- published: 26 Apr 2016
- views: 449
Alinda (Ἄλινδα) was an ancient inland city of Caria in Anatolia. It is situated on a hilltop which commands the modern-day town of Karpuzlu, Aydın Province, in western Turkey, and overlooks a fertile plain.
Alinda could have been an important city since the second millennium BC and has been associated with Ialanti that appears in Hittite sources (J. Garstang, p. 179).
It was this fortress which was held by the exiled Carian Queen Ada. She greeted Alexander the Great here in 334 BC.
The city could have been renamed "Alexandria by the Latmos" shortly afterwards, and was recorded as thus by Stephanus of Byzantium, although different sources raise different possibilities as to the exact location of the settlement of that name. The prior name of Alinda was restored by at least 81 BC. It appears as "Alinda" in Ptolemy's Geographia (Book V, ch. 2) of the 2nd century AD.
Alinda remained an important commercial city; minting its own coins from the third century BC to the 3rd century AD. Stephanus records that the city had a temple of Apollo containing a statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles.
Rain the rains of a lost angel's day.
Her face washed over and over, again and
again;
Tears of sadness, tears of pain coloured red:
Our love dissolved by lacerating drops of
insanity,
Our unity, creating universes:
An opened circle, broken symbol.
The rains of Saturn are falling in my heart,
As tears of melancholy breed infinite dreams,
And the watery star pours its light into me.
The melopoea of the birds,
Musical death of paradise,
Altered the moving of the spheres.
The magic of their voices awakens
The nostalgy of the place out of reach
We visioned in a dream.
But the dark is drawing in their beauty,
And for them I would steal the light
From the glorious fountain of day...
Were I to be what I longed to be.
Under a crimson sky,
I open my wounds, I am the chalice
I offer up the ruby wine of the Sun,
And golden dust studs my mystical face.
Drain me to the dregs, you, Keepers of Truth,
You, Guardians of Beauty!
The birds of dawn cry the departure of light,
(the anthem of a fading sun)
The swans, weeping on the lake, glide in harmony
With the swaying of the sinful waves.
Fly the doves, bewitched by the fragrance of
my thoughts
For I am the sea of dreary tears
And not the foam seeking shelter on heavenly
shores.
As the birds vanish and pervade the azure
pure, They hide the sun with their enshadowed
wings.
Dolorem nostram tulit,
All my crying, the fears, the grieves, the pains,
Supplicium nostrum fert.
The hurting tears on the shores of time.
Dolorem nostram tulit,
The flowers of mercy they have given to me
Supplicium nostrum fert.
Cannot satisfy all my sorrow and pain.
Ab omnibus despectus,
Aeterno repudiatus,
Es angelus curarum,
Tristitia adfectus,
Fers luctum atque curam.
The birds of dawn.
Their chant resounds in me
As howling voices echoed under a vault
In the cathedral of sorrows and mysteries
Their death has built within my self.