Tios
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHYW. 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) 266ffMI.
G. E. BEAN