Encyclopedia > Colophon

  Article Content

Colophon

Colophon was a titular see of Asia Minor. It was one of the twelve Ionian cities, between Lebedos[?] (ruins near Hypsili-Hissar) and Ephesus (Aya-Solouk). The bibliographic colophon (a description of how a published work was produced, or the emblem of a publisher, placed on the title page) was named after this city in ancient Ionia.

In Greek antiquity two sons of Codrus[?], king of Athens, established a colony there. It was the birthplace of the philosopher Xenophanes and the poet Mimnermus. It was destroyed by Lysimachus, one of the successors of Alexander. Notium[?] served as the port, and in the neighbourhood was the village of Clarus, with its famous temple and oracle of Apollo Clarius, where Calchas vied with Mopsus in divinatory science.

The cavalry of Colophon was renowned. Its pine trees supplied a rosin[?] or colophony highly valued for the strings of musical instruments. In Roman times Colophon lost its importance; the name was transferred to the site of Notium, and the latter name disappeared between the Peloponnesian War and the time of Cicero.

The "Notitiae episcopatuum[?]" mentions Colophon or Colophone, as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century, as a suffragan of Ephesus. Lequien (I, 723) gives the names of only four Bishops: St. Sosthenes (I Cor., i, 1) and St. Tychicus (Tit., iii, 12) are merely legendary; Euthalius was present at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and Alexander was alive in 451.

The ruins of the city are at the Castro of Ghiaour-Keui, an insignificant village in the vilayet of Smyrna, caza of Koush-Adasi.


Source: copyedited version of text from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia[?], see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04128d.htm



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
North Lindenhurst, New York

... km² (1.9 mi²). 4.9 km² (1.9 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there are 11,767 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 39.4 ms