Telmessus

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

Titular see in Lycia, suffragan of Myra. Telmessus (or incorrectly Telmissis) was a flourishing city west of Lycia, on a bay of the same name (also called Glaucus sinus). It was famed for its school of diviners, consulted among others by Croesus, prior to declaring war against Cyrus, and by Alexander, when he came to the town after the siege of Halicarnassus. It must not be confounded with a city of the same name in Caria. Telmessus was also called Anastasiopolis in honour of the emperors of that name. Its ruins are located at Makri (1500 inhabitants, half of them Greek), the capital of a caza in the vilayet of Smyrna, and situated upon a rather important harbour. The acropolis is still in existence surrounded by walls erected by the Knights of Rhodes and the Genoese. The ruins include the remains of a theatre and a curious tomb cut in the rock. Makri derives its names from the Macra of the ancients - the Isla Longa of the medieval Italians, which lay at the entrance to the gulf. Le Quien (Oriens Christ., I, 971) mentions two bishops of Telmessus: Hilary (370) and Zenodotus, at the Council of Chalcedon (451). The latter is called "Bishop of the Metropolis of Telmessaei and the Isle of Macra". The "Notitiae episcopatuum" mentions Telmessus among the suffragans of Myra until the tenth century, when it is no longer called Macra; in 1316 mention is made of the See of "Macra and Lybysium". Lybysium or Levissi is about four miles south-west of Makri, and has 3000 inhabitants, nearly all Greeks.

SMITH, Dict. of Greek and Roman Geogr. S.V.; TEXIER, Asie mineure (Paris, 1862), 667-670; CUINET, La Turquie d'Asie (Paris, 1891-4), 333, III, 676 seq.; TOMASCHEK, Zur historischen Topographie von Kleinasien im Mittelalter (Vienna, 1891), 44.

S. PÉTRIDÈS