Chalcedon

Chalcedon, more correctly Calchedon (mod. Kadikeui), an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari. It was a Megarian colony founded on a site so obviously inferior to that which was within view on the opposite shore, that it received from the oracle the name of “the City of the Blind.” In its early history it shared the fortunes of Byzantium, was taken by the satrap Otanes, vacillated long between the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian interests, and was at last bequeathed to the Romans by Attalus III. of Pergamum (133 B.C.). It was partly destroyed by Mithradates, but recovered during the Empire, and in A.D. 451 was the seat of the Fourth General Council. It fell under the repeated attacks of the barbarian hordes who crossed over after having ravaged Byzantium, and furnished an encampment to the Persians under Chosroes, c. 616-626. The Turks used it as a quarry for building materials for Constantinople. The site is now occupied by the village of Kadikeui (“Village of the Judge”), which forms the tenth “cercle” of the municipality of Constantinople. Pop. about 33,000, of whom 8000 are Moslems. There is a large British colony with a church, and also Greek and Armenian churches and schools, and a training college for Roman Catholic Armenians. To the S. are the ruins of Panteichion (mod. Pendik), where Belisarius is said to have lived in retirement.

See J. von Hammer, Constantinopolis (Pesth, 1822); Murray’s Handbook for Constantinople (London, 1900).

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