Where was Miletus, where Paul said farewell to the elders of Ephesus?

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Miletus stood on a peninsula near the mouth of the Maeander on the west coast of Asia Minor; its ruins, by the village of Balat in the province of Aydın in Turkey, now lie several kilometres inland, cut off from the sea by the river's silt, and the map point stands on them. Ephesus was about 46 km to the north in a straight line, the island of Patmos about 69 km to the west-south-west, and Jerusalem about 970 km away. About AD 57, hurrying to be in Jerusalem by Pentecost, “Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus”, and the ship put in at Miletus instead: “from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.” The messengers had to go and the elders to come back, so the stop took several days. His address to them is the only speech in Acts that Paul makes to Christians; at its end “they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more.” Second Timothy adds: “Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.” In the archaic age Miletus was one of the richest Greek cities, the mother of colonies around the Black Sea and the home of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes; the Persians took it in 494 BC after the sea battle of Lade. Under Rome it had a Jewish community, and an inscription on the seats of its theatre reserves a place for the Jews and the God-fearers, though its exact wording is read in more than one way. The great theatre and the Baths of Faustina still stand, and the market gate of Miletus was taken to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.