Ostracine

Ostracine

Titular see and suffragan of Pelusium in Augustamnica prima. Pliny (Hist. naturalis, V, xiv) places the town sixty-five miles from Pelusium. Ptolemy (IV, v, 6) locates it in Cassiotis, between Mount Cassius and Rhinocolura. We learn from Josephus ("Bellum Jud.", IV, xi, 5) that Vespasian stopped there with his army on the way from Egypt into Palestine; the city then had no ramparts. It received its water from the Delta by a canal. A Roman garrison was stationed there. Hierocles, George of Cyprus, and other geographers always mention it as in Augustamnica. Le Quien (Oriens christianus, II, 545) speaks of three bishops, Theoctistus, Serapion, and Abraham, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. There is at present in this region, near the sea, a small town called Straki, which probably replaced Ostracine.

AMELINEAU, La Geographie de l'Egypte a l'epoque copte (Paris, 1893), 288.

S. VAILHÉ