The literary sources are too few and too scant to give anything more than a general idea of the location of Marathesion, which is true of many ancient cities. More precise localization is typically the work of archaeology.
The Ephesus connection Pseudo-Skylax lists Marathesion as a place in
Lydia. The language is equivocal: "... Ephesos and port, Marathesion ...." Either Marathesion is in apposition to port, meaning it is the port of Ephesos, or Marathesion is in series, meaning Ephesos has some unknown port, but Marathesion is not part of it. Stephanos of Byzantium mentioning Marathesion says in a second sentence "It is a city of the Ephesians." By 300 BC Syrie was a hummock in the alluvial plain. Marshes had begun to build northward from Ephesos. By 200 BC it was no longer an oceanic port. The population could still reach the estuary via long streets to the NW. From that time matters went from bad to worse. The Ephesians fought to save their now river-port. They dredged the region frequently.
Nero had a canal built around the now non-navigable river. By 200 AD all vestiges of the port were gone. Ephesus had only two paths of approach: the estuary, and overland from the coast of north Ionia, the latter coming through what is now Kuşadası. A major issue in localization of the area is that the then toponym of Port Kuşadası is not known. It was the target of population transfer from Ephesus. As the capability of Ephesus to transfer people and goods with maximum efficiency decreased, the land approach became increasingly important. Ephesus went on through the later Roman Empire and Byzantine period as an important international city of the Christian faith. Inevitably in the 13th century the Greek name Nea Ephesos, "New Ephesus," begins to be used. The Venetians ruled the city then. They were making stand against the inroads of the Turks, which turned out to be the last stand. They called the port Latin Scala Nova, Italian Scala Nuova, "Newport." The coupling of the two suggest that the newness of Nea and Nova/Nuova means that Ephesus had a new port, rather than that it was inherited from any past toponym.
Scribal error in Strabo These toponyms of the 13th century introduced a confusion in subsequent scholarship, as
Strabo had already apparently used the term Neapolis. In his description of the coast of north Ionia he reports a geographic order of toponyms, south to north: Samos, Neapolis, Marathesium, Ephesus (Strabo 14.1.20). The Samians had once owned Marathesium, he said, but then exchanged it to Ephesus for Neapolis, which was closer to Samos. This Neapolis in the more recent centuries of travel writing seemed at first to be Scala Nuova, as is marked "Ancient Neapolis" on Admiralty Chart 1546. Ancient Neapolis cannot be Scala Nuova, as it is south of Marathesium, and not immediately before Ephesus. There is no other mention of this Neapolis anywhere.
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff had suggested in 1906 that Neapolis was a scribal error in Strabo's text. Instead of being interpreted as eita Neapolis, "and next Neapolis," the phrase should have been eit' Anea Polis, "and next Anea city." Neapolis disappears altogether and
Anea stands in its place, a known city south of Ambar Tepe on what was then the coast, now inland. Both Keil and Lohmann accepted this view. Lohmann proposed Ambar Tepe as the location of Marathesium. However, that choice leaves downtown Kuşadası without a toponym, if Scala Nuova can be assumed to be a settlement of the population of Ephesus. The question is not a new one. In 1717 the botanist,
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, published a three-volume account of an expedition he had made in the orient. In this account he visits Scalanova from Ephesus. His woodcut of the place shows the unmistakable outline of Kese Dağı and Pigeon Island without the causeway. Presumably Scalanova is the walled community bordering on the harbor and rising to the
col behind it. The hill itself is outside the wall, as is described by Keil. Pitton de Tournefort calls the hill "Cape Scalanova, which projects greatly into the sea." He is at a loss to explain the etymology of the name, calling it an "Italian name that the Franks gave to it perhaps after the destruction of Ephesus." By
Franks one must understand any European. Apparently the Venetians, who had their own Italic language must be Franks, or else Pitton de Tournefort was unaware of the Venetian hegemony. He suggests that Scalanova is a transcription of "the ancient name of Neapolis of the Milesians," but does not elucidate with any literary references. He identifies Scalanova with Turkish Cousada. ==Sources==