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PELLA

Volume 16 · 287 words · 1815 Edition

in Ancient Geography, a town situated on the confines of Emathia, a district of Macedonia, (Pto- lemy); and therefore Herodotus allots it to Bottiaea, a maritime district on the Sinus Thermaicus. It was the royal residence, situated on an eminence, verging to the south-west, encompassed with unpassable marshes summer and winter: in which, next the town, a citadel like an island rises, placed on a bank or dam, a prodigious work, both supporting the wall and securing it from any hurt by means of the circumfluent water. At a distance, it seems close to the town, but is separated from it by the Ludias, running by the walls, and joined to it by a bridge, (Livy): distant from the sea 10 stadia, the Ludias being so far navigable, (Strabo). Mela calls the town Pelle, though most Greek authors write Pella. The birth-place of Philip, who enlarged it; and after- wards of Alexander, (Strabo, Mela). Continued to be the royal residence down to Perseus, (Livy). Called Pella Colonia, (Pliny); Colonia Julia Augusta, (Coin). It afterwards came to decline, with but few and mean in- habitants, (Lucian). It is now called Ta Παλαιά, the Little Palace, (Holstenius). Pellaeus, both the gentiliti- ous name and the epithet, (Lucian, Juvenal, Martial.) —Another PELLA, (Polybius, Pliny); a town of the Decapolis, on the other side the Jordan; abounding in water, like its cognominal town in Macedonia; built by the Macedonians, (Strabo); by Seleucus, (Eusebius); anciently called Butis, (Stephanus); Apamea, (Strabo); situated 35 miles to the north-east of Gerafa, (Ptolemy). Thither the Christians, just before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, were divinely admonished to fly, (Eusebius). It was the utmost boundary of the Persea, or Transjor- dan country, to the north, (Josephus).