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Miletus
Miletus
N-7 on the Map
Ancient Miletus The city stood opposite the mouth of the Maeander and
was the most flourishing city of Asia Minor. The Bible mentions that in Paul's
3rd Missionary Journey he met with the elders of the Church of Ephesus at
Miletus in 57 AD (Acts 20:15–38).
Acts 20:15 -
And we sailed thence, and came the next [day] over against Chios; and the next
[day] we arrived at Samos, and tarried at Trogyllium; and the next [day] we came
to Miletus.
Acts 20:17 - And
from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the
church.
Miletus
Roman period. The New Testament mentions Miletus as the site where the
Apostle Paul in 57 CE met with the elders of the church of Ephesus near the
close of his Third Missionary Journey, as recorded in Acts of the Apostles (Acts
20:15–38). It is believed that Paul stopped by Great Harbour Monument and sat on
its steps. He may have met the Ephesian elders there and then bid them farewell
on the nearby beach. Miletus is also the city where Paul left Trophimus, one of
his travelling companions, to recover from an illness (2 Timothy 4:20). Because
this cannot be the same visit as Acts 20 (in which Trophimus accompanied Paul
all the way to Jerusalem, according to Acts 21:29), Paul must have made at least
one additional visit to Miletus, perhaps as late as 65 or 66 CE. Paul's previous
successful three-year ministry in nearby Ephesus resulted in the evangelization
of the entire province of Asia (see Acts 19:10, 20; 1 Corinthians 16:9). It is
safe to assume that at least by the time of the apostle's second visit to
Miletus, a fledgling Christian community was established in Miletus. (The
rendering of the King James Version of Malta as "Melita" in Acts 28:1 has
created confusion between Malta and Miletus among some readers of the Bible.)
- Wikipedia
Miletus. One of the greatest cities of Asia Minor. It belonged
territorially to Caria and politically to Ionia, being the southernmost of the
twelve cities of the Ionian confederacy. The city stood upon the southern
headland of the Sinus Latmicus, opposite to the mouth of the Maeander, and
possessed four distinct harbours, protected by a group of little islands; its
territory was rich in flocks, and the city was celebrated for its woollen
fabrics, the Milesia vellera. At a very early period it became a great maritime
State, and founded numerous colonies, especially on the shores of the Euxine.
Among these were Abydos, Tomi, Olbia, Cyzicus, and Odessus; and in Egypt,
Naucratis. It was the birthplace of the philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and
Anaximenes, and of the historians Cadmus and Hecataeus. It was the centre of the
great Ionian revolt against the Persians, after the suppression of which it was
destroyed (B.C. 494). (See Aristagoras; Histiaeus.) It recovered sufficient
importance to oppose a vain resistance to Alexander the Great, which brought
upon it a second ruin. Under the Roman Empire it still appears as a place of
some consequence. The earlier name of Miletus is said to have been Pityusa (??t???sa)
or Anactoria (??a?t???a). See Herod. i. 17-20, 141; vi. 6; Arrian, Anab. i. 18;
and Rayet and Thomas, Milet et le Golfe Latmique (Paris, 1877).
- Harry Thurston Peck. Harpers Dictionary
of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers. 1898.
Miletus MILE´TUS
MILE´TUS (Milesius), once the most flourishing city of Ionia, was situated on
the northern extremity of the peninsula formed, in the south-west of the
Latmicus Sinus, by Mount Grion. The city stood opposite the mouth of the
Maeander, from which its distance amounted to 80 stadia.
At the time when the Ionian colonies were planted on the coast of Asia Minor,
Miletus already existed as a town, and was inhabited, according to Herodotus
(1.146), by Carians, while Ephorus (ap. Strab. xiv. p.634) related that the
original inhabitants had been Leleges, and that afterwards Sarpedon introduced
Cretan settlers. The testimony of Herodotus is born out by the Homeric poems, in
which (Il. 2.867) Miletus is spoken of as a place of the Carians. That the place
was successively in the hands of different tribes, is intimated also by the fact
mentioned by Pliny (5.30), that the earlier names of Miletus were Lelegeďs,
Pityusa, and Anactoria. (Comp. Paus. 7.2.3; Steph. B. sub voce On the arrival of
the Ionians, Neleus, their leader, with a band of his followers, took forcible
possession of the town, massacred all the men, and took the women for their
wives,--an event to which certain social customs. regulating the intercourse
between the sexes, were traced by subsequent generations. It appears, however,
that Neleus did not occupy the ancient town itself, but built a new one on a
site somewhat nearer the sea. (Strab. l.c.) Tombs, fortifications, and other
remains, attributed to the ancient Leleges, were shown at Miletus as late as the
time of Strabo (xiv. p.611; comp. Hdt. 9.97). As in most other colonies the
Ionians had amalgamated with the ancient inhabitants of the country, the
Milesians were believed to be the purest representatives of the Ionians in Asia.
Owing to its excellent situation, and the convenience of four harbours, one of
which was capacious enough to contain a fleet, Miletus soon rose to a great
preponderance among the Ionian cities. It became the most powerful maritime and
commercial place; its ships sailed to every part of the Mediterranean, and even
into the Atlantic; but the Milesians turned their attention principally to the
Euxine, on the coasts of which, as well as elsewhere, they founded upwards of 75
colonies. (Plin. Nat. 5.31; Senec. Cons. ad Helv. 6; Strab. xiv. p.635; Athen.
12.523.) The most remarkable of these colonies were Abydos, Lampsacus, and
Parium, on the Hellespont; Proconnesus and Cyzicus on the Propontis ; Sinope and
Amisus on the Euxine; while others were founded in Thrace, the Crimea, and on
the Borysthenes. The period during which Miletus acquired this extraordinary
power and prosperity, was that between its occupation by the Ionians and its
conquest by the Persians, B.C. 494.
The history of Miletus, especially the earlier portion of it, is very obscure. A
tyrannis appears to have been established there at an early time; after the
overthrow of this tyrannis, we are told, the city was split into two factions,
one of which seems to have been an oligarchical and the other a democratic
party. (Plut. Quaest. Gr. 32.) The former gained the ascendant, but was obliged
to take extraordinary precautions to preserve it. On another occasion we hear of
a struggle between the wealthy citizens and the commonalty, accompanied with
horrible excesses of cruelty on both sides. (Athen. 12.524.) Herodotus (5.28)
also speaks of a civil war at Miletus, which lasted for two generations, and
reduced the people to great distress. It was at length terminated by the
mediation of the Persians, who seem to have committed the government to those
landowners who had shown the greatest moderation, or had kept aloof from the
contest of the parties. All these convulsions took place within the period in
which Miletus rose to the summit of her greatness as a maritime state. When the
kingdom of Lydia began its career of conquest, its rulers were naturally
attracted by the wealth and prosperity of Miletus. The first attempts to conquer
it were made by Ardys, and then by Sadyattes, who conquered the Milesians in two
engagements. After the death of Sadyattes, the war was continued by Alyattes,
who, however, concluded a peace, because he was taken ill in consequence, it was
believed, of his troops having burnt a temple of Athena in the territory of
Miletus. (Herod 1.17, &c.) At this time the city was governed by the tyrant
Thrasybulus, a friend of Periander of Corinth (Hdt. 5.92), and a crafty
politician. Subsequently Miletus seems to have concluded a treaty with Croesus,
whose sovereignty was recognised, and to whom tribute was paid.
After the conquest of Lydia by the Persians, Miletus entered into a similar
relation to Cyrus [2.356] as that in which it had stood to Croesus, and was
thereby saved from the calamities inflicted upon other Ionian cities. (Hdt.
1.141, &c.) In the reign of Darius, the Ionians allowed themselves to be
prevailed upon by Histiaeus and his unscrupulous kinsman and successor openly to
revolt against Persia, B.C. 500. Miletus having, in the person of its tyrant,
headed the expedition, had to pay a severe penalty for its rashness. After
repeated defeats in the field, the city was besieged by land and by sea, and
finally taken by storm B.C. 494. The city was plundered and its inhabitants
massacred, and the survivors were transplanted, by order of Darius, to a place
called Ampe, near the mouth of the Tigris. The town itself was given up to the
Carians. (Hdt. 6.6, &c.; Strab. xiv. p.635.)
The battle of Mycale, in B.C. 479, restored the freedom of Miletus, which soon
after joined the Athenian confederacy. But the days of its greatness and glory
were gone (Thuc. 1.15, 115, &c.); its ancient spirit of liberty, however, was
not, yet extinct, for, towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, Miletus threw
off the yoke imposed upon her by Athens. In a battle fought under the very walls
of their city, the Milesians defeated their opponents, and Phrynichus, the
Athenian admiral, abandoned the enterprise. (Thuc. 8.25, &c.) Not long after
this, the Milesians demolished a fort which the Persian Tissaphernes was
erecting in their territory, for the purpose of bringing them to subjection. (Thuc.
8.85.) In B.C. 334, when Alexander, on his Eastern expedition, appeared before
Miletus, the inhabitants, encouraged by the presence of a Persian army and fleet
stationed at Mycale, refused to submit to him. Upon this, Alexander immediately
commenced a vigorous attack upon the wails, and finally took the city by
assault. A part of it was destroyed on that occasion ; but Alexander pardoned
the surviving inhabitants, and granted them their liberty. (Arrian, Arr. Anab.
1.18, &c.; Strab. l.c.) After this time Miletus continued, indeed, to flourish
as a commercial place, but was only a second-rate town. In the war between the
Romans and Antiochus, Miletus sided with the former. (Liv. 37.16, 43.6.) The
city continued to enjoy some degree of prosperity at the time when Strabo wrote,
and even as late as the time of Pliny and Pausanias. (Comp. Tac. Ann. 4.63, 55.)
From the Acts (20.17), it appears that St. Paul stayed a few days there, on his
return from Macedonia and Troas. In the Christian times, Ephesus was the see of
a bishop, who occupied the first rank among the bishops of Caria; and in this
condition the town remained for several centuries (Hierocl. p. 687; Mich. Duc.
p. 14), until it was destroyed by the Turks and other barbarians.
Miletus, in its best days, consisted of an inner and an outer city, each of
which had its own fortifications (Arrian l.c.), while its harbours were
protected by the group of the Tragusaean islands in front of which Lade was the
largest. Great and beautiful as the city may have been, we have now no means of
forming any idea of its topography, since its site and its whole territory have
been changed by the deposits of the Maeander into a pestilential swamp, covering
the remains of the ancient city with water and mud. Chandler, and other
travellers not being aware of this change, mistook the ruins of Myus for those
of Miletus, and describe them as such. (Leake, Asia Minor, p. 239.) Great as
Miletus was as a commercial city, it is no less great in the history of Greek
literature, being the birthplace of the philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and
Anaximenes, and of the historians Cadmus and Hecataeus.
The Milesians, like the rest of the Ionians, were notorious for their
voluptuousness and effeminacy, though, at one time, they must have been brave
and warlike. Their manufactures of couches and other furniture were very
celebrated, and their woollen cloths and carpets were particularly esteemed. (Ath.
1. p. 28, xi. p. 428, 12.540, 553, 15.691; Verg. G. 3.306, 4.335; comp. Rambach,
De Mileto ejusque coloniis, Halae, 1790, 4°; Schroeder, Comment. de Rebus
Milesiorum, part i. Stralsund, 1817, 4°; Soldan, Rerum Milesiarum Comment. i.
Darmstadt, 1829, 4°.)
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Geography (1854) William Smith, LLD, Ed.