Caunus

Caunus

(Kaunos).

A titular see of Asia Minor. Kaunos was said to have been founded by Kaunos, son of Miletos and Kyane, on the southern coast of Caria, opposite Rhodes, and was known as Rhodian Peraea, at the foot of Mount Tarbelos. Its acropolis was called Imbros. It exported, chiefly to Rome, highly prized figs. It was the home of the painter Protogenes. The "Synecdemus" of Hierocles and most "Notitiae episcopatuum", as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century, place it in Lycia, as a suffragan of Myra. Four bishops are mentioned by Lequien (I, 981): Basil, who attended the council at Seleucia in 359; Antipater, at Chalcedon in 451; Nicolaus, who subscribed the letter to Emperor Leo in 458; Stephanus at Nicaea in 787. The interesting ruins of the city are half an hour from the modern village of Dalian, in the vilayet of Konia, on the right bank of a little brook, the ancient Kalbis. Among them are a theatre, a large rectangular building that was probably a temple, others of uncertain destination, a Byzantine church, and very curious rock-hewn tombs.

S. PÉTRIDÈS