri for three days, exploring some new part of the city and environs every afternoon. Not until the last day of my stay, however, did I attempt to reach the ancient citadel, six hundred feet above the village.
The first stage of the hike up, where I could still find a trail, was manageable. Then the trail vanished, and the going got tough. I decided to follow the line of the walls that climbed toward the citadel.
Walking atop the rampart where it still stood and scrambling through rubble where it had collapsed, I gradually mounted to a region of steep cliffs and rockfalls on a high shoulder of Mt. Latmos.
Then the line of walls stopped. Here at last, I thought, the Hellenistic wall-builders had made an end of their labor, hundreds of feet above and nearly two miles west of the ancient city. The walls clung to gray ridges below, weaving a slow way down towards the shimmering lake and distant minaret of Kapikiri; everywhere else, gray stone rose and fell, a storm-tossed sea petrified.
But I hadn’t quite reached the top. Spotting what appeared to be the remains of a tower about a hundred feet overhead, I realized that I was still below the remains of the citadel. The final tower, however, seemed impossible to reach from my vantage point. I agonized for long minutes; but sunset was coming, and I was out of water. So I turned back, resolving to make another attempt if I ever came back to Kapikiri.
5-27-17
Four years later, I tried again…
This time, I promised myself, I would reach that highest tower – a broken stump barely visible from Kapikiri.
It was not to be. In fact, I made an even worse showing than the first time. I followed what turned out to be a goat path, which left me on a steep slope of tumbled boulders and scrub. Hoping to strike the line of the wall, I charged forward, and soon found myself in a maze of gullies and cliffs.
For an agonizing hour, I dragged myself upward on moss-slicked granite and through tearing thorns. When I finally reached the crest, I could see the final tower atop a ridge a hundred feet overhead. I started resolutely upward – and, almost at the same instant, heard thunder. I turned to see black clouds boiling over Latmos, and a wall of rain advancing across the lake.
Exposed on a barren mountainside, I had no choice but to turn back. Thorns tearing at my arms, I scrambled down the boulders as fast as I dared. The thunder became almost continuous, rolling and echoing off the cliffs. Bushes began to shiver in a rising wind. The veil of rain blotted out the horizon. Finally, just as a whistling drizzle began to sting my eyes, I staggered onto flat ground. Within moments, I was wrapped in a blinding downpour. Hands bleeding and shins bruised, I shuffled back to my pension beneath the dripping flowers of Kapikiri.
Third time’s the charm…