The sanctuary of Zeus at Labraunda and the legacy of the Hekatomnids who built it in the fourth century BC were clearly of vital interest to Mylasa over a century later. This is clear through the use of the sanctuary, the iconography on coinage, and even the local naming practices. The question however is why this democratic city, which only a generation before had denounced the “tyranny” of the past, instead clung to its memory. With the help of Actor-Network Theory, the monumental architecture is interpreted together with epigraphic, numismatic, and onomastic evidence, and even the magnificent view, as artifacts in a web of associations that was exploited by the polis to stake its claims to the sanctuary. Unraveling this web reveals how Mylasa switched between past and present as it deployed a strategy of social memory management to negotiate its own political identity through the sanctuary and cult of Zeus Labraundos.