Editing Miletus (section)

===Roman period===

After an alliance with Rome, in 133 BC the city became part of the province of Asia.

Miletus benefited from Roman rule and most of the present monuments date to this period.

The [[New Testament]] mentions Miletus as the site where the Apostle [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]] in 57 AD met the elders of the [[Mother Church|church]] of [[Ephesus]] near the close of his Third Missionary Journey, as recorded in [[Acts of the Apostles]] (Acts 20:15–38). It is believed that Paul stopped by the Great Harbour Monument and sat on its steps. He might have met the Ephesian elders there and then bade them farewell on the nearby beach. Miletus is also the city where Paul left [[Trophimus]], one of his travelling companions, to recover from an illness ([[2 Timothy]] 4:20). Because this cannot be the same visit as Acts 20 (in which Trophimus accompanied Paul all the way to Jerusalem, according to Acts 21:29), Paul must have made at least one additional visit to Miletus, perhaps as late as 65 or 66 AD. Paul's previous successful three-year ministry in nearby [[Ephesus]] resulted in the evangelization of the entire province of Asia (see Acts 19:10, 20; [[1 Corinthians]] 16:9). It is safe to assume that at least by the time of the apostle's second visit to Miletus, a fledgling Christian community was established in Miletus.

In 262 new city walls were built.

However the harbour was silting up and the economy was in decline. In 538 emperor [[Justinian]] rebuilt the walls but it had become a small town.