Mausolus

Turkish satrap (r. 377-353 b.c.e.)

• Born: Unknown
• Birthplace: Caria (now in Turkey)
• Died: 353 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Caria (now in Turkey)

Mausolus established a multinational empire in southwest Turkey, but he became much more famous for his tomb at Halicarnassas, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Early Life

Most information about Mausolus (maw-SOH-luhs) and his wife and sister Artemisia comes from various accounts dealing with the Seven Wonders of the World, a highly subjective compiling by Antipater of Sidon about 200 b.c.e. Artemisia built a huge and beautiful tomb for Mausolus in the capital city of the Carian Empire, Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey). This tomb, which survived for nearly eighteen hundred years, is the origin of the modern word “mausoleum.”

Mausolus was a Carian, a group known for its many acts of piracy in the eastern Mediterranean region. King Minos of Crete forced the Carians into the mainland of Turkey, where they founded the cities of Mylasa and Halicarnassus. Mylasa was the official capital, but Halicarnassus had a more favorable geographic position, being located at the Gulf of Cos. The latter city would always have a mystic (and mysterious) reputation, with the Greeks claiming it had been founded by a descendant of the god of the seas, Poseidon. Herodotus, arguably the first historian, called Halicarnassus home. About a century after its defeat by the Greeks, Persia began expanding westward again, and by 387 b.c.e. had subjugated almost all of Asia Minor, including Caria.

The Persians were not as brutal as most conquerors, and they allowed the native Carian leader, King Hecatomnas, to remain in power as their chosen representative, or satrap. He obediently collected Persian taxes and enforced Persian law, and in exchange for these services, Caria was granted substantial autonomy.

Hecatomnus died in 377 and was succeeded by his son Mausolus and daughter Artemisia, who were married to each other. The Persians installed Mausolus as Caria’s king and their agent, but, unlike his father, Mausolus was hugely dissatisfied by this arrangement. He wanted to free Caria of any Persian authority or influence, and through a campaign of intimidation, diplomacy, and war, he was able to do so.

Life’s Work

King Mausolus, once fully sovereign, began to build a thoroughly cosmopolitan empire that combined Carian, Persian, and Hellenic culture. Although not Hellenic by birth, the king seemed to be particularly influenced by Greek architecture, as judged by the proliferation of temples, monuments, theaters, and marketplaces built during his reign. He expanded his realm by conquering nearby Lycia and Ionia, in addition to a number of islands in the eastern Mediterranean region. Carian power and influence would never again approach the heights established by Mausolus during his twenty-four year reign.

The Carian monarch soon grew tired with his inherited capital city of Mylasa and longed for a metropolis far grander and more Hellenic. He therefore decided to move the capital to Halicarnassus, a city that enjoyed the additional advantages of being farther west and more easily protected. Even Halicarnassus, however, did not meet his standards or fulfill his dream, so Mausolus decided extensive rebuilding was necessary. He built a new palace for himself in a place that provided a clear view of the harbor. He also extended the walls of the city, thus making available room for all of his anticipated projects. He then fortified the harbor to make it safe from attack and built a water passageway, which led directly to the new palace. Mausolus could thus keep up to one hundred ships near his residence, an armada entirely invisible to any potential conquerors from the sea. Wanting a capital to rival Athens, he decided a larger population was needed. Accordingly, parks, museums, and theaters were built, making Halicarnassus a major cultural attraction. When this failed to produce the desired population, he simply coerced the inhabitants of Mylasa and surrounding areas to move to the new capital.

All of these undertakings required enormous amounts of money, and Mausolus felt bound by neither law nor ethics in how he raised it. Early in his reign, he promised the people of Mylasa a new protective city wall, an improvement for which they dutifully paid. Then he took the revenues and spent them on building up Halicarnassus. When the people of Mylasa complained, he blithely informed them that the gods forbade the building of the promised fortification. He raised money from the Lycians by telling them that Persia had ordered all of them to shave their heads to provide hair for wigs for the Persian aristocracy. The only way to avoid this unfortunate circumstance was to offer up a huge cash payment, which Mausolus would pass on to Persia. Of course, there had been no such decree, and this money was also used on Halicarnassus.

He was as unscrupulous in foreign affairs as he was in appropriations. He joined a growing rebellion against Persia in 374. This rebellion, strongly supported by Egypt, was widely successful and helped lead to Carian independence. The very next year, however, he joined a punitive expedition led by Persia against Egypt. He waged war mercilessly, attacking without provocation Miletus and Ephesus and in the Social War (356 b.c.e.) he used duplicity to convince Rhodes and other islands to shift their allegiance from Athens to Caria.

A vain man, Mausolus routinely described himself as a superior physical specimen. Such an entity certainly deserved an eternal resting spot that would produce awe and homage for centuries, a tomb second to none on earth. He certainly wanted a larger and more intricate tomb than that of the Persian king Darius, his despised eastern rival. The Carian tyrant’s goal was a burial place grander than any similar structure, more ornate than anything the Oriental world could offer and more stately than all Athenian structures.

Mausolus decided to place his tomb directly in the center of Halicarnassus, at the site where the capital’s two main roads intersected. Interestingly, Alexander the Great, in choosing his own gravesite in Alexandria, Egypt, later in the same century, would also choose an intersection as his grave and memorial. Mausolus was nothing if not a builder, constructing two harbors, new city walls, a fortressed arsenal, a marketplace, and a luxurious palace. In this respect, perhaps he was more Roman than either Greek or Persian. A tremendously costly enterprise, the building of the tomb was to be financed as the earlier enterprises had been: forced homage, deceit, and crushing taxes.

It is likely that the mammoth structure was begun before the death of Mausolus in 353 b.c.e. Artemisia was to be the driving force behind the erection of the great monument. So consumed was she by grief on the death of her husband and brother, she reputedly had some of his remains mixed with wine, an eerie concoction she then drank. She meticulously planned his grandiose funeral activities, which included poetry readings, great orations, and the ritualistic slaughter of sacrificial animals (mostly chickens, oxen, sheep, and lambs). Artemisia was to outlive Mausolus by only two years, a period of time dominated by the crushing of a rebellion in Rhodes, and primarily, the building of the tomb.

The most gifted of architects, the Greek Pythius, was commissioned for the final design, and the gifted artist Scopas was hired to lead a team of sculptors. Great progress was made on the tomb, but Artemisia’s unexpected death in 351 b.c.e. threw the completion of the structure into great doubt. Without the queen’s determination and adequate financing, it seemed the project might never be finished. The tomb, however, became a labor of love for the artisans constructing it, and they persevered. It was completed during the reign of Idreus, another son of Hecatomnus and Artemisia’s successor. Respected sources such as Pliny of Rome and Philo of Byzantium vividly described its grandeur, and Alexander the Great, who conquered the area only twenty years later, was mesmerized by the tomb’s beauty. Even thought he razed much of what Mausolus had built, he zealously protected the tomb.

The tomb measured 127 feet (39 meters) long and 108 feet (33 meters) in width. It was built on a leveled foundation with stone blocks held in place by metal clamps. A small hallway led to the burial chamber. On the foundation was a small series of steps leading to a rectangular basement area of stone and marble, which supported two contiguous friezes. A third frieze helped support a cella above it. The cella was surrounded by thirty-six Greek columns. Resting on the columns was a small pyramid, surmounted by a statue of life-sized horses pulling a chariot ridden by stone representations of Mausolus and Artemisia. The whole structure was adorned with stone carvings of gargoyles and real and mythical animals.

Amazingly, the tomb survived in good shape for more than eighteen centuries. At some point, an earthquake caused some of the artwork to collapse, including the statues of Mausolus and Artemisia. This wonder of the world, however, was tragically destroyed by human hands. A crusading Catholic order called the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem fled to Mecy, as Halicarnassus was then known, from eastern Turkey and the order’s mortal enemy, the Ottoman Turks in 1402. The knights decided to build a protective fortress, and they used the stones and marble of the tomb to build it. The new structure, the fortress of St. Peter, incorporated into its outer walls some of the tomb’s sculptured art. In 1542, the demolition was completed when the knights used what was left of the tomb to expand the fortress. All of this plundering was for naught, because the Ottomans soon captured the area anyway and again pushed the knights into exile. What the knights did not destroy was soon looted by thieves and pirates. The razing was so complete that only a century later few remembered exactly where the tomb had been.

Significance

King Mausolus of Caria is not one of the more famous historical figures. He was, however, something of a prototype for many subsequent leaders. Alexander the Great admired the Carian’s success on the battlefield, and city builders such as Roman emperor Constantine and Russia’s Peter the Great apparently were influenced by Mausolus’s great rebuilding of Halicarnassus.

The greatest contribution of Mausolus is, without doubt, his tomb. By the nineteenth century, many had come to believe it was entirely mythological. Charles Newton, an English diplomat and historian, believed the tomb to have been a reality and, accordingly, he began to excavate the Bodrum ruins in the 1850’s. With a large and well-financed expedition and with the approval of the English and Turkish governments, his efforts were hugely successful. Much artwork, toppled by the ancient earthquake, was rediscovered and shipped to the British Museum. Stairways, a foundation wall, a casket, and decorative jars were also uncovered. Thanks to the efforts of ancient writers and modern anthropologists, the location, size, style, and general appearance of the tomb are today largely known, and its awe-inspiring and majestic aura continues to influence those who erect government buildings, arenas, and, of course, mausoleums.

Bibliography

Banks, Edgar J. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916. Dr. Banks was an archaeologist who taught at the University of Chicago, and his book reads more like a dissertation or ethnography than a modern research work, but it is nevertheless a thoroughly detailed and outstanding source.

Müller, Arthur. The Seven Wonders of the World: Five Thousand Years of Culture and History in the Ancient World. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. As a written source, this work does not contribute much new information. It does provide a thorough description of Artemisia’s campaign against Rhodes after the death of Mausolus. The accompanying photographs of the tomb’s relics and the surrounding Bodrum countryside make this work worthwhile.

Romer, John, and Elizabeth Romer. The Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. This is an excellent source, and it provides some background to the building of Halicarnassus and the Hellenic penchant for the ritualistic slaughtering of animals.