Claudiopolis
- A town in Southern Cappadocia, now Eraklia, Plin. 5, 24, 20, § 85; Amm.14, 8, 2.—
- II A town in Bithynia, prob. the mod. Boli or Bula, Cod. Th. 12, 1, 119.
- —Hence, Claudĭŏpŏlītāni, ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Claudiopolis in Bithynia, Plin. Ep. 10, 39 (48), 5; Traj. ib. 10, 40 (49), 3.
CLAUDIO´POLIS(Κλαυδιόπολις).
1.Ammianus (14.25) mentions Seleucia and Claudiopolis as cities of Cilicia, or of the country drained by the Calycadnus; and Claudiopolis was a colony of Claudius Caesar It is described by Theophanes as situated min a plain between the two Tauri, a description which exactly, corresponds to the position of the basin of the Calycadnus. [CILICIAp. 617.] Claudiopolis may therefore be represented by Mout, which is higher up the valley than Seleucia, and near the junction of the northern and western branches of the Calycadnus. It is also the place to which the pass over the northern Taurus leads from Laranda. (Leake, Asia Minor, pp. 117, 319.) Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.24) mentions a Claudiopolis of Cappadocia, and Ptolemy (Ptol. 5.7) has a Claudiopolis in Cataonia. Both these passages and those of Ammianus and Theophanes are cited by Forbiger to prove that there is a Claudiopolis in Cataonia, though it is manifest that the passage in Ammianus at least can only apply to a town in the valley of the Calycadnus in Cilicia Trachea. The two Tauri of Theophanes might mean the Taurus and Antitaurus. But Hierocles places Claudiopolis in Isauria, a description which cannot apply to the Claudiopolis of Pliny and Ptolemy.
2.A town of. the Trocmi in Galatia; the site is unknown. (Ptol. 5.4.)
3.[BITHYNIUM[G.L]
(Κλαυδιόπολις). (1) A city of Bithynia, previously called Bithynium. It was situated above Tium, in a district named Saloné, celebrated for its excellent pastures and a cheese much esteemed at Rome. Under Theodosius it was made the capital of the province Honorias. Many years after, we learn from Anna Comnena (p. 967) and Leo Diaconus (iv. 9), who describe it as the most wealthy and flourishing city of Galatia, that it was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake, attended with vast loss of life.
(2) A city of Cilicia Trachea, but assigned by Ammianus and Hierocles to Isauria. It was founded by Claudius, the Roman emperor, and was situated in a plain between two summits of Mount Taurus.
In a well-watered plain 80 km N-NW of Seleucea on the Kalykadnos. Named for the emperor, who gave it colonial status, Claudiopolis was first a city and later a bishopric. It was tentatively identified in 1800 with modern Mut by Leake, who noted that “its chief streets and temples and other public buildings may be easily distinguished, and long colonnades and porticos, with the lower parts of the columns in their original places. Pillars of verd-antique, breccia and other marbles, lie half buried in different parts. . . .” The city's identity was confirmed from epigraphic evidence at the end of the 19th c.
Little remains of Claudiopolis, apart from reused building material and inscriptions in Mut and in the walls of the 14th c. (Karamanoğlu) castle at the town's N limit. The theater, with fragments of seating and of the sculpture and column drums of its scaena, may still be recognized to the W, and S of the ancient ramparts (still visible in places as a low mound) is the necropolis with numerous sculptured sarcophagi. Of the latter, one recording the city's name has been removed for safekeeping to the precincts of Lâl Pasha's mosque.
BIBLIOGRAPHYPtol. 5.7.7; Amin. Marc. 14.2.5.
W. M. Leake, Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor (1824) 108, 117; A. C. Headlam, “Ecclesiastical Sites in Isauria (Cilicia Trachea),” Suppl. Papers No. II of the Soc. for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (1893) 23.
M. GOUGH