MILE'TUS (Lat., from (1k. M(Xnros, Afifetos). Aneiently the greatest and most flourishing city of Ionia, in Asia Slinor. It was situated on the Lattnic Gulf, at the mouth of the Maluider. and was famous for its woolen Malillfactures and for its extensive trade with the north. The site is said to have been occupied by a Callan town, when the Ionian colonists. under Nelens, seized the place. massacred the men, and told; posses sin of their wives. Though the inhabitants prided themselves on their lonian descent. the names of their tribes show the presems‘ of a foreign element. The city early eame to occupy a eimunanding position in the Greek eommereial world, and established many colonies in the north, as Abydos and Lampsaens. on the Hellespont ; ('yzieus, on the Propontis: Sinope, Istria, Toini, and l'antiearelona on the Mack Sea. Un der the tyrant Thrasybultis it offered so resolute a resistance to the Lydian kings that it was at received into an Aflame on eipial terms. It took a prominent part in the Ionian revolt Ow. 500). and after the battle of Lade was besieged by the Persians, and after a long resistance cap tured and destroyed in me. 494. It seems to have revived after the formation of the Athenian League, and near the close of the Peloponnesian War ventured to revolt and join the Spartans. It also offered some resistance to Alexander, but seems to have declined from that time, though it continued to exist for several centuries. Saint
Paul spent two or three days there on his last journey to .Ie•usalem before his imprisonment at Rome, and delivered his farewell Address to the elders from Ephesus, who visited him at hi. request (Acts xx. 15-xxi. 1). Another visit, referred to in I. Timothy iv. 20, is best placed in a period late• than that covered by the Book of Acts. Miletus has a distinguished place in the history of Greek literature, having been the birth place of the philosophers 'Males, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, and of the historians Cadmus and Beeat;rus. Its harbor is now filled up, and the site is a swampy plain, occupied by the little Turkish village of Palatia. Excavations were begun by the Berlin Museum in 1899, and in spite of great difficulties have determined the course of the ancient walls, some streets, the Bouleuterion and part of the Agora, and other points important for the topography of the city. Preliminary reports are published in the Sitz ungsbcriehte der• -11.-ademie der• Wissenschaft zu Berlin for 1900 et seq. See also the unfinished work of Rayet and Thomas, I/ itel et le Golf Lat inigue (Paris, 1877 et seg.).