Tavium

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Tavium, or Tavia, was the chief city of the Galatian tribe of Trocmi, one of the three Celtic tribes which migrated from the Danube Valley to Galatia in the 3rd century BCE. Owing to its position on the high roads of commerce was an important trading post. The site was successively occupied by Hittites, Cimmerians, Persians, Celts, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks. At the time of the Roman Empire, Tavium was an important crossroads and a stopping place on the caravan routes.

One of the few things we do know about Tavium was that there was metalworking, because coins have been found that were minted there in the early 1st century bearing the likenesses of Marcus Aurelius and Elagabalus. Copper, tin, iron and silver were mined in the nearby mountains. If we can draw parallels with other Celtic sites of the time, the smelting and stamping was done by a small group of artisans working in one or two stone huts.

In the temple at Tavium there was a colossal statue of Jupiter in bronze, greatly venerated by the Galatians. There was some doubt about the exact site of the city, but it is today generally believed to be the ruins situated close to the village of Nefez Keui (today known as Büyüknefes), inhabited during the winter by nomadic Turkish tribes, lying in a very fertile plain east of Halys in the caza of Songourlou and the vilayet of Ankara.

These ruins were partly used in building the neighbouring village of Yuzgat. We find there the remains of a theatre and possibly of a temple of Jupiter; these have a number of inscriptions, mostly Byzantine. In the Notitiæ Episcopatuum this see is mentioned up to the 13th century as the first suffragan of Ancyra.

he names of five bishops of the area are known: Dicasius, present at the Councils of Neocæsarea and Nice; Julian, at the Robber Synod of Ephesus (449), and at the Council of Chalcedon (451), and a signer of the letter from the Galatian bishops to the Emperor Leo (458); Anastasius, present at the Council of Constantinople (553); Gregory at the Council in Trullo (692); Philaretus at Constantinople (869).

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.