TIOS
or Tion or Tieion (Filyos) Turkey.
City
in Pontos or Bithynia, 23 km NE of Zonguldak. A Milesian colony at the mouth of the Filyos Çayi, the ancient
Billaios. In the mid 4th c. Tios was a dependency of its
neighbor Herakleia, and was later incorporated by Amastris in the city which she founded under her own name.
Following a period of independence after 280 B.C. Tios
was restored to Herakleia by Nikomedes of Bithynia.
In 189 B.C. it was given to Eumenes of Pergamon, and
after some further vicissitudes was captured by Mithridates VI (Strab. 541). Under Pompey's settlement of the region Tios seems to have acquired some measure of autonomy. The coinage begins in the 4th c. B.C. and
extends to the 3d c. A.D.
Although Strabo (
543) regarded Tios as an undistinguished town, its ruins are considerable; they date, however, after Strabo's time and at present are much overgrown. The acropolis, the original place of settlement, is
on a headland N of the site; it carries a mediaeval fortification based on ancient defense lines; two Hellenic
towers are recognizable. The inhabited town lay below
the acropolis on the S; in the hillside facing W is the
theater, judged in the late 19th c. to be among the best
preserved in Asia Minor. Today this cannot be said, but
parts of the cavea and stage building can still be made
out among the dense overgrowth. To the S of the theater
are the ruins of a rectangular building of regular ashlar,
parts of which still stand to a considerable height. Other
buildings include one with apse and peristyle, in regular
bossed ashlar, with numerous doors. A fragment of an
aqueduct, with three or four arches remaining, extends
towards the shore, where some traces of the ancient harbor are visible. The necropolis spread over the NE slope of the acropolis; the finds were chiefly much damaged sarcophagi.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. F. Ainsworth,
Travels and Researches I (1842) 49-52; W. von Diest,
PM 94 (1889) 73-75; G. Mendel,
BCH 25 (1901) 36-39; E. Kalinka,
JOAI 28 (1933) 53-54, 89-94; L. Robert,
Études Anatoliennes (1937) 266ff
MI.
G. E. BEAN
