Miletopolis

Miletopolis

A titular see of Asia Minor, suffragan of Cyzicus. Miletopolis was a town north of Mysia, at the confluence of the Macestus and the Rhyndacus, west of Lake Miletopolitis Limne. There seems to have been a tribe there, called Milatæ, of which Miletopolis was the chief town and whose name was hellenized in order to suggest a colony from Miletus. Nothing is known of the history of Miletopolis except that its inhabitants served to colonize the city of Gargara. It has been identified with Bali-Kesser, Manias, Mikhalitch; but the first two identifications are certainly erroneous and the third doubtful. It was more probably located at Hammamli, in the vilayet of Brusa, where the remains of an ancient town can be seen. Miletopolis figures in the "Notitiæ episcopatuum" among the suffragan sees of Cyzicus until the twelfth or thirteenth century; toward the end of the twelfth it was united with the See of Lopadium, as an archbishopric and later as metropolis. Le Quien (Oriens Christ., I, 779) gives the names of some twelve bishops of Miletopolis; the first is Philetus, a contemporary of St. Parthenius, Bishop of Lampsacus, born at Miletopolis, in the beginning of the fourth century.

HAMILTON, Researches, I, 81; II, 91; SMITH, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, s. v.; RAMSAY, Asia Minor, 159.

S. PÉTRIDÈS.