Nora (Cappadocia)

Nora was a mountain fortress and town of ancient Cappadocia, on the frontiers of Lycaonia, at the foot of Mount Taurus. It is best known from the winter of 319 BC, when the general Eumenes was besieged there for a whole winter by Antigonus before he escaped. In the time of the geographer Strabo it was called Neroassus or Neroassos, and it served as a treasury to Sicinus, who was striving to obtain the sovereignty of Cappadocia. The site is only tentatively located, near Gelin tepe in Aksaray Province, Turkey, on a small mound about 3.5 kilometres east of the modern town of Güzelyurt and behind the village of Sivrihisar. The entry rests on an older gazetteer of Greek and Roman geography, so it records the ancient references and the proposed location, and states the uncertainty of the identification plainly rather than adding detail the source does not give.