In ancient times, if the royal consorts had been faithful, the siege would indeed have needed to last ten years.

--Bonnard, French poet

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"Everybody pose, I'm going to take a picture!" A tour guide dressed in ethnic attire stood in front of a tripod camera and danced around.

A few tourists from various countries were all of a sudden smiling and stood in front of the ruins of a colonnade, ready to leave some visual record of their trip.

It was the evening of October 18, 2013, in Giresun, a small town on Turkey's northeastern border that borders the Black Sea and is a bit of a tourist attraction, with rolling hills and valleys, a rough coastline, and lush cherry and hazelnut trees, it has a quieter, more rural beauty than the sunny Crimea, which is famous for its warm sunshine on the other side of the Black Sea.

Just as the tour guide was about to press the shutter, he angrily nuzzled his mouth, and saw the young man in the group of tourists who was never quite in tune with the rules and regulations, the man was about twenty years old, one meter seventy-five or so, from East Asia, with black glasses and black hair, gray casual jacket, long and unruffled hair, with a pair of black-rimmed glasses, the standard college student's appearance. At this moment, the man as if he did not hear the tour guide's invitation to take a picture, is standing alone in front of a dozens of meters high cliff, with his back to everyone, tilting his head and gazing at this cliff, pondering.

"This guest, please come and have your picture taken, when it's over we'll be boarding the bus and heading to our hotel in the city to rest." The tour guide, though not in pain, politely stepped forward and walked over to the man.

Out of curiosity, other tourists flocked to this cliff, whose section was in fact a colossal statue, an extremely common sight in Asia Minor--Anatolia, which, as the famous Turkish poet has said, "is like the head of a beautiful mare, which has galloped from distant Asia and plunged headlong into the azure Mediterranean. "This region is like the head of a beautiful mare, which has galloped from distant Asia and plunged headlong into the blue Mediterranean Sea." If we compare it to the palm of a hand, the wrist is the towering peaks of eastern Asia, the inwardly curved thumb is the Taurus Mountains, the center of the palm is the undulating plateau and salt lakes, the further west the terrain becomes more gentle, is the dense concentration of cities and towns, and ultimately the fingers are the rivers that gently reach into the Aegean Sea. The head of Asia, the belly of Europe, where countless men or empires have left their footprints, the chariots of the Hittites, the kings of Lydia, the philosophers of Greece, the emperors of Persia, the eagle-flags of Rome, the monks of Byzantium, the shepherds of Turkey, and, according to the pronouncement of Sir Hamilton, of the Royal Geological Society, in the middle of the nineteenth century - "Anatolia, even in the smallest piece of it, has monuments."

See guests are up, the guide will look at the statue: a tall man image, with stretching like a scorpion ao crown, full of military attire, holding a strange scepter in the hand, under the foot of the intentionally reduced treatment of the soldiers group bas-reliefs, or riding a horse, or holding a spear and carrying a bow, line up, to the direction of the man's scepter pointing to charge ... ... the whole sculpture gives a sense of the majesty of the emperor and oppressive feeling. ...The whole sculpture, giving people a kind of emperor's majesty and oppression.

"Oh, pay attention everyone, this is the legendary relief of Alexander." The expressive tour guide, in passing, began to explain again with his hands in the air.

"No, it's not an Alexandrian relief at all." The young man turned around and vetoed the tour guide, which was extremely embarrassing for the other man, but before the other man could defend himself, the man pushed down the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and with an expression of pride, he spoke in a succession of words in fluent Turkish: "All the statues of Alexander the Great that exist in the world are the images of young men with no beards, but the owner of this sculpture was full of a beard tied in a braid, the standard Indo-European But his armor, including the military weapons of the soldiers in relief, is a mixture of Greek Corinthian and Persian styles - and look at his scepter!"

All the tourists were attracted by the man's words and couldn't help but look in the direction of his finger, which made the tour guide even more embarrassed, "At the top of this scepter, it's a sun, and there's also an inscription on it - Mithra, Mithra, that's right, it's the name of the Persian sun god, and this is Mithra which is also known as the god's descendant, can only have a scepter. So the owner of this bas-relief is-"

The man exhaled, paused, and then said, word for word, "It was in the first century B.C., the *** monarch of the Black Sea, the arch-enemy of the Roman Republic, the self-proclaimed descendant of Darius of Persia, and the leader of the Hellenic state of Bendu, Mithradates VI!"

Next, he continued quickly, "That's right, Gireson, the ancient Greeks called this place Calabi, meaning the mountain range where cherry trees bloomed, and the Romans called it the City of the Friends of the Gods, meaning that it was filled with temples. King Mithradates of Bendu converted this place into his palace, and the place where everyone's feet are located was originally a vast palace, hunting park with camping plugs ......"

The tourists were stuck in a pause before this excited man, these people even domestic tourists, the cognition is limited to the pressure mountain, Gurus and so few, what is Mitradati? They quickly lost interest, and one of the fat women raised her hand and said to the guide, "Is it time to go down the hill and dine at the hotel?"

Now, it was the guide's turn to smile at the man as if in mockery and ask, "The guest is here for archaeology?"

The man college student ran his hand through his hair, spoiling for a fight, and said, "I'm a Chinese student at X University, my name is Li Bida, and I'm majoring in Linguistics."

That tour guide shrugged, slapped his hands, and turned to the other tourists, "Let's go to the bus and get on the bus to meet up first, maybe Mr. Lee would like to stay here for five more minutes to continue exchanging ideas with whatever Mithra is." The surrounding tourists smiled a few times and left the cliff.

Leaving Li Bida alone, still wandering in place, the evening wind, the light of the setting sun slowly covered to this valley, the mutilated piers, bas-reliefs gilded, the air is filled with a cool flavor. At this moment, Li Bida found that suddenly the giant statue of Mithradates, holding the scepter of the Sun God, the top of the sun symbol, seems to be not ordinary stone carved, reflecting the setting sun, flashing an extremely dazzling light, the light convergence into the hair scattered columns of light, so that Li Bida could not open his eyes, soon this light went to Li Bida's body, shrouded him, before he had the time to be surprised, his body was transformed into a billion particles of children! that drifted away without a trace!

Five minutes later, the impatient guide grunted, walked under the cliff where Lippitta had just stood, and then gasped in amazement, his mouth wide open.

Below the cliff, Li Bida was nowhere to be seen, not even a hair left, no trace of him for miles around, only a streak of clothes, pants, wristwatches, that guide trembled, ran his hand through the pile of clothes, only to pick up a pair of glasses, black framed-the shadows of twilight gradually covered the canyon, and the surroundings were filled with an indefinable eeriness .

A few days later, Lippitta, became one of the more than 5,000 travelers on the list of those who go missing in Asia Minor each year.