Pamphylia (a narrow strip of land in southern Anatolia that curves along the Mediterranean between Cilicia and Lycia) belongs to the satrapy of the Sea Peoples (and its successors) during the fifth century, but its cities are allowed to issue their own coinage.
The Pamphylians, a mixture of aboriginal inhabitants, immigrant Cilicians, and Greeks, have never acquired great political significance and have run the gauntlet of Anatolian conquerors: Phrygians, Lydians, Persians.
Although Aeolian Greeks had founded the city of Side (modern Selimiye), Pamphylia's principal city and port, its citizens speak a peculiar non-Greek language.
Cimon, as leader of an allied fleet of two hundred ships, routs the much larger Phoenician fleet near the mouth of the River Eurymedon in Pamphylia in about 467, destroying or capturing the entire Persian fleet of two hundred triremes, manned by Phoenicians.
He subsequently defeats the King's forces on land, sacking their army camp, and routing their Cyprian reinforcements, thus gravely weakening Persian control over the eastern Mediterranean.
