Page 170 - Sarpedon’dan Keykubad’a Bir Zamanlar Antalya

his daughter’s suitors, determined to marry his beloved daughter to
the person who deserved it, and announced that he would marry
his daughter to the young man who did the most useful work for
Aspendos in the competition. From that day forward, all the young
men who fell in love with Belkıs set out to do something for the city
of Aspendos in order to marry her. Poets wrote poems in the name
of the city, sculptors decorated it with monuments, gardeners dec-
orated it with rare and colourful flowers, architects built bridges and
fountains for the sake of obtaining the beautiful Belkıs.
The day came, the last day of the competition, and the governor
begins to wander around the city to see the works that had been
done. First, he listens to the poems of the poets, and then looks at
the statues and flowers in turn. Finally, the king, standing in front of
an aqueduct, decides that this building is the most useful building
for the city because it carries water to the city, and he decides to
give his daughter to the engineer İtalicus who built this aqueduct.
However, Belkıs fell in love with a young architect Zenon during the
competition, so she asked his father to see the building that he had
built.
Governor is surprised at this situation, but stil, he follows his
daughter to see the building. Governor, who came across a theater
building as his destination, climbed to the top step of the building
and examined the theater, but he kept the thought that the aqueduct
was a more useful structure still dominant in his mind. At this very
moment, the architect Zenon, who designed the building, whispers
to his friends in a corner, “Governor will give Belkıs to me”. However,
at that moment, when the governor heard this whisper of the archi-
tect from high above him, from the top step of the theater, he was
stunned and could not understand how a whisper could resonate
throughout the entire theater. Unable to figure out how the architect
Zenon designed this acoustic, the governor was fascinated by this
situation. On top of that, he declares that the building, which was
designed in a way that has never been seen before, accompanied
by this magnificent acoustics, was the most useful building for his
city, and that he will give his beautiful daughter to this young man.
The two young lovers were married in this theater. After that day, the
name of this precious building remains the Belkıs Theater.

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