[500] COS ({Kõs}). -- An island off the Carian coast, nearly blocking the entrance to the Ceramic gulf, very fertile (producing ointments, wheat, wines, and, above all, silk), famous for its rich and comfortable country life and the beauty and character of its people, with a city of the same name at its eastern end. It was one of the six Dorian colonies. Its famous temple of Aesculapius was the centre of one of the oldest and greatest medical schools in Greece, adorned especially by the genins of Hippocrates in the 5th century. Amid the busy and frequent trade and intercourse between the Aegean cities and the Syrian and Egypt. coasts, which existed for many centuries after time of Alexander the Great (336 - 321), C., which lay on the path of all ships engaged in that trade, S. of Miletus and Samos, and N. of Rhodes (Ac 21.1; Lucan, viii 243 f.; Livy xxxvii. 16), became a place of great importance and wealth. In the 3rd cent. C. clung closely to the Egypt. kings; but in the [501] 2nd cent. it was a good deal under the influence of caseates', and like it a staunch ally of Rome. It is uncertain whether C. was incorporated in the Rom. province Asia in B.C. 129 along with the rest of Caria (which see) ; it had always the dignity of a free city (see Chios) as a reward for its faithful alliance; and this perhaps implied a position of approximate autonomy until the time of Augustus, when C. became definitely a part of the province (after the death or deposition of the tyrant Nicias). It suffered from earthquakes in B.C. 6, under Pius (A.D. 138 - 161), and in A.D. 554 (Agathias, p. 98, gives a vivid description of the latter). There is a famous plane tree of great size and age in the square of the modern city, declared by tradition to be over 2000 years old.

From its Syrian and Alexandrian trading connexion, C. was one of the great Jewish centres in the Aegean. In B.C. 139 - 138 the Romans wrote to its government in favour of the Jews (1 Mac 15.23; see CARlA). The position of C. naturally made it one of the great banking and financial centres of the E. commercial world; and the treasure of Cleopatra, which Mithridates seized in B.C. 87, is thought by Rayet to have been deposited with the Jewish bankers of C., as certainly were the 800 talents (£192,000) belonging to Jews of Asia Minor, which Mithridates also seized there (Jos. Ant. XIV. vii. 2). In B.C. 49, C. Fannius, governor of the province Asia, wrote to the Coans urging them to observe the decree of the Rom. Senate, 1 and provide for the safe passage of Jewish pilgrims through C. (which lay on their route) to Jerusalem (Jos. Ant. XIV. x. 15). The poet Meleager, who lived in C. in that century, complains that his mistress deserted him for a Jewish lover (Ep. 83, Anthol. Gr. v.160). Herod the Great was a benefactor of the Coans; and the inscription of a statue to his son Herod the Tetrarch has been found at Cos.

FOOTNOTES

LITERATURE.~Strabo, p.657 f. The latest and best account is by Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos; Rayet, Memoire sur l'ile de Kos(extr. des archives des missions iii. 3); Dubois, De Co insula; Ross, Reisen nach Kos, u. s. w., and his Risen auf den griech. Inseln, ii. pp. 86 - 92, iii. pp. 126 - 139, are also useful. A list of other works is given, Paton-Hicks, p. ix.

1 The decree is erroneously termed by some modern authorities an edict of Julius Caesar.