Reestablishment of the City
The Dream of Alexander the Great
The people of Izmir, who will settle on the slopes of the Pagos Hill (Kadifekale) located by the Sacred Meles River, will be four times happier than before. This prophecy, which led to the reconstruction of Izmir along the Kadifekale-Kemeraltı axis in the late 4th century BC, was taken after a dream of Alexander the Great. According to the account of the ancient writer Pausanias, Alexander the Great, exhausted while hunting in the Sacred Grove of Nemesis, fell asleep under a tall plane tree. In his dream, he saw two Nemeses, who told Alexander the Great to rebuild the city on the Pagos Hill where he fell asleep. Following this, Alexander the Great consulted the meaning of his dream at the Apollo Clarios Sacred Grove (Ahmetbeyli Village, Izmir), one of the most famous prophecy centers of the time. The giving of the aforementioned prophecy facilitated the establishment of a new city on the slopes of Pagos. After Alexander the Great left Izmir, the city was rebuilt in its new location at the foot of Kadifekale by his commanders, first by Antigonus Monophthalmus and then by Lysimachus. Smyrna, after its reestablishment, would compete with the famous cities of Western Anatolia such as Ephesus (Efes) and Pergamon (Bergama) in the following centuries, surpassing them in wealth and size during the Late Roman Period.
