A goddess clothed in history

The infamous statue of a naked Aphrodite lured tourists to the city of Cnidus in ancient times. Barnaby Rogerson finds there is still something to cherish among the ruins

Lucian was here some 2,000 years before us, with his wisecracks and casual impieties. Such a well-travelled man, such an amusing and prolific writer; he was so much talked about and quoted during our exploration of the ruins that he seemed part of our party. We felt certain that his ghost approved of the seaside taverna that stands on the ruins of Cnidus. For we were as earnest about lunch as archaeology.

The taverna table groaned with plates of meze and chilled bottles of Villa Doluca (thevin de table of Turkey). From my chair in the shade, I looked around. One travelling companion was sketching, another was reading, and a third was texting Washington DC, while his wife dutifully tested herself on classical Arabic root-forms. My two daughters were rolling in the dust with six puppies and a cherubic Turkish boy. Melissa and Rose were checking out the fish in the kitchen. They returned triumphant. The eyes were bright and the gills were red. The first batch was placed on the charcoal brazier and, without a word, the nine chairs around our table were filled.

Lucian had travelled to the city of Cnidus with just two friends, Charicles and Callicratidas. The trio had been drawn to Cnidus, as we had, by the world's most celebrated statue of the goddess of love: Aphrodite. They had an easier time of it than we did. Cnidus was then at the crossroads of the world's shipping routes.

The city breathed trade; its double harbour remained open in all weathers. Cnidus was also right in the middle of the Roman tourist route. From here you could tick off three wonders of the world in almost as many days. The Colossus of Rhodes was a day's sail south, the great, steep-stepped pyramid of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus a day north, while beyond it beckoned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.

We endured a cramped charter flight to Rhodes followed by a few days unwinding on the Greek island; a ferry journey to Turkish Marmaris; a failed attempt to reach the city by hire car the next day, ending with a stop-over in a pension. Today we had chartered a boat. It was the right way to arrive at Cnidus. As we approached the harbour, its ancient walls and towers suddenly emerged into clear focus out of a backdrop of same-coloured limestone.

Our captain pointed out the rock-cut ledge from where, in the 1850s, the British had taken the great lion of Cnidus that now dominates the Great Court of the British Museum. They had also carted away the half-exposed cult statue of Demeter from her hilltop shrine, in one of the several hundred cases of statuary bound for London.

Once ashore we scrambled across the ruts and trenches left by more than a century of archaeological digs. Hopping across fallen masonry, we were continually distracted from finding Aphrodite's temple by Byzantine apses.

Lucian, Charicles and Callicratidas would not have been so encumbered. The city of Cnidus had been laid out on a regular grid of streets, with great staircases climbing up the formal terraced slopes. Strabo records the city glittering like a giant theatre that reached up to the fortress on the Acropolis. Where we saw the Agora as a thistle field, Lucian would have seen a magnificent marble playing field for oratory, a vast, column-enclosed piazza at the centre of the city.

The Agora had been designed when Cnidus was a green-field site. The old city had been two days' row further down the coast. It was burdened with a troubled legacy of political ghosts: autocratic kings, greedy aristocrats and lost battles. So around the middle of the 4th century BC, the citizens, having just won themselves a democratic constitution, decided on a fresh start. They moved, lock, stock and barrel, to the headland site with its twin harbours.

To put new Cnidus on the map and honour the gods, they were in the market for the very best art that money could buy. It was, by happy coincidence, the perfect time for prestige acquisitions. The ateliers of all the great masters of Hellenistic sculpture – Praxiteles, Scopas and Bryaxis – were in full production. The city of Kos had commissioned an Aphrodite from Praxiteles, who shocked their "committee of taste" by sculpting the first ever naked goddess of love. They rejected it out of hand. Cnidus jumped at the chance. The city got a great work at a bargain price, plus a publicity campaign thrown in for free. As Pliny tells, people began to sail to Cnidus simply to see the statue. An innovative round temple was erected so that the naked Aphrodite could be admired in the round. This revolution in Greek architecture was copied, painted and talked about throughout the classical world.

It was the naked goddess that bought Lucian, Charicles and Callicratidas to Cnidus. The hillside shrine is perched on a corner, above the city but also right beside a sea cliff. Around the shrine clustered dozens of votive altars raised by admirals, emperors and lovers in honour of the goddess.

All we could see was the paved floor of the shrine, which had been excavated in 1969. A fallen capital and a fragment of column were the props with which to rebuild the round open-air sanctuary in our imagination. The statue has not been seen for 1,500 years. Rumours abound: that it was shipped to Constantinople, that it was burned by Christians in a lime kiln, or that it was reverently buried underground by the last priestess AD430.

Shortly after leaving the temple, Lucian and his two friends settled down to discuss which was purer: the love of a man for a boy or the love of a man for his wife. They all agreed that man's love for women was fatally compromised by the animal desire to procreate. It was not a decision to flatter Aphrodite. I wonder what harsh winds she provided for their onward voyage.