(from μητρίς, mother, and πόλις, city), the capital of a country or a province; or the principal city, and, as it were, the 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 thirteen dioceses, and a hundred and twenty 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; the bishop of the capital city having 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. The erection of metropolitans is referred to the end of the third century; it was confirmed by the council of Nice.