SINO´RIA
SINO´RIA (
Σινορία,
Strab. xii. p.555), a town on the frontier of Armenia Major, a circumstance which gave rise to a pun of the historian Theophanes who wrote the name
Συνόρια. The place is no doubt the same as the one called Sinorega by Appian (
App. Mith. 101), by Ammianus Marcellinus (
17.7) Synhorium, by Ptolemy (
5.7.2) Sinibra or Sinera, and in the Antonine Itinerary (p. 208) Sinervas.
The pun upon the name made by Theophanes seems to show that the form Sinoria, which Strabo gives, is the correct one.
The town was a fortress built by Mithridates on the frontier between Greater and Lesser Armenia; but assuming that all the different names mentioned above are only varieties or corruptions of one, it is not easy to fix the exact site of the town, for Ptolemy and the Antonine Itinerary place it to the south-west of Satala, on the road from this town to Melitene, and on the Euphrates, while the Table, calling it Sinara, places it 79 miles to the north-east of Satala, on the frontiers of Pontus; but there can be no doubt that the Sinara of the Table is altogether a different place from Sinoria, and the site of the latter place must be sought on the banks of the Euphrates between Satala and Melitene, whence some identify it with
Murad Chai and others with
Semi Beli [
L.S]
