MILETUS. - A city located on the coast of Asia Minor near the mouths of the Meander. Inhabited already in prehistoric times, it was occupied by Greek colonists at least from 1000 B.C., becoming an agricultural center of great importance from the 8th to the 6th century. Subdued by Croesus and then by Cyrus, it rebelled in the Greek war and in 494 was destroyed by the victorious Persians.
In 479 it was rebuilt, but farther east, on the plain, compared with its ancient position, in a locality called today Kalabak-Tepe, according to a very precise town plan. In 478-477 it joined the Delian League and from 412 to 334 it fell again under Persian rule. Under the Seleucids it returned to flourish and under the Romans it had a prosperous life. Notable public buildings were erected, such as the temple of Apollo, the baths, the fountain, the theater, etc., of which several ruins remain. It was at this time that St. Paul stayed there, the first time during the third journey (Acts 20:15-18), when he gathered there the leaders of the Church of Ephesus, and the other, it seems, after his first imprisonment (2 Tim 4:22), when he left there his companion Trophimus. In the Christian period it had a bishopric and traces remain of the ancient Cathedral with a mosaic floor with geometric and animal designs. Two inscriptions recall the martyr Onesiphorus and the cult of the seven guardian angels of the city. Around M. there was a center of monastic life, in which the monastery of Latmos predominates.
Bibliography2 works
Bellarmino Bagatti
CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY
Although the city had lost the very great importance it had had in the Hellenistic period and had partly retained during the Roman one, it was anything but negligible during the first Christian centuries, thanks to its fortunate geographical position, which always made it a commercial center, with the consequent attraction of foreign colonies. The Jewish one was important (the remains of a synagogue have survived to the present day), from which the Christian community was born. A bishop Eusebios is known in 325, and at the time of Justinian there is a mention of the existence of an archbishopric.
The most important Christian monument is a large Basilica with three naves with many annexed rooms, probably rising on the ruins of the Asklepieion. The church is preceded by a square atrium with a portico supported by columns and having in the middle still the traces of a cantharus: from the atrium one enters directly into the church, which lacks a narthex. The three naves are divided by two rows of double columns; there must have been an ambo, probably in the middle of the central nave. There was a single semicircular apse, externally reinforced by buttresses. From two doors opening at the ends of the side naves one entered a semi-annular room, which ran around the apse and whose liturgical function is unknown. To the north of the apse there is a square room surrounded on three sides by a passage, probably a baptistery. From a door opened in the southern side nave one enters a rectangular room as long as the side nave itself and communicating to the east with a rotunda with six niches, probably a martyrion. There are other secondary rooms. The floor is largely of marble slabs and mosaics, partly with geometric and decorative motifs, but partly also with figures of animals: notable is that of the baptistery with the scene of two deer drinking from a cantharus. Much later is a church to the northwest of the northern market, built in the 6th century, under the patriarch Kiriakos (595-606), the Roman priest of the great church (Hagia Sophia) of Constantinople and by a George, as an inscription says. The church, likewise with three naves, was dedicated to the archangel Michael. A third church, but with a central plan, also stood in the city: it was a large rotunda with four large niches and a small apse, all enclosed in a masonry structure having externally a square layout. Inside there was a ring of eight columns which must have supported a dome. The diameter of the rotunda is almost eleven meters: it was probably a martyrion. Outside the city, on the road toward Didyma, the remains of a fourth church were found, likewise a basilica with three naves but with three apses, decorated with interesting floor mosaics and which, according to an inscription, was erected by the priest and steward Noymechios: it seems that around it there were monastic buildings. It was dedicated to an unnamed archangel. Among the many Christian inscriptions of the city the only notable one is that of the Byzantine period, found near the theater, invoking the seven archangels as protectors of the city: notable is this diffusion in M. of the cult of the archangels.