Ancient highways, modern frontiers

The image that forms the header for this blog is a view from the mainland coast of Turkey across the straits to the island of Boczaada, near the mouth of the Dardanelles. Turkish now, for thousands of years it was part of the Greek speaking world. The island of Tenedos, as they called it, has a deep place in Greek literature. It figures in Homer; its ruler Tenes was killed by Achilles during the long war for nearby Troy; and it was here, according to Virgil, that the Greeks retreated after leaving the wooden horse outside the city walls to await the success of their trick. It’s always been part of a contested frontier zone. The Byzantines, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Ottomans all successively fought for it; it featured in the Greek war of independence and was finally ceded to Turkey in the 1920s. The Greek population has almost all gone now. There’s a haunting memoir by Dmetri Kakmi about the departure of the rump Greek population towards the end of the last century.

Such off-shore islands lie dotted along the coast of Asia Minor – Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and a scattering of smaller ones. They’re now the frontiers between Greece and Turkey and have become militarized zones, patrolled on either side by jets and warships, though the heat has somewhat gone out of the confrontation in recent times. Once however they were linked closely to the mainland by trade and culture; they were highways down which merchants, travellers and ideas passed to and fro. Just behind the picture, on the mainland, lies the immense sprawling classical site of Alexandria Troas, named after Alexander the Great by one of his generals. St Paul passed this way, stopping at the city to preach – at such length that a young man seated in a window upstairs window fell asleep, dropped out of the window and died – to be miraculously restored to life by the saint. The landscape is scattered with remnants of this ancient place. Columns, probably broken whilst being transported by the Ottomans to incorporate in their palaces, stand upright in the calm sea.