Heroon of Trysa
Trysa, Lycia, Turkey
~380 BCE
The Heroon is a set of four walls, decorated with reliefs of Greek and Lycian heroic tales. The walls originally stood on a mountain peak in southern Turkey, a bit northeast of the island of Rhodes, and enclosed the burial site of a Lycian hero prince-a hero being a leader capable of supernatural deeds
The walls average 9 feet in height, and 66 by 78 feet in length and are decorated with two rows of reliefs, one above the other. Nearly 85 percent of the frieze reliefs survived the centuries.
The Heroon is one of the most important relief monuments of classical art. Unique to this work and little known is that Lycian heroic episodes are intertwined with similar Greek stories in the depictions. For example, the story of Bellerophon, the Corinthian hero, who refused the advances of the wife of King Proetus of Argos. An angry Proetus (who questioned Bellerophon's innocence) sent him to his father-in-law Iobates in Lycia who then gave him a dangerous mission-to kill the Chimera.