Arch of Modestus, Patara, Turkey. (photo)

Patara's best-preserved monument, located on the southeastern side of Tepecik hill. 10 metres high, 19 metres length and 2.5 metres wide. Inscriptions reveal that "the people of Patara, the metropolis of the Lycian people" built it and that it was constructed to honour the highest ranking administrator of Patara around 100 AD. That man was C. Trebonius Proculus Mettius Modestus, the first governor general of Lyica and Pamphylia. The arch has twelve consoles, six on each side, and portrait busts of Modestus and his family were placed on them. Said to have been founded by Patarus, a son of Apollo, Patara (Lycian: Pttara), later renamed Arsinoe (Greek: Ἀρσινόη), was a flourishing maritime and commercial city on the south-west coast of Lycia on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey near the modern small town of Gelemiş, in Antalya Province.