Tavium

Tavium

A titular see in Galatia Prima, suffragan of Ancyra. Tavium, or Tavia, was the chief city of the Galatian tribe of Trocmi, and owing to its position on the high roads of commerce was an important trading post. There are still extant some of the coins of Marcus Aurelius and Elagabalus. In the temple at Tavium there was a colossal statue of Jupiter in bronze, greatly venerated by the Galatians. There was some doubt about the exact site of the city, but it is today generally believed to be the ruins situated close to the village of Nefez Keui, inhabited during the winter by nomadic Turkish tribes, lying in a very fertile plain east of Halys in the caza of Songourlou and the vilayet of Angora. These ruins were partly used in building the neighbouring village of Yuzgad. We find there the remains of a theatre and possibly of a temple of Jupiter; these have a number of inscriptions, mostly Byzantine. In the "Notitiæ Episcopatuum" this see is mentioned up to the thirteenth century as the first suffragan of Ancyra. We have the names of five bishops: Dicasius, present at the Councils of Neocæsarea and Nice; Julian, at the Robber Synod of Ephesus (449), and at the Council of Chalcedon (451), and a signer of the letter from the Galatian bishops to the Emperor Leo (458); Anastasius, present at the Council of Constantinople (553); Gregory at the Council in Trullo (692); Philaretus at Constantinople (869).

LE QUIEN, Oriens Christ., I, 473; SMITH, Dict. Greek and Roman Geog., s. v.; TEXIER, Asie mineure, 497; PERROT, Exploration archéol. de la Galatie et de la Bithynie (Paris, 1872), 288-93; RAMSAY, Asia Minor, 243; MÜLLER, notes to Ptolemy, ed. DIDOT, I, 853.

S. PÉTRIDÈS.