Peer-reviewed
Coins from an Aeolic Site
Returning to Smyrna from a journey up the Aeolic coast in July 1960, I stopped at the village of Buruncuk, which lies at the foot of an ancient site on the north edge of the Hermus Plain. The site is the excavated one commonly identified as Larisa Phrikonis or Larisa Aegyptia. It is not, however, certain that the identification is correct. In view of its position on the Hermus Plain and the sudden access of prosperity that the excavations show to have occurred there after the middle of the sixth century, we can confidently recognize the site as one of the two towns of the Hermus Plain that were given by Cyrus the Great to the soldiers of the Egyptian guard after the defeat of Croesus in front of Sardis; and we know that Larisa was one of the two towns. But the possibility remains that the Buruncuk site is the other of the two towns (i.e. Cyllene) and that Larisa itself was the more impressive site on the hill above Yanik Köy four miles further east. We shall return to this problem; but for the present purpose we may note that Larisa and Neon Teichos, which is commonly identified with the Yanik Köy site, lay close together in the vicinity of the Hermus Plain
Article
The Annual of the British School at Athens, 63, 196811, 33