Cnidus

Cni'dus

(Κνίδος, of unknown etymol.; by the Romans often called Gnidus) is mentioned in 1 Maccabees 15:23, as one of the Greek cities which contained Jewish residents in the second century before the Christian era, and in Ac 27:7, as a harbor which was passed by Paul after leaving Myra, and before running under the lee of Crete. It was a city of great consequence, situated at the extreme southwest of the peninsula (Mela, 1:16, 2) of Doris (Ptolemy, 10:2,10), in Asia Minor, SEE CARIA, on a promontory which projects between the islands of Cos and Rhodes (Pliny, 5:29; see Ac 21:1); in fact, an island, so joined by an artificial causeway to the main land as to form two harbors, one on the north, the other on the south (see Smith's Dict. of Class. Geogr. s.v.). All the remains of Cnidus show that it must have been a city of great magnificence (see Mannert, VI, 3, 234 sq.). Its inhabitants were originally Lacedaemonian colonists (Herod. 1:174). It was celebrated for the worship of Venus, whose famous statue, executed by Praxiteles, stood in one of her three temples there (Strabo, 14, p. 965; Pliny Hist. Nat. 36, 15; Hom. Odyss. 1, 30), and was the birthplace of Etesias and other noted ancients (Pausanias, 1:1, 3). It is now a mere heap of ruins, and the modern name of the promontory is Cape Krio (Clarke's Travels, 3. 261). The place has been fully illustrated by Beaufort (Karamania, p. 81), Hamilton (Researches, 2, 39), and Texiar (Asie Mineure); see also Leake (Northern Greece, 2, 177; Asia Minor, p. 226), with the Drawings in the Ionian Antiquities, published by the Dilettanti Society, and the English Admiralty Charts, Nos. 1533, 1604.