According to Greek mythology, it was said to have been founded by Agamemnon, and to have been peopled with the remnants of his army; it contained a temple of Artemis Munychia.

[11] Silver and bronze coins dated to the 4th century BCE bearing the legends «ΦΥΓΑΛΕΩΝ» or «ΦΥΓ» are attributed to the town.

[12] Harpocration wrote that according to Theopompos it took its name when some of the men with Agamemnon stayed there on account of a disease to do with their buttocks (pygai, πυγαί).

[14] The folk etymology is, of course, ridiculous, as it was always meant to be, in the tradition of naming subject places and peoples with derogatory exonyms.

It does have a bronze-age history (see below) under the Hittite name of Piggaya, which, if too early for the Carian language, at least was Anatolian, probably Luwian, as the place then would have been in Arzawa.