MYLASA _and_ LABRANDA may be taken together, as from the former a Sacred Way led to Labranda. The former was, no doubt, in early times one of the chief places in Caria, before Halicarnassus was adopted as the royal residence; indeed, we find a proof of this in the fact that it had a temple to which Lydians and Mysians were alike admitted (Herod, i. 171). Physcus, to which we have already referred was considered as its port. Mylasa, in ancient times, as Strabo avers, a city of great beauty, owed much to its having been built close to a mountain of the finest white marble. It was, indeed, so close, that one of the provincial governors observed that the founder of the town ought to have been ashamed of his blunder, if not frightened.[54] It was, also, so full of sacred buildings, that when Stratonicus came there, thinking there were more temples than people, he exclaimed, in the middle of the forum, “Hear, oh ye temples”! (Athen. viii. p. 348). Footnote 54: Strabo’s words are: Ταύτην γὰρ, ἔφη, τὴν πόλιν ὁ κτίσας εἰ μὴ ἐφοβεῖτο, ἆρ’ οὐδ’ ᾐσχύνετο; (xiv. 659). The people of Mylasa having made a successful resistance to the attacks of Philip, the son of Demetrius, were rewarded by being made “free” by the Romans. Modern travellers, from Pococke to Chandler, fully confirm the statements of the ancients as to the abundance of marble monuments; and Colonel Leake adds that, since they were there, the Turks have pulled down the best ruin, that of the Temple of Romulus and Augustus. Sir Charles Fellows, on his second journey, observed on the key-stone of a gateway the double-headed axe (bipennis), indicating that the building to which it belonged had once been consecrated to the Jupiter of Labranda, a name said to have been derived from λαβρὺς, the Carian word for an axe;[55] and succeeded, also, in identifying it (pp. 66-67). He says of it, “The only conspicuous building of the place is a beautiful temple of the Corinthian order, but I think not of the finest age.... It stands in a recess in the hills, and is consequently not seen without approaching close to it.”[56] Footnote 55: Strabo calls the temple νεὠς άρχαῖος, and Herodotus adds that there was a holy grove of plane-trees near it, ἅγιον ἂλσος πλατανίστων (v. 119). Plutarch (ii. p. 302 A) states that λαβρὺς was the Lydian and Carian word for axe (which we find represented also on the coins of Mausolus and Pixodarus). On one of the Oxford marbles (ii. 12), probably an altar, occur the words Διός Λαβραύνδου. Footnote 56: Since Sir Charles’s visit, this spot has been carefully examined by Mr. Pullan, who states that the building (of which the fifteen columns still stand) is really of Roman times and work, though engraved (under the auspices of Dr. Chandler) as a Greek temple in the “Ionian Antiquities,” vol. i. (Pullan, “Ruins of Asia Minor,” p. 26). ------------------------------------------------------------------------