Clazomenae

Clazomenae

A titular see of Asia Minor. The city had been first founded on the southern shore of the Ionian Sea (now Gulf of Smyrna), about 15 miles from Smyrna; it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian Confederation, and reached the acme of its importance under the Lydian kings. After the death of Croesus its inhabitants, through fear of the Persians, took refuge on the island opposite their town (today St. John's Isle), which was joined to the mainland by Alexander the Great; the pier has been restored and is yet used as means of communication between the modern Vourla and the island, on which there is now an important quarantine hospital. Clazomenae is the birthplace of the philosophers Hermotimus and Anaxagoras. The see was a suffragan Ephesus. Lequien (I, 729) mentions two bishops: Eusebius, present at Ephesus and chalcedon, in 431 and 451; and Macarius, at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, in 869. When Smyrna was raised to the rank of a metropolis (perhaps as early as the sixth century) Clazomenae was attached to it, as is shown by Parthey's "Notitiae", 3 and 10. In 1387 it was given again to Ephesus by a synodal act of the patriarch Nilus (Miklosich and Müller, "Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopol.", II, 103). After this date there is no apparent trace of its history; nothing remains of the city except the ancient pier.

S. PÉTRIDÈS