A titular see situated in Phoenicia. Bothrys is the Greek name
of a city founded by Ithobaal, King of Tyre and father of
Jezabel (897-866 B.C.), on the seashore near Cape Lithoprosopon
(Menander, in Josephus "Ant. Jud.", VIII, 13, 2). It is
mentioned by all the ancient geographers, Strabo, Pliny,
Ptolemy, Stephanus Byzantius, Hierocles, etc. The city belonged
to Phoenicia Prima, and became a suffragan of Tyre in the
Patriarchate of Antioch. In 551 it was destroyed by an
earthquake, on which occasion the cape cracked in the very
middle so that quite a large harbor was opened ( Malalas,
Chronogr., XVIII, in P.G., XCVII, 704). Theophanes, relating the
same event (ad an. 543), calls the city Bostrys, which form is
also found elsewhere. Three Greek bishops are known: Porphyrius
in 451, Elias about 512; and Stephen in 553 ( Lequien, II, 827).
According to a Greek "Notitia episcopatuum" , the see still
existed in the tenth century and was then called Petrounion. Its
present Arabic name is Batroun. There are 2,500 in