(from μητρις, mother, and πόλις, city), the capital of a country or province; or the principal city, and as it were mother of all the rest.

The term metropolis is also applied to archiepiscopal churches, and sometimes to the principal or mother-church of a city. The Roman empire having been divided into 13 dioceses and 120 provinces, each diocese and each province had its metropolis or capital city, where the proconsul had his residence. To this civil division the ecclesiastical was afterwards adapted, and the bishop of the capital city had the direction of affairs, and the pre-eminence over all the bishops of the province. His residence in the metropolis gave him the title of metropolitan. This erection of metropolitans is referred to the end of the third century, and was confirmed by the council of Nice. A metropolitan has the privilege of ordaining his suffragans; and appeals from sentences passed by the suffragans are preferred to the metropolitan.

in Ancient Geography, a town of Arcania, a little to the south of Stratos.—Another, of Lydia; situated between Colophon and Priene, near the Cayster.—A third, of Phrygia; sacred to the mother of the gods, who was here worshipped.—A fourth Metropolis of Etiotis, a district in Thessaly, to the east of Gomphi, and the last town of that district. Metropoleite, the people.