Famous personalities

At a time when mythical creatures, heroic warriors and all-powerful gods roamed the land, the philosopher Thales (around 620–540 BC) sought to understand the essence of the world in Miletus in the sixth and seventh century BCE. He is considered the founder of Western philosophy.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Thales was looking for discernible structures that explained the principles of nature instead of resorting to mythical explanations. He gathered knowledge to help him understand the logic and order that underpinned the world around him. Today, this approach to research is called natural philosophy. While it is not based directly on Thales’s writing, his ideas and calculations informed the work of many scholars as early as antiquity, such as Plato, Aristotle and Diogenes Laërtius. Besides his achievements in mathematics and astronomy, Thales wanted to find the ‘primary substance’—the element at the beginning of everything. He believed that water was this substance. To him, everything had a soul and, as such, a spark of the divine. Thales defined the soul as anything that can bring about an autonomous action. Today, Thales is best known for his eponymous mathematical theorem, which states that any triangle inscribed in a semicircle such that one of the sides is a diameter and the third point is a random point on the semicircle is always a right triangle.

Anaximander (around 610–547 BCE), another Milesian, is widely considered the pupil and successor of Thales. It is likely that the two met. According to Anaximander, however, the primary element is the indefinite or infinite (apeiron). Like the Olympians, this is an immortal, indestructible being. Anaximander believed in a constant cosmic order maintained by the apeiron. Much like Thales, he also believed that water was the origin of all life. “Anaximander said that the first living being had been generated in moisture, enclosing themselves in spine-like barks. As they advanced in age, they moved onto dry land and shedded their bark. For a brief while, they survived in a different form.” (C. Rapp, Die Vorsokratiker. Munich, 1997. 51.) It is fascinating to consider how close Anaximander’s idea of the origin of life came to today’s theory of evolution. 

The third Milesian pre-Socratic thinker, Anaximenes (around 585–524 BCE), based his theories on Anaximander’s. In his view, the all-encompassing air was the primary substance (aer). Anaximenes had realized that matter expands in heat and contracts in cold. He concluded that all things, including the divine, had originated from the expansion and compression of air.

With their observations and ideas, these three Milesians laid the foundation of (natural) philosophy. They opened their minds to other cultures and schools of thought, for example, by incorporating Egyptian concepts of natural science into their own theories. Merchants and seafarers carried their ideas from Miletus across the entire Mediterranean region. They became the foundation of Western philosophy, which seeks to answer the question of (human) existence in harmony with the natural sciences.

^{Text: Florian Schwake}

“[…] to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length.” 

^{Plut. Per. 24, 1}

Aspasia of Miletus was probably the most famous woman of the fifth century BCE. She was alive from the middle to the end of that century. Her name, Aspasia, means “warm welcome“; she was the daughter of Axiochus and grew up in Miletus. However, she only rose to fame after her arrival in Athens in the forties of the fifth century BCE. As a hetaira (literally: companion), she had access to the most powerful political circles of Classical Athens. Aspasia was an educated woman who was highly respected among philosophers. Xenophon has Socrates quote her repeatedly in Memorabilia and Oeconomicus to support his arguments. In particular, he refers to her social aptitude, for example, her ability to identify and pursue advantageous relationships. 

Aspasia entered into such a relationship herself when she married the Attic statesman Pericles. It is likely that she took advantage of the marriage to achieve her own goals. The ancient historian and biographer Plutarch (first–second century BCE) even blames her for the outbreak of war between Athens and Samos in 441–439 BCE. When her hometown of Miletus and Samos entered into a conflict about the neighbouring city of Priene, the Athenians took the side of the besieged Milesians. Pericles sailed to Samos with a fleet of 40 ships and vanquished the Samian army despite considerable losses among his own.

Over the further course of history, Aspasia came to be known as the loveliest of all women, much like Alexander was considered the greatest of heroes. But historians frequently doubt her historicity, i.e., the question of whether the reports about her actually refer to a real, historical person. This is because she has been described in various contradictory ways: some documents claim that she was a good wife; in others, she is a combination of courtesan and prostitute. It is possible, however, that these contrasting roles all correspond to a single historical person and that the ancient writers arbitrarily portrayed Aspasia’s role and character in a way that matched their own stories and intentions. 

^{Text: Florian Schwake}

Relatively little details are known about the life of the Roman general and politician Marcus Ulpius Traianus (around 30–100 CE). He was a descendant of Italian settlers from Umbria, with whom Scipio Africanus had colonised the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Traianus belonged to the gens Ulpia. His sister, Ulpia, was the mother of Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer and the grandmother of the later Roman emperor Hadrian. Traianus and his wife Marcia had two children: one son, the future Emperor Trajan, and one daughter, Ulpia Marciana, proclaimed Augusta by her brother in 105 CE.

Nothing is known about his earlier political and military career. The first historical records of Traianus date back to his involvement in the First Jewish–Roman War in 67/68 CE as a commander of Legio X Fretensis, the tenth legion. This won him the approval of the later Roman Emperor Vespasian, at that time the governor of the province of Judaea. Vespasian made Traianus a patrician to thank him for his support in the Year of the Four Emperors, which started Traianus’ political career. Between 70 and 72, he served as suffect consul, followed by five years during which he supervised the important province of Syria. Later, he became the governor of his home province of Baetica before finally assuming the position of proconsul of Asia in 79/80 CE. In this role, he established a new nymphaeum opposite the assembly house (bouleuterion) of Miletus, as the Latin inscription on the architrave of the lower story tells us.

Marcus Ulpius Traianus died before 100 CE, and his son deified him in 113 CE as divus Traianus pater.

^{Text: Florian Schwake}

The Menteşeoğulları (Sons of the Menteşe) were a Turkish family who founded a principality in southwestern Anatolia in the second half of the thirteenth century and governed the region for more than a hundred years. When the Turks conquered Muğla and the surrounding area in 1261, the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos tried to intervene, but Menteşe Bey defeated him. This led to the Turkish annexation of Aydın (called Tralleis in antiquity) and Güzel Hisar, and the Menteşeoğlulları governed the region from 1282.

İlyas Bey is first mentioned as one of the Menteşeoğlulları in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. His father, Mehmed Bey, was the son of Menteşe Ibrahim, the ruler of the regions of Muğla and Çine. His uncle was Ahmed Gazi, who ruled over Balat, Peçin and Milas. No information is available about İlyas Bey’s earlier life: he only appeared in historical records after Timur returned his lands to the beylik (principality) of Menteşe following the Battle of Ankara in 1402.

İlyas Bey’s father, Mehmed Bey, met Timur at the Büyük Menderes River near Denizli after the battle and presented him with valuable gifts, which suggests that İlyas Bey fought alongside Timur in the Battle of Ankara. The Menteşeoğulları, led by İlyas Bey, remained under the command of Timur until his death in 1407. From that day onward, he sometimes ruled independently, sometimes under the Ottoman Empire. When Mehmed I became the Ottoman sultan in 1413, İlyas Bey became his subject. He issued coins bearing the name of Mehmed I in 1415. At the same time, he sent his two sons, Leys and Ahmed, to the Ottoman Palace as hostages. He occasionally used his fleets, built at the shipyard of Balad, for raids. When Mehmed I had conquered Izmir from the Aydınoğulları (another principality), he had the castle of the Knights of Rhodes demolished and new castles built further south. İlyas Bey died in 1421. He was buried in his grave next to the mosque he had built in Balat. After his death, his sons fled from the Ottoman palace and sought to take over the principality (beylik) of Menteşe. But they were defeated, and the principality was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after Murad II’s conquest of the province of Menteşe in 1424. During his 19-year reign, İlyas Bey built a mosque, a madrasa and an imaret in Balat in 1404.

^{Text: Nisan Lordoğlu}

^References

• F. Emecen, “İlyas Bey: Menteşeoğulları’nın Son Beyi”, İslam Ansiklopedisi 22. Cilt, 2000, 162–163.
• H. D. Yıldız, Anadolu Türk Tarihi (Osmanlı Devleti’nin Kuruluşuna Kadar), Anadolu Uygarlıkları Ansiklopedisi 3, 1982.
• P. Wittek, Menteşe Beyliği, Ankara 1986.