BITHY´NIUM
BITHY´NIUM (
Βιθύνιον: Eth.
Βιθυνιεύς, Eth.
Βιθυνιάτης), a city in the interior of Bithynia, lying above Tins, as Strabo (p. 565) describes it, and possessing the country around Salon, which was a good feeding country for cattle, and noted for its cheese. (
Plin. Nat. 11.42;
Steph. B. sub voce Σαλωνεία.) Bithynium was the birthplace of Antinous, the favourite of Hadrian, as Pausanius tells us (8.9), who adds that Bithynium is beyond, by which he probably means east of, the river Sangarius; and he adds that the remotest ancestors of the Bithynians are Arcadians and Mantineis. If this is true, which however does not seem probable, a Greek colony settled here. Bithynium was afterwards Claudiopolis, a name which it is conjectured it first had in the time of Tiberius (Cramer,
Asia Minor, vol. i. p. 210); but it is strange that Pausanias does not mention this name. Dio Cassius (69.11. ed. Reimarus, and his note) speaks of it under the name of Bithynium and Claudiopolis also.
It has been inferred from the words of Pausanias that Bithynium was on or near the Sangarius, but this does not appear to be a correct interpretation. Leake, however, adopts it (
Asia Minor, p. 309); and he concludes from the dubious evidence of Pausanias that, having been originally a Greek colony, it was probably not far from the mouth of the Sangarius.
But this is quite inconsistent with Strabo, who places it in the interior; as Pliny (
5.32) does also.
It seems probable that Claudiopolis was in the basin of the Billaeus; and this seems to agree with Ptolemy's determination of Claudiopolis. [
G.L]
[p. 1.407] 
