City
Melentenis
Eski Malatya · Battalgazi
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Melentenis is a garbled form found nowhere else, probably a slip by the medieval copyist, for the city of Melitene near the Euphrates, whose ruins lie at Eski Malatya in eastern Turkey. The Greek geographer Strabo found no city in the district in his day, only mountain strongholds. Yet its position guarding a river crossing brought the Twelfth Legion, the Thunderbolt Legion, to camp here from AD 70 or 71, and under the emperor Trajan it became a metropolis. Later Justinian fortified it heavily. The map misplaces it, though: in reality the city lay south of the preceding station, Ciaca.