Loryma is an ancient town and Roman Catholic titular see

Titular see

A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular bishop", "titular metropolitan", or "titular archbishop"....

 in the former Roman province

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

 of Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...

, in Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 (now Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

, Asian Turkey).

Loryma was a small fortified town and harbour on the coast of Caria, formerly in the Ottoman province (vilayet of Smyrna (present Izmir), not far from Cape Cynossema, at the western extremity of the peninsula known as Rhodian Chersonesus, opposite to and twenty Roman miles from Rhodes

Rhodes

Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...

 island.

Nothing is known of its ecclesiastical history, but William Martin Leake

William Martin Leake

William Martin Leake, FRS , British antiquarian and topographer, was born in London.After completing his education at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and spending four years in the West Indies as lieutenant of marine artillery, he was sent by the government to Constantinople to instruct the...

 (Asia Minor, 223) mentions its ruins: towers, tombs and ramparts, west of Port Aplothiki. The Notitiæ episcopatuum mentions Loryma among the suffragan sees of the Metropolitan of Stauropolis (also in Caria) up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Lequien (Oriens christianus, I, 915) names three bishops of Loryma: George, present at the Council of Constantinople

Third Council of Constantinople

The Third Council of Constantinople, counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and other Christian groups, met in 680/681 and condemned monoenergism and monothelitism as heretical and defined Jesus Christ as having two energies and two wills...

 in 680, Anthimus at the Council of Nicæa

Second Council of Nicaea

The Second Council of Nicaea is regarded as the Seventh Ecumenical Council by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic Churches and various other Western Christian groups...

 in 787 and Joseph at the Council of Constantinople in 879.

Citadel

Above the bay of Loryma (modern Bozuk Bükü) lies the ruins of a curtain wall surrounding the top of the hill. Constructed from large blocks of stone shaped in-situ, the remaining walls (mostly a metre high on the outside) retain very precise corners and sheer faces.

Literary references

In addition to the ancient sources noted below, the British traveler and writer Freya Stark

Freya Stark

Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs. Perowne, DBE was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels, which were mainly in Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan....

 visited Loryma and wrote concerning the historical significance of its sheltered harbor:

In the stillness of Loryma we spent the night. The wind could be heard howling outside, against the hills that enclosed our sheltered water as if it were a mountain tarn. Only a fanning ripple touched the centre. The sound of the wind, inarticulate and busy like the world’s voice, gave an illusion of safety, of an unassailable peace. If it could penetrate, how many sleeping echoes would it waken? Athenians from Samos, dodging the Dorian Cnidus, picking up ship’s tackle at Syme, sheltering at Loryma; Conon, before the battle, with his ninety ships; the Roman fleet that dared not face Hannibal in the offing; Cassius, gathering forces against Rhodes, twenty miles away. Each in their turn passed through the narrow opening and felt the sudden calm. In these places, the natural features have remained unaltered; the moments that visit them, fashioned to one pattern by nature itself, drop like beads on a string, through long pauses, one after the other, into the same silence. (The Lycian Shore, 1956)

Sources and references

• SMITH, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
• Ancient authors:
  • Strabo
    Strabo
    Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
    
    , XIV, 652
  • Ptolemy
    Ptolemy
    Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
    
    , V, 2, 8
  • Titus Livius, XXXVII, 17; XLV, 10