Note (30) — Chapter V · OF THE ANCIENT PLACES ON THE SOUTHERN COAST OF ASIA MINOR.

Here it will be observed that the Stadiasmus exactly confirms Strabo’s description of the rock Pœcile, with its steps leading to Seleuceia. Its distance of 40 stades from the Calycadnus, if correct, will place it about Pershendi, at the north-eastern angle of the sandy plain of the Calycadnus, where a sheltered bight between the sandy beach and a projection of the mountains which constitute the coast from thence as far as the Lámas, serves as the harbour of Selefke towards the east, as Aghalimán is to the west. Instead of any steps in the rocks, Captain Beaufort here found the “extensive ruins of a walled town, with temples, arcades, aqueducts, and tombs built round a small level, which had some appearance of having once been a harbour, with a narrow opening to the sea.” An inscription copied by Captain Beaufort from a tablet over the eastern gate of the ruins, accounts for the omission of any notice of this town by Strabo; for the inscription states it to have been entirely built by Fluranius, archon of the Eparchia of Isauria, in the reign of the Augusti Valentinian, Valens, and Gratianus⁠[268]⁠. It seems probable that it is the same place called Pœcile Petra by Strabo; and that being the eastern port of Seleuceia, it acquired under the Roman emperors a share of the importance to which Seleuceia then attained, and probably some new name, perhaps Zephyrium. As the Stadiasmus speaks of the place in the same terms as Strabo, it may be inferred that this Periplus is older than the ruins at Pershendi, or older than the 4th century.