Historians mention that the Greek side won the battle between the Greeks and the Persians, known as the Battle of Eurymedon, which took place in 467 BC on the banks of the river flowing near the city. Although Aspendos tried to resist Alexander the Great by fraudulent means, they eventually surrendered and accepted the tax debt in return for the famous horses and gold raised in the city.
The ruins of Olympos that have survived to the present day are generally located at the mouth and on both sides of a river that flows rapidly from east to west towards the sea. In the ancient period, the river bed dividing the city in two was enclosed in a canal and both sides were used as piers and connected to each other by a bridge. Today, one leg of the bridge is still standing.
Side became a settlement centre in the VII century BC. In the VI century BC, it came under the sovereignty of the Lydian Kingdom together with the whole Pamphylia, and after the fall of the Lydian Kingdom in 547/46, it came under the rule of the Persians. The city, which preserved its freedom to some extent during this period, minted coins in its own name. Side, which opened its doors to the Macedonian king without any resistance during the Anatolian campaign of Alexander the Great (334 BC), later became one of the great coin minting centres established by Alexander.
