Miletus

(Acts 20:15,17) less correctly called MILETUM in (2 Timothy 4:20) It lay on the coast, 36 miles to the south of Ephesus, a day's sail from Trogyllium. (Acts 20:15) Moreover, to those who are sailing from the north it is in the direct line for Cos. The site of Miletus has now receded ten miles from the coast, and even in the apostles' time it must have lost its strictly maritime position. Miletus was far more famous five hundred years before St. Paul's day than it ever became afterward. In early times it was the most flourishing city of the Ionian Greeks. In the natural order of events it was absorbed in the Persian empire. After a brief period of spirited independence, it received a blow from which it never recovered, in the siege conducted by Alexander when on his eastern campaign. But still it held, even through the Roman period, the rank of a second-rate trading town, and Strabo mentions its four harbors. At this time it was politically in the province of Asia, though Caria was the old ethnological name of the district in which it was situated. All that is left now is a small Turkish village called Melas , near the site of the ancient city.

Miletus

An ancient city, formerly the metropolis of all Ionia, situated on the western coast of Asia Minor, on the confines of Caria, just south of the mouth of the river Meander. It was the parent of many colonies, and was celebrated for a temple and oracle of Apollo Didymaeus, an as the birthplace of Thales, Anaximander, Democritus, and other famous men.

The apostle Paul, on his voyage from Macedonia toward Jerusalem, spent a day or two here, and held an affecting interview with the Christian elders of Ephesus, who at his summons came nearly thirty miles from the north to meet him, Acts 20:15-38. He also revisited Miletus after his first imprisonment at Rome, 2 Timothy 4:20. There were Christians and bishops there from the fifth to the eighth century; but the city has long been in ruins, and its exact site can hardly be determined, so much is the coast altered around the mouth of the Meander.

MILETUS

mi-le'-tus (Miletos): A famous early Ionian Greek city on the coast of Caria, near the mouth of the Meander River, which, according to Acts 20:15-21:1, and 2 Timothy 4:20 (the King James Version "Miletum"), Paul twice visited. In the earliest times it was a prominent trading post, and it is said that 75 colonies were founded by its merchants. Among them were Abydos, Cyzicus and Sinope. In 494 B.C., the city was taken by the Persians; it was recovered by Alexander the Great, but after his time it rapidly declined, yet it continued to exist until long after the Christian era. In the history of early Christianity it plays but a little part. The Meander brings down a considerable amount of sediment which it has deposited at its mouth, naturally altering the coast line. The gulf into which the river flows has thus been nearly filled with the deposit. In the ancient gulf stood a little island called Lade; the island now appears as a mound in the marshy malarial plain, and Palatia, the modern village which stands on the site of Miletus, is 6 miles from the coast. Without taking into account the great changes in the coast line it would be difficult to understand Acts 20:15-21, for in the days of Paul, Ephesus could be reached from Miletus by land only by making a long detour about the head of the gulf. To go directly from one of these cities to the other, one would have been obliged to cross the gulf by boat and then continue by land. This is what Paul's messenger probably did. The direct journey may now be made by land. Miletus has been so ruined that its plan can no longer be made out. Practically the only remaining object of unusual interest is theater, the largest in Asia Minor, which was not built in a hollow of the hillside, as most ancient theaters were, but in the open field.

E. J. Banks

(Miletum, 2 Timothy 4:20), a seaport town and the ancient capital of Ionia, about 36 miles south of Ephesus. On his voyage from Greece to Syria, Paul touched at this port, and delivered that noble and pathetic address to the elders ("presbyters, " ver. 28) of Ephesus recorded in Acts 20:15-35. The site of Miletus is now some 10 miles from the coast. (see EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO.)