Paltus

A titular see and suffragan of Seleucia Pieria in Syria Prima. The town was founded by a colony from Arvad or Aradus (Arrianus, Anab. II, xiii, 17). It is located in Syria by Pliny (Hist. Natur., V, xviii) and Ptolemy (V, xiv, 2); Strabo (XV, iii, 2; XVI, ii, 12) places it near the river Badan. When the province of Theodorias was made by Justinian, Paltus became a part of it (Georgii Cyprii Descriptio orbis romani, ed. Gelzer, 45). From the sixth century according to the "Notitia episcopatuum" of Anastasius [Echos d'Orient, X, (1907), 144] it was an autocephalous archdiocese and depended on Antioch; in the tenth century it still existed and its precise limits are known [Echos d'Orient, X (1907), 97]. Le Quien (Oriens christ., II, 799) mentions five of its bishops: Cymatius, friend of St. Athanasius, and Patricius, his successor; Severus (381); Sabbas at the Council of Chalcedon (451); finally John exiled by the Monophysites and reinstated by Emperor Justin I (518). The ruins of Paltus may be seen at Belde at the south of Nahr es-Sin or Nahr el-Melek, the ancient Badan.

S. VAILHÉ.