Hierapolis of Phrygia: e Drawn-Out Demise of an Anatolian City

A sea of ruins, with scattered farmhouses and nomadic shepherds, will have greeted the occasional visitor to Hierapolis between the eenth and nineteenth centuries. Many centuries before it had been a thriving Roman city, a focus for wool production, teeming with merchants who plied their trade from Italy to the Orient along routes that ran west down the Meander valley to the Aegean, or east onto the Anatolian plateau and beyond (D’Andria 2003).