Limyra

Limyra was a small city in Lycia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, on the Limyrus River, and twenty stadia from the mouth of that river.

It is mentioned by Strabo (XIV, 666), Ptolemy (V, 3, 6) and several Latin authors. Nothing, however, is known of its history except that Gaius Caesar, adopted son of Augustus, died there (Velleius Paterculus, II, 102).

The ruins of Limyra are about 5 km northeast of the town of Finike (ancient Phoenicus) in Antalya Province, Turkey. They consist of a theatre, tombs, sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, Greek and Lycian inscriptions etc. About 3 km east of the site is the Roman Bridge at Limyra, one of the oldest segmental arch bridges of the world.

Ecclesiastical history

Limyra is mentioned in the Notitiæ Episcopatuum down to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a suffragan of the metropolitan of Myra.

Six bishops are known: Diotimus, mentioned by St. Basil (ep. ccxviii); Lupicinus, present at the First Council of Constantinople, 381; Stephen, at the Council of Chalcedon (451); Theodore, at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553; Leo, at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787; Nicephorus, at the so-called Photian Council of Constantinople (879).

It remains a Roman Catholic titular see of the former ecclesiastical province of Lycia.

Source

• "Limyra". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09265a.htm.