Magnesia, an ancient city of Ionia in Asia Minor, situated nearly 10 miles NE. of Miletus in the valley of the Mæander. It was a wealthy and prosperous city until after it fell into the hands of the Romans, in spite of its having been destroyed during the Cimmerian invasion about 660 B.C. Here stood a famous temple to Artemis, the remains of which have been excavated; and here Themistocles, the Athenian patriot and statesman, died (449 B.C.). It was called Magnesia ad Mæandrum, to distinguish it from another, MAGNESIA AD SIPYLUM, which stood on the Hermus, near Mount Sipylus. Beside this town Scipio defeated Antiochus of Syria in 190 B.C. It is now called Manissa, and is a town of 50,000 inhabitants, 41 miles NE. of Smyrna by rail.—The easternmost division of ancient Thessaly in Greece also bore this name.—To one of the places called Magnesia, most probably that in Lydia, we owe the terms magnet, magnetism, magnesia, and apparently also manganese.
Magnesia
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 6: Humber to Malta, p. 796
Source scan(s): p. 0811