In the first part of our trip with Koray, after being teleported to the sun, we said to go back and continue to visit ancient sites and we arrived at the place called Apollo Smintheus. This place is on the lower side of a village called Gülpınar and it has a very interesting story.
The word 'smintheion', which gives its name to this place, means mouse. You know Apollo; He's the manager of the Athena band that we met on our trip last year and moved to Istanbul 'cause they thinking that the place was in is very ancient. In our interviews with the local people, we come across this disagreement at the root of the mouse issue. The event develops as follows: The Athena band, which finds the scene in Assos too ancient, complains to Apollon about this situation. Apollon, who was running an olive oil factory in this region at that time, says that this was nonsense, that everywhere was formed as antiquity here, and that what awaits them in Istanbul is a bigger Byzantine antiquity. While the discussions were going on, there were rats everywhere, as it was very ancient at that time. Realizing that they cannot fight with so many mice, Athena takes their instruments and flies to Istanbul. This is the reason for the mouse figures on the steps of the temple. The local people are naturally afraid of the fact that a man who deals with olive oil has such powers and said to Apollo, "Brother, don't deal with such things. You're a retired man. Look, you opened your factory, be in your work." they are trying to calm him down.
When the first excavations here started in 1866, the story was partially revealed, but when Apollon decided to enlarge the olive oil factory, the excavations in the ancient city couldn't continue. In 1982, when Apollo retired and moved to Greece, these structures and the story took their present form.
16 September '20
