Ostracine is a Roman Catholic Titular bishopric and suffragan of Pelusium

Pelusium

Pelusium was a city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, 30 km to the southeast of the modern Port Said. Alternative names include Sena and Per-Amun , Pelousion , Sin , Seyân , and Tell el-Farama...

 in the former (Egyptian) Roman province

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

 of Augustamnica prima

Augustamnica

Augustamnica or Avgoustamnikai was a Roman province of Egypt created during the 5th century and was part of the Diocese of Oriens first and then of the Diocese of Egypt, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 640s...

.

History

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 (Hist. naturalis, V, xiv) places the town sixty-five miles from Pelusium. Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

 (IV, v, 6) locates it in Cassiotis, between Mount Cassius and Rhinocolura. Hierocles

Hierocles (author of Synecdemus)

Hierocles or Hierokles was a Byzantine geographer of the sixth century and the attributed author of the Synecdemus or Synekdemos, which contains a table of administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists of the cities of each...

, George of Cyprus and other geographers always mention it as in Augustamnica

Augustamnica

Augustamnica or Avgoustamnikai was a Roman province of Egypt created during the 5th century and was part of the Diocese of Oriens first and then of the Diocese of Egypt, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 640s...

.

We learn from Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

 ("Bellum Jud.", IV, xi, 5) that Vespasian

Vespasian

Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...

 stopped there with his army on the way from Egypt into Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

; the city then had no ramparts. It received its water from the Delta by a canal. A Roman garrison was stationed there.

Le Quien (Oriens christianus, II, 545) speaks of three bishops, Theoctistus, Serapion and Abraham, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries.

There is in this region, near the sea, a small town called Straki, which probably replaced Ostracine.

Further reading

• Ostracine is mentioned in The Youth of Jesus (Lorber Verlag - Bietigheim) received by the Inner Word by Jakob Lorber during the years 1843 to 1851. The Holy Family went there by the help of the Roman authorities, esp. the governor of Syria Cyrenius, who resided in Tyre at that time and who brought them by his own ship to Ostracine.