Doliche

Doliche

A titular see of Commagene (Augusto-Euphratesia). It was a small city on the road from Germanicia to Zeugma (Ptolemy, V, 15, 10; Itiner. Anton., 184, 189, 191, 194; Tab. Peuting.), famous for its temple of Zeus Dolichenus; it struck its own coins from Marcus Aurelius to Caracalla. The ruins stand at Tell Dülük, three miles northwest of Aintab, in the vilayet of Aleppo. Doliche was at an early date an episcopal see suffragan of Hierapolis (Mabboug, Membidj). Lequien (Or. Christ., II, 937) mentions eight Greek bishops: Archelaus, present at Nicaea in 325, and at Antioch in 341; Olympius at Sardica in 344; Cyrion at Seleucia in 359; Maris at Constantinople in 381; Abibus, a Nestorian, in 431, deposed in 434; Athanasius, his successor; Timothy, a correspondent of Theodoret, present at Antioch in 444 and at Chalcedon in 451; Philoxenus, a nephew of the celebrated Philoxenus of Hierapolis, deposed as a Severian in 518, reinstated in 533 (Brooks, The sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, London, 1904, II, 89, 90, 345-350, 352). The see figures in the first "Notitia Episcopatuum" ed. Parthey, about 840. At a later time Doliche took the place of Hierapolis as metropolis (Vailhé, in Echos d'Orient, X, 94 sqq. and 367 sqq.). For a list of fourteen Jacobite Bishops of Doliche (eighth to ninth century), see "Revue de l'Orient chrétien", VI, 195.

S. PÉTRIDÈS