MITYLENE mĭt’ ə lē’ nĭ (Μιτυλήνη, G3639). Sometimes and as correctly, spelled Mytilene. Chief city of the island of Lesbos, the largest of the Gr. islands off the Asia Minor coast. It was situated on the SE coast on a magnificent harbor. Mitylene was populated by Aeolian Greeks and it was in the Aeolic dialect that both Sappho and Alcaeus wrote, in the early 6th cent. b.c., the songs which were the foundation of Gr. lyric poetry. Both poetess and poet lived in Mitylene, and took an ardent part in the city’s stormy politics.

Mitylene had its brief period of local imperialism, during which it clashed with Athens. It fell under Pers. dominance when the great empire flowed W to the shores of the Aegean, and had an ill-starred share in the Ionian cities’ revolt. When Pers. power receded and Athens became dominant in the eastern Aegean, Mitylene found it expedient to join the Delian League, but was an uneasy partner, twice seceding (428 and 419 b.c.), each time with the loss of her ships, her fortifications and considerable territory. In the 4th cent. she was a more steady ally of Athens. After Alexander’s death Mitylene, too weak now for the successful maintenance of independence in a world of emerging great powers, fell successively under the rule of the Gr. states which strove for power in the disrupted borderlands of the western Asiatic coast. At first on good terms with Rome, Mitylene revolted after the Mithridatic War and was broken by the Republic. Pompey restored the city’s freedom in his reorganization of Asia. It has little more history to record. Its capacious harbor always kept Mitylene on the fruitful crossroads of trade (Acts 20:14).