Nysa, Anatolia

Nysa

Νῦσα (Greek)
The theatre of Nysa
Shown within Turkey
Location	Sultanhisar, Aydın Province, Turkey
Region	Caria
Coordinates	37°54′06″N 28°08′48″E / 37.90167°N 28.14667°E / 37.90167; 28.14667Coordinates: 37°54′06″N 28°08′48″E / 37.90167°N 28.14667°E / 37.90167; 28.14667
Type	Settlement

Nysa on the Maeander was an ancient city of Anatolia, whose remains are in the Sultanhisar district of Aydın Province of Turkey, 50 kilometres (31 mi) east of the Ionian city of Ephesus.

At one time it was reckoned as belonging Caria or Lydia, but under the Roman Empire it was within the province of Asia, which had Ephesus for capital, and the bishop of Nysa was thus a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Ephesus.

In Greek mythology, Dionysus, the god of wine was born or raised in Nysa or Nyssa (Ancient Greek: Νύσα or Νύσσα), a name that was consequently given to many towns in all parts of the world associated with cultivation of grapes. The name "Nysa" is mentioned in Homer's Iliad (Book 6.132-133), which refers to a hero named Lycurgus, "who once drove the nursing mothers of wine-crazed Dionysus over the sacred mountains of Nysa". But the city on the Maeander was named instead for Nysa, a wife of Antiochus I Soter, who reigned from 281 to 261 BC and founded the city on the site of an earlier town called Athymbra (Ancient Greek Ἄθυμβρα), a name that continued in use until the second half of the 3rd century BC, but not in the earliest coinage of Nysa, which is of the next century.

The geographer Strabo began his studies under the rhetorician Aristodemus of Nysa the Younger, a grandson of the famous Posidonius, whose influence is manifest in Strabo's Geography. Nysa was then a centre of study that specialized in Homeric literature and the interpretation of epics.