Archelais
Ἀρχελαΐς
Archelais (Ἀρχελαΐς).
1.
In Cappadocia, and on the Halys, as Pliny states (6.3); a foundation of Archelaus, the last king of Cappadocia, which the emperor Claudius made a Colonia. The site is assumed to be Ak-serai (Hamilton, Researches, vol. ii. p. 230; Lond. Geog. Journ. vol. viii. p. 146); but Ak-serai is not on the Halys, as Leake supposes. Ak-serai is in 38° 20′ N. lat., in an open and well-cultivated valley, through which a small stream called the Beyaz-Su flows into the salt lake of Kochhisar.
Ak-serai, however, agrees very well with the position of Archelais as laid down in the Itineraries, and Pliny may have been misled in supposing the stream on which it stood to be a branch of the Halys. [G.L]
2.
A village built by Archelaus, son of Herod (J. AJ 17.13.1), and not far from Phasaelis (18.2.2) It is placed by the Peutinger Tables 12 M. P. north of Jericho. (Reland, Palaest. p. 576, comp. plate, p. 421.) [E.B.J]
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.