Karaburun in the mythological stories...         

Mimas...

Ever since ancient times the Karaburun Peninsula was stage to a number of extraordinary myhtological stories and other tales. In the classical Greek period and during the Roman period, the peninsula as well as its Bozdag range carried the name of “MİMAS”. The Karaburun Peninsula owns the name of “MİMAS” to the Greek mythology. The story goes that.....

The Goddess of the Earth, GAİA, had given birth to the GİGANTES (Giants), next to the Titans and a number of other children. The Giants, who numbered over hundred, were said to have been conceived from the blood their father Uranus shed over the earth after one of his sons, Chronos, had castrated him to free his mother Gaia from the burden of too frequent pregnancies. The most well known Giants were Porphyrion, Alcyoneus, Enceladus, Ephialtes, Eurytus, Clytius, Polybotes, Pallas, Hippolytus, Gration, Agrius, Thoas and Mimas.

The Giants were supernatural creatures, with a fearful appearance. Though they owned a humanlike body, they were covered with scales and their legs ended in a kind of lizard or snake like tail. They had shaggy hair and long beards. In their hairy hands they held long shiny spears. The Giants were extraordinarily strong. They were able to break huge rocks from the mountains and through them very far.

Although they were of divine origin, they were mortal or at least, in order to be killed they had to be hit simultaneously by a god and by a mortal. Other myths say that some Giants were immortal as long as they walked on the ground of their homeland.

The Giants were often visited by the Olympic gods who also participated in their banquets that were organized during celebrations when the Giants offered hecatombs to the gods. The gods liked the company of the Giants.

After a ten years lasting battle with the Olympians gods, the Titans had to surrender to Zeus and his family. Zeus punished them by sending them into the Tartarus which is laying deep under the earth and from where they never came out any more. Gaia, who was also Zeus’ grandmother,  was infuriated by what had happened to her children and stirred up the Giants to make war upon the Olympian gods.

Iris...

Iris was the winged goddess of the rainbow and also the messenger of the Olympic gods. Hera, the wife of the supreme god Zeus, tried to keep a watch over the love affairs her spouse was having with other goddesses, nymphae or mortal female beings by sitting on the highest places. But since, as the First Lady of the Olympus she had also other businesses to do, she called upon Iris to help her. 

One day Hera got notice that Zeus had left the goddess Leto pregnant, with whom he had got a love affair before marrying Hera. Furious about this new betrayal, Hera decided not to give any rest to Leto who was about to give birth to her twins Apollo and Artemis and she thus banned Leto from one place to another.  In order to keep an eye on Zeus and Leto, Hera asked Iris to go and sit high on the top of Mount Mimas so that she could look over the far flung islands and see what was happening. During her wandering for a suitable place to give birth to her twins, Leto also arrived on the Mimas Peninsula, where she was spotted be Iris and instantly driven away by Hera. Leto finally arrived on the island of Delos where, after long and painful labour, she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis.

(From this mythological story we can understand that the top of Mount Mimas was used by the Olympic gods as an observation-post. Today also the Bozdag range – Mimas with its ancient name – is equiped with modern radar and transmission equipment....)

Narcissus...

When talking about Karaburun, one automatically thinks of the marvelously well smelling white-yellow narcissus flowers which are growing throughout the peninsula in winter. These narcissi are cultivated by the villagers and collected during the months of December and January to be sold in the big cities where their refreshing smell fill the living-rooms.

According to some authors, the mythological story of the handsome young Narcissus, after whom the narcissus flower was named, took place on the slopes of Mount Mimas. Narcissus was born as the son of the River God Cephissus and the Nymph Liriope. The seer Tiresias predicted that “the child would live a long life on the condition that it would never see itself”. When Narcissus had become a young adolescent, his perfect beauty enflamed the hearts of all the nymphae and young girls. But Narcissus wasn’t paying attention to any of his admirers and passed the days by living a care-free and happy life hunting in the woods around Mount Mimas.

Echo, one of the nymphae fell in love with Narcissus and tried to attract his attention. But just like with all the other nymphae and young girls, Narcissus stayed uninterested to the efforts of Echo. Finally the poor Echo wasted away because of her unanswered love for Narcissus and her voice faded to a mere whisper. When the goddess Nemesis, who fought all exagerations, heard about the misfortune of Echo, she decided to punish Narcissus. So one day, while hunting, Narcissus bowed over a water well to quench his thirst. When he saw his own reflection in the water, he didn’t realize that it was his own image and fell deeply in love with whom he thought was a beautiful young boy.

Narcissus started to wander around looking for the deeply loved young boy and came every day to the well to contemplate the unreachable image of his beloved. Days passed, months passed and the love of Narcissus for this unknown young boy grew bigger and bigger. Finally Narcissus, devored by this unanswered love, lost all appetite and zest for living and died at the well where he had seen the picture for the first time. On the spot where his dead body laid, narcissus flowers started to grow as if they wanted to celebrate the perfect beauty of this unfortunate young adolescent with their lovely smell. Over the ages the narcissi have spread over the whole Karaburun Peninsula...