Celetrum or Keletron (Ancient Greek: Κέλετρον) was a town of Orestis in ancient Macedonia, situated on a peninsula which is surrounded by the waters of a lake, and has only a single entrance over a narrow isthmus which connects it with the continent. Celetrum has been identified with the Celaenidium or Kelainidion (Κελαινίδιον) of Hierocles.[1] The town also bore the name of Diocletianopolis or Diokletianoupolis (Διοκλητιανούπολις)[2] and Justinianopolis or Ioustinianoupolis (Ἰουστινιανούπολις).[3]
In the first campaign of the Romans in the Second Macedonian War, in 200 BCE, the consul Sulpicius, after having invested this place, which submitted to him, returned to Dassaretia, and from thence regained Apollonia, the place from which he had departed on this expedition.[4] The position is so remarkable that there is no difficulty in identifying it with the modern town of Kastoria. The lake, which bears the same name, is about six miles long and four broad (10 by 6 km). The peninsula is nearly four miles (6 km) in circumference, and the outer point is not fa6r from the centre of the lake. The later fortification of Kastoria consists only of a wall across the western extremity of the isthmus, which was built in the time of the Byzantine Empire, and has a wet ditch, making the peninsula an island. In the middle of the wall stands a square tower, through which was the only entrance to the town. The ruins of a parallel wall flanked with round towers, which in Byzantine times crossed the peninsula from shore to shore, excluding all the east part of it, in the 19th century divided the Turkish and Greek quarters of the town.
The site of Celetrum is near the modern Kastoria.[5][6]
References
Wesseling apud loc.; William Martin Leake, Northern Greece, vol.iii. p. 330, vol. iv. p. 121.
August Friedrich von Pauly, Georg Wissowa, Paulys real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Band 18. J. B. Metzler, 1980, p. 965. (in German)
Kathimerini, 29 October 2007, part 1. available online here.
Livy. Ab Urbe Condita Libri (History of Rome). 31.40.
Richard Talbert, ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton University Press. p. 49, and directory notes accompanying.
Lund University. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Celetrum". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
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