TELMESSUS was on the coast, and is now represented by the village of Makri.[66] In ancient times it was famous for the skill of its augurs. Herodotus tells us they were often consulted by the kings of Lydia, and especially by Crœsus; and Arrian ascribes to them a remote antiquity. Their reputation long survived; for Cicero speaks of the town thus:— “Telmessus in Caria est quâ in urbe excellit haruspicum disciplina” (De Divin. i. 41). In early Christian times it had a bishop. Telmessus has been fully described by Dr. Clarke and Sir Charles Fellows. Its monumental remains are almost wholly tombs; but these are, many of them, remarkable for their beauty, as also for the extraordinary labour bestowed on them in cutting them out of the face of the rock. Sir Charles Fellows makes the curious remark, that, though the Greek population of Lycia were mainly Dorians, he did not meet with any tombs or other monuments unquestionably of the Doric order. Footnote 66: Fellows remarks that the Meio of the maps and of the “Modern Traveller” (supposed, too, by Cramer to be a corruption of Telmessus) is not known in the country. PATARA, on the left bank of the river Xanthus, was chiefly celebrated for its worship and temples of the Lycian Apollo, known by the appellation of Patareus.[67] According to Herodotus (i. 182), the priestess who delivered it was shut up in the temple every night, but the oracular responses were only occasional. The Pataræan oracle was very ancient, and considered scarcely inferior to that of Delphi. Captain Beaufort, in his account of Karamania, places the remains of Patara[68] near the shore, and notices “a deep circular pit of singular appearance, which may have been the seat of the oracle.” Fellows alludes to “a beautiful small temple about the centre of the ruined city,” with a doorway “of beautiful Greek workmanship, ornamented in the Corinthian style, and in fine proportion and scale.” The port of Patara, which was too small to contain the combined fleet of the Romans and Rhodians under Regillus in the war with Antiochus (Liv. xxxvii. 17) is now completely overgrown with brushwood, &c. The theatre is shown by an inscription to have been built (more probably rebuilt) in the fourth consulate of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 145. Footnote 67: Hor. Od. iii. 4, 62: Delius aut Patareus Apollo. Stat. Theb. i. 696: ... Seu te Lyciæ Pataræa nivosis Exercent dumeta jugis. Virg. Æn. iv. 143: Qualis ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta Deserit, ac Delum maternam invisit Apollo. On which passage Servius makes the remark that the oracles were delivered alternately,—during the winter months at Patara, and during the summer at Delos. Footnote 68: Cicero uses the Ethnic form Pataranus (Orat. in Flacc. c. 32).