Kefken & Kerpe

Around 400 BC, ten thousand Greek mercenaries who had escaped alive from the depths of the Persian lands came to a harbor as they made their way west along the Black Sea coast. Xenophon, one of their leaders, describes this harbor in his ‘Anabasis’ with such admiration that, reading it, you can’t help feeling you are listening not to a commander but to someone showing a home-seeker a place to settle: plenty of water, fertile soil, a sheltered headland reaching into the sea, everything one could want for founding a city… The harbor was called Calpe; today we call it Kerpe.