CORY'ZA. See OZENA.
COS (Gk. K(7.)c, IcO.s. It. S'tanehio, Turk. Istan Hi). One of the Dorian Sporades. off the southwest coast of Asia Minor, now belonging to Turkey. Cos is about 23 miles long. On the southern side of the island, a range of hills ex tends along the coast; the western half of the island is also mountainous. but the eastern por tion north of the jagged ridge of Mount Prion is a fertile plain. producing the grapes which furnish the chief modern exports. In ancient times the island was famous for its perfumes, wines, and silk (probably produced from an inferior variety of worm), from which were woven time trans parent Cohn garments worn by the courtesans of Greece and Rome. There are many mineral springs on the island, which early became an im portant seat of the worship of Asclepius, the god of healing. Cos was the birthplace of the great physician Hippocrates (q.v.). The chief town, Comm, is situated on the northeast coast, on the site of the ancient city, In the centre of the main street is a gigantic palm-tree, said to have stood there before the Christian Era. To the northwest is an old fortress of the Knights of Saint John. The harbor is small, and so filled with mud as to be available only for small boats. The inhabitants are
employed chiefly in agriculture. Cos men tioned in the Mad among the allies of the and the island seems to have been early colonized, perhaps from Thessaly. Later it. was the seat of a Dorian colony, apparently from Epidaurus, and became one of the cities of the Dorian Hexapolis. It was a member of the Athenian League, and in the fourth century B.C. enjoyed a prosperity which seems to have increased under Alexander and his successors. It was the birthplace of Ptolemy Il. Philadelphus, and the home of Philetas, the bucolic poet, who founded on the island a school of which Theocritus (q.v.) was the most distinguished member. Cos was favored by the Romans, and seems to have been little disturbed till the Latin conquest of Constanti nople (A.D. 1204). From that time till its capture by the Turks in 1523, Cos shared the vicissitudes of Rhodes and the neighboring isl ands. Consult: Rayet, .11e'moire sur l'ik de Cos (1876) : Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of ('ox (Oxford, 1S01), the introduction containing a brief history of the island; Herzog, Koische Forsehungem (Leipzig, 1899).