According to the mid-10th century
De administrando imperio, Soterioupolis was located on the border with
Abasgia, while seal finds attest that it was the capital of a border district or
kleisoura. The
Escorial Taktikon, written in the 970s, mentions a "
strategos of Soterioupolis or Bourzo", and the contemporary
Notitiae Episcopatuum record that it was the seat of an autonomous archbishopric. The site's identification has been disputed:
Alexander Kazhdan in the
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium dismisses the suggestions expressed by various authors for an identification with
Pitsunda or
Sukhumi, and considers Soterioupolis to have been a single site.
Werner Seibt and
Ivan Jordanov, on the other hand, distinguish between the various references of the name, equating the Soterioupolis of the
De administrando imperio with Pitsunda, which in the mid-11th century formed part of a military command with nearby
Anakopia, securing Byzantine presence in coastal Abkhazia and the northwestern Caucasus in general, where Byzantium had commercial and strategic interests. The seat of the
strategos of the
Escorial Taktikon, however, is considered to be located further south, at the fortress Bourzo (identified by
Nicolas Oikonomides and B. Baumgartner with modern
Borçka in Turkey), to which are to be attributed the seals of the
kleisourarches of Soteropolis, as well as the references preserved in the collection of miracles of Saint
Eugenios of Trebizond, according to which the
strategos was a subordinate of the
doux of
Chaldia. == Titular see ==