CEA, CIA, or Cos, in Ancient Geography, one of the Cyclades, lying opposite to the promontory of Achaia, called Sunium, and fifty miles in compass. This island is commended by the ancients for its fertility and the richness of its pastures. The first silk stuffs, if Pliny and Solinus are to be credited, were wrought here. Ceos was particularly famous for the excellent figs it produced. It was first peopled by Aristaeus, the son of Apollo and Cyrene, who being grieved for the death of his son Actaeon, retired from Thebes, at the persuasion of his mother, and went over with some Thebans to Ceos, at that time uninhabited. Diodorus Siculus tells us that he retired to the island of Cos; but the ancients, as Servius observes, called both these islands by the name of Cos. Be that as it may, however, the island of Ceos became so populous, that a law prevailed there, commanding all persons upwards of sixty to be poisoned, that others might be able to subsist; so that none above sixty were to be seen in the island, all persons, after they arrived at that age, being obliged either to submit to the law or abandon the country, together with their effects. Ceos had, in former times, four famous cities, Julis, Carthaea, Coressus, and Praeessa. The two latter were, according to Pliny, swallowed up by an earthquake; the other two flourished in Strabo's time. Carthaea stood on a rising ground at the end of a valley, about three miles from the sea. The situation of it agrees with that of the present town of Zea, which gives name to the whole island.