Abdera (Greek: Άβδηρα) is a municipality in the Xanthi regional unit of Thrace, Greece. In classical antiquity, it was a major Greek polis on the Thracian coast.
Abdera Άβδηρα | |
|---|---|
 Remains of the ancient city of Abdera. | |
  Abdera Location within the region  | |
| Coordinates: 40°56′N 24°58′E / 40.933°N 24.967°E | |
| Country | Greece |
| Geographic region | Thrace |
| Administrative region | Eastern Macedonia and Thrace |
| Regional unit | Xanthi |
| Government | |
| • Mayor | Georgios Tsitiridis (since 2014) |
| Area | |
• Municipality | 352.0 km2 (135.9 sq mi) |
| • Municipal unit | 162.0 km2 (62.5 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 41 m (135 ft) |
| Population (2021) | |
• Municipality | 17,610 |
| • Density | 50/km2 (130/sq mi) |
| • Municipal unit | 2,799 |
| • Municipal unit density | 17/km2 (45/sq mi) |
| • Community | 1,172 |
| Demonym(s) | Abderite, Abderian |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (EET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+3 (EEST) |
| Vehicle registration | AH |
The ancient polis is to be distinguished from the municipality, which was named in its honor. The polis lay 17 km east-northeast of the mouth of the Nestos River, almost directly opposite the island of Thasos. It was a colony placed in previously unsettled Thracian territory, not then a part of Hellas, during the age of Greek colonization. The city that developed from it became of major importance in ancient Greece. After the 4th century AD it declined, contracted to its acropolis, and was abandoned, never to be reoccupied except by archaeologists.
During the Early Middle Ages, a new settlement emerged near the ancient city. It was called Polystylon (Greek: Πολύστυλον), and later considered as the New Abdera (Greek: Νέα Άβδηρα). In 2011 the modern municipality of Abdera was synoecized from three previous municipalities comprising a number of modern settlements. The ancient site remains in it as a ruin. The municipality of Abdera has 17,610 inhabitants (2021). The seat of the municipality is the town Genisea.
Name
The name Abdera is of Phoenician origin and was shared in antiquity by Abdera, Spain and a town near Carthage in North Africa. It was variously Hellenized as Ἄβδηρα (Ábdēra), Αὔδηρα (Aúdēra),Ἄβδαρα (Ábdara),Ἄβδηρον (Ábdēron), and Ἄβδηρος (Ábdēros), before being Latinized as Abdera.Greek legend attributed the name to an eponymous Abderus who fell nearby and was memorialized by Hercules's founding of a city at the location.
The present-day town is written Avdira (Άβδηρα) and pronounced [ˈavðira] in modern Greek.
History
Antiquity
The Phoenicians apparently began the settlement of Abdera at some point before the mid-7th century and the town long maintained Phoenician standards in its coinage.
The Greek settlement was begun as a failed colony from Klazomenai, traditionally dated to 654 BC. (Evidence in 7th-century-BC Greek pottery tends to support the traditional date but the exact timing remains uncertain.)Herodotus reports that the leader of the colony had been but, within his generation, the Thracians had expelled the colonists. Timesios was subsequently honored as a local protective spirit by the later Abderans from Teos. Others recount various legends about this colony. Plutarch and Aelian relate that Timesios grew insufferable to his colonists because of his desire to do everything by himself; when one of their children let him know how they all really felt, he quit the settlement in disgust; modern scholars have tried to split the difference between the two accounts of early Abdera's failure by giving the latter as the reason for Timesios's having left Klazomenai.
Strabo describes Abdera as "a Thracian city" at the time of Anacreon and the migration of people from Teos to that area. The successful colonisation occurred in 544 BC, when the majority of the people of Teos (including the poet Anacreon) migrated to Abdera to escape the Persian invasion of their homeland. The chief coin type, a griffon, is identical with that of Teos; the rich silver coinage is noted for the beauty and variety of its reverse types.
In 513 and 512 BC, the Persians, under Darius conquered Abdera, by which time the city seems to have become a place of considerable importance, and is mentioned as one of the cities which had the expensive honour of entertaining the great king on his march into Greece. In 492 BC, after the Ionian Revolt, the Persians again conquered Abdera, again under Darius I but led by his general Mardonius. On his flight after the Battle of Salamis, Xerxes stopped at Abdera and acknowledged the hospitality of its inhabitants by presenting them with a tiara and scimitar of gold.Thucydides mentions Abdera as the westernmost limit of the Odrysian kingdom when at its height at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. It later became part of the Delian League and fought on the side of Athens in the Peloponnesian war.
Abdera was a wealthy city, the third richest in the League, due to its status as a prime port for trade with the interior of Thrace and the Odrysian kingdom. In 408 BC, Abdera was reduced under the power of Athens by Thrasybulus, then one of the Athenian generals in that quarter.
A valuable prize, the city was repeatedly sacked: by the Triballi in 376 BC, Philip II of Macedon in 350 BC; later by Lysimachos of Thrace, the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, and again by the Macedonians. In 170 BC the Roman armies and those of Eumenes II of Pergamon besieged and sacked it.
The town seems to have declined in importance after the middle of the 4th century BC. Cicero ridicules the city as a byword for stupidity in his letters to Atticus, writing of a debate in the Senate, "Here was Abdera, but I wasn't silent" ("Hic, Abdera non tacente me"). The Philogelos, a Greek-language joke book compiled in the 4th century AD, has a chapter dedicated to jokes about dumb Abderans. Nevertheless, the city counted among its citizens the philosophers Democritus, Protagoras and Anaxarchus, historian and philosopher Hecataeus of Abdera, and the lyric poet Anacreon. Pliny the Elder speaks of Abdera as being in his time a free city.
Abdera had flourished especially in ancient times mainly for two reasons: because of the large area of their territory and their highly strategic position. The city controlled two great road passages (one of Nestos river and other through the mountains north of Xanthi). Furthermore, from their ports passed the sea road, which from Troas led to the Thracian and then the Macedonian coast.
The ruins of the town may still be seen on Cape Balastra (40°56'1.02"N 24°58'21.81"E); they cover seven small hills, and extend from an eastern to a western harbor; on the southwestern hills are the remains of the medieval settlement of Polystylon (Greek: Πολύστυλον). Since the 9th century, Byzantine Polystylon was an episcopal see, under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan bishop of Philippi. By the end of the 14th century it fell under the Ottoman rule.
Modern
Avdira as a modern administrative unit (community) was established in 1924, and consisted of the villages Avdira, Myrodato (Kalfalar), Pezoula, Giona, Veloni and Mandra, but Myrodato and Mandra became separate communities in 1928. The municipality Avdira was formed in 1997 by the merger of the former communities Avdira, Mandra, Myrodato and Nea Kessani. At the 2011 local government reform it merged with the former municipalities Selero and Vistonida, and the town Genisea became its seat.
The municipality has an area of 352.047 km2, the municipal unit 161.958 km2. The municipal unit Avdira is subdivided into the communities Avdira, Mandra, Myrodato and Nea Kessani. The community Avdira consists of the settlements Avdira, Giona, Lefkippos, Pezoula and Skala.
Landmarks
Landmarks of Abdera include the Archaeological Museum of Abdera, the Kütüklü Baba Tekke, and (also Paralia Avdiron) near the village Lefkippos.
Famous people
- Democritus
- Protagoras
- Hecateus
- Nicaenetus
See also
Notes
- The name of the African town is written Ἄβδειρα (Ábdeira) in Claudius Ptolemy's Geography.
References
Citations
- Municipality of Avdira, Municipal elections – October 2023, Ministry of Interior
- "Αποτελέσματα Απογραφής Πληθυσμού - Κατοικιών 2021, Μόνιμος Πληθυσμός κατά οικισμό" [Results of the 2021 Population - Housing Census, Permanent population by settlement] (in Greek). Hellenic Statistical Authority. 29 March 2024.
- Agelarakis & Agelarakis 2015, p. 11-56.
- "Δ. Αβδήρων". EETAA. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
- Graham (1992), pp. 44–45.
- "Ἄβδειρα". Logeion. University of Chicago. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). . Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
- "Ἄβδηρα". Logeion. University of Chicago. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- "Ἄβδηρος". Logeion. University of Chicago. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ed. Wagner, R. Leipzig: Teubner, 1894; Mythographi Graeci 1, Chapter 2, section 97, line 7ff.
- Hornblower, Simon (1996). "Abdera". The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 1.
- Graham (1992), p. 46.
- Graham (1992), pp. 45–47.
- Strabo. Geographica. Vol. 14.1. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
- Herodotus, i.168.
- "Abdera". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. I: A-Ak - Bayes (15th ed.). Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2010. pp. 19. ISBN 978-1-59339-837-8.
- One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Abdera". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 33. Endnotes:
- Mittheil. d. deutsch. Inst. Athens, xii. (1887), p. 161 (Regel);
- Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, xxxix. 211;
- K. F. Hermann, Ges. Abh. 90-111, 370 ff.
- Herod. vii. 120.
- Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). . Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
- ii. 97.
- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, ed. Vogel, F., Fischer, K.T. (post I. Bekker & L. Dindorf), Leipzig: Teubner, 1:1888; 2:1890; 3:1893; 4–5:1906, Repr. 1964. Book 13, chapter 72, section 2, line 2.
- Diod. xiii. 72.
- Cicero. Epistulae ad Atticum, 4.17.3, 7.7.4.
- The Jests of Hierocles and Philagrius. Translated by Bubb, Charles Clinch. Cleveland: The Rowfant Club. 1920. pp. 50–55.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - N.H. iv. 18.
- D. C. Samsaris, Historical Geography of Western Thrace during the Roman Antiquity (in Greek), Thessaloniki 2005, p. 91-96
- "Κ. Αβδήρων". EETAA. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
- "ΦΕΚ A 87/2010, Kallikratis reform law text" (in Greek). Government Gazette.
- "Population & housing census 2001 (incl. area and average elevation)" (PDF) (in Greek). National Statistical Service of Greece. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-21.
Sources
- Grant, Michael (1986). A Guide to the Ancient World. Michael Grant Publications.
- Agelarakis, Anagnostis; Agelarakis, Argiro (2015). "Αbdera/ Polystylon: A Byzantine Town in Western Thrace in the Context of Historical Developments during the 6th-14th Centuries as Depicted by its Archaeo-Anthropological Record". Byzantina Symmeikta. 25: 11–56. doi:10.12681/byzsym.1159.
- Adak, Mustafa and Thonemann, Peter (2022). Teos and Abdera: Two Cities in Peace and War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
External links
- Stillwell, Richard, ed. (1976). "Abdera, Thrace, Greece". Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites.
- "Abdera". Hellenic Ministry of Culture. 2005. Archived from the original on 2008-02-03.
- Graham, A.J. (1992), "Abdera and Teos", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. CXII, Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, pp. 44–73, doi:10.2307/632152, JSTOR 632152, S2CID 162718165.
Abdera Greek Abdhra is a municipality in the Xanthi regional unit of Thrace Greece In classical antiquity it was a major Greek polis on the Thracian coast Abdera AbdhraMunicipalityRemains of the ancient city of Abdera AbderaLocation within the regionCoordinates 40 56 N 24 58 E 40 933 N 24 967 E 40 933 24 967CountryGreeceGeographic regionThraceAdministrative regionEastern Macedonia and ThraceRegional unitXanthiGovernment MayorGeorgios Tsitiridis since 2014 Area Municipality352 0 km2 135 9 sq mi Municipal unit162 0 km2 62 5 sq mi Elevation41 m 135 ft Population 2021 Municipality17 610 Density50 km2 130 sq mi Municipal unit2 799 Municipal unit density17 km2 45 sq mi Community1 172Demonym s Abderite AbderianTime zoneUTC 2 EET Summer DST UTC 3 EEST Vehicle registrationAH The ancient polis is to be distinguished from the municipality which was named in its honor The polis lay 17 km east northeast of the mouth of the Nestos River almost directly opposite the island of Thasos It was a colony placed in previously unsettled Thracian territory not then a part of Hellas during the age of Greek colonization The city that developed from it became of major importance in ancient Greece After the 4th century AD it declined contracted to its acropolis and was abandoned never to be reoccupied except by archaeologists During the Early Middle Ages a new settlement emerged near the ancient city It was called Polystylon Greek Polystylon and later considered as the New Abdera Greek Nea Abdhra In 2011 the modern municipality of Abdera was synoecized from three previous municipalities comprising a number of modern settlements The ancient site remains in it as a ruin The municipality of Abdera has 17 610 inhabitants 2021 The seat of the municipality is the town Genisea NameThe name Abdera is of Phoenician origin and was shared in antiquity by Abdera Spain and a town near Carthage in North Africa It was variously Hellenized as Ἄbdhra Abdera Aὔdhra Audera Ἄbdara Abdara Ἄbdhron Abderon and Ἄbdhros Abderos before being Latinized as Abdera Greek legend attributed the name to an eponymous Abderus who fell nearby and was memorialized by Hercules s founding of a city at the location The present day town is written Avdira Abdhra and pronounced ˈavdira in modern Greek HistoryAntiquity Location of Abdera and its two successive metropolises Clazomenae and Teos The chief coin type with griffon The Phoenicians apparently began the settlement of Abdera at some point before the mid 7th century and the town long maintained Phoenician standards in its coinage The Greek settlement was begun as a failed colony from Klazomenai traditionally dated to 654 BC Evidence in 7th century BC Greek pottery tends to support the traditional date but the exact timing remains uncertain Herodotus reports that the leader of the colony had been but within his generation the Thracians had expelled the colonists Timesios was subsequently honored as a local protective spirit by the later Abderans from Teos Others recount various legends about this colony Plutarch and Aelian relate that Timesios grew insufferable to his colonists because of his desire to do everything by himself when one of their children let him know how they all really felt he quit the settlement in disgust modern scholars have tried to split the difference between the two accounts of early Abdera s failure by giving the latter as the reason for Timesios s having left Klazomenai Strabo describes Abdera as a Thracian city at the time of Anacreon and the migration of people from Teos to that area The successful colonisation occurred in 544 BC when the majority of the people of Teos including the poet Anacreon migrated to Abdera to escape the Persian invasion of their homeland The chief coin type a griffon is identical with that of Teos the rich silver coinage is noted for the beauty and variety of its reverse types In 513 and 512 BC the Persians under Darius conquered Abdera by which time the city seems to have become a place of considerable importance and is mentioned as one of the cities which had the expensive honour of entertaining the great king on his march into Greece In 492 BC after the Ionian Revolt the Persians again conquered Abdera again under Darius I but led by his general Mardonius On his flight after the Battle of Salamis Xerxes stopped at Abdera and acknowledged the hospitality of its inhabitants by presenting them with a tiara and scimitar of gold Thucydides mentions Abdera as the westernmost limit of the Odrysian kingdom when at its height at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war It later became part of the Delian League and fought on the side of Athens in the Peloponnesian war Abdera was a wealthy city the third richest in the League due to its status as a prime port for trade with the interior of Thrace and the Odrysian kingdom In 408 BC Abdera was reduced under the power of Athens by Thrasybulus then one of the Athenian generals in that quarter A valuable prize the city was repeatedly sacked by the Triballi in 376 BC Philip II of Macedon in 350 BC later by Lysimachos of Thrace the Seleucids the Ptolemies and again by the Macedonians In 170 BC the Roman armies and those of Eumenes II of Pergamon besieged and sacked it The town seems to have declined in importance after the middle of the 4th century BC Cicero ridicules the city as a byword for stupidity in his letters to Atticus writing of a debate in the Senate Here was Abdera but I wasn t silent Hic Abdera non tacente me The Philogelos a Greek language joke book compiled in the 4th century AD has a chapter dedicated to jokes about dumb Abderans Nevertheless the city counted among its citizens the philosophers Democritus Protagoras and Anaxarchus historian and philosopher Hecataeus of Abdera and the lyric poet Anacreon Pliny the Elder speaks of Abdera as being in his time a free city The west gate of classical Abdera Abdera had flourished especially in ancient times mainly for two reasons because of the large area of their territory and their highly strategic position The city controlled two great road passages one of Nestos river and other through the mountains north of Xanthi Furthermore from their ports passed the sea road which from Troas led to the Thracian and then the Macedonian coast The ruins of the town may still be seen on Cape Balastra 40 56 1 02 N 24 58 21 81 E they cover seven small hills and extend from an eastern to a western harbor on the southwestern hills are the remains of the medieval settlement of Polystylon Greek Polystylon Since the 9th century Byzantine Polystylon was an episcopal see under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan bishop of Philippi By the end of the 14th century it fell under the Ottoman rule Modern Avdira as a modern administrative unit community was established in 1924 and consisted of the villages Avdira Myrodato Kalfalar Pezoula Giona Veloni and Mandra but Myrodato and Mandra became separate communities in 1928 The municipality Avdira was formed in 1997 by the merger of the former communities Avdira Mandra Myrodato and Nea Kessani At the 2011 local government reform it merged with the former municipalities Selero and Vistonida and the town Genisea became its seat The municipality has an area of 352 047 km2 the municipal unit 161 958 km2 The municipal unit Avdira is subdivided into the communities Avdira Mandra Myrodato and Nea Kessani The community Avdira consists of the settlements Avdira Giona Lefkippos Pezoula and Skala LandmarksLandmarks of Abdera include the Archaeological Museum of Abdera the Kutuklu Baba Tekke and also Paralia Avdiron near the village Lefkippos Famous peopleDemocritus Protagoras Hecateus NicaenetusSee alsoList of ancient Greek citiesNotesThe name of the African town is written Ἄbdeira Abdeira in Claudius Ptolemy s Geography ReferencesCitations Municipality of Avdira Municipal elections October 2023 Ministry of Interior Apotelesmata Apografhs Plh8ysmoy Katoikiwn 2021 Monimos Plh8ysmos kata oikismo Results of the 2021 Population Housing Census Permanent population by settlement in Greek Hellenic Statistical Authority 29 March 2024 Agelarakis amp Agelarakis 2015 p 11 56 D Abdhrwn EETAA Retrieved 24 July 2022 Graham 1992 pp 44 45 Ἄbdeira Logeion University of Chicago Retrieved 20 November 2019 Smith William ed 1854 1857 Abdera Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography London John Murray Ἄbdhra Logeion University of Chicago Retrieved 20 November 2019 Ἄbdhros Logeion University of Chicago Retrieved 20 November 2019 Pseudo Apollodorus Bibliotheca ed Wagner R Leipzig Teubner 1894 Mythographi Graeci 1 Chapter 2 section 97 line 7ff Hornblower Simon 1996 Abdera The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford Oxford University Press p 1 Graham 1992 p 46 Graham 1992 pp 45 47 Strabo Geographica Vol 14 1 Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon s edition Herodotus i 168 Abdera Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol I A Ak Bayes 15th ed Chicago IL Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc 2010 pp 19 ISBN 978 1 59339 837 8 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Abdera Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 1 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 33 Endnotes Mittheil d deutsch Inst Athens xii 1887 p 161 Regel Mem de l Acad des Inscriptions xxxix 211 K F Hermann Ges Abh 90 111 370 ff Herod vii 120 Smith William ed 1854 1857 Abdera Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography London John Murray ii 97 Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca historica ed Vogel F Fischer K T post I Bekker amp L Dindorf Leipzig Teubner 1 1888 2 1890 3 1893 4 5 1906 Repr 1964 Book 13 chapter 72 section 2 line 2 Diod xiii 72 Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum 4 17 3 7 7 4 The Jests of Hierocles and Philagrius Translated by Bubb Charles Clinch Cleveland The Rowfant Club 1920 pp 50 55 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint date and year link N H iv 18 D C Samsaris Historical Geography of Western Thrace during the Roman Antiquity in Greek Thessaloniki 2005 p 91 96 K Abdhrwn EETAA Retrieved 29 June 2020 FEK A 87 2010 Kallikratis reform law text in Greek Government Gazette Population amp housing census 2001 incl area and average elevation PDF in Greek National Statistical Service of Greece Archived from the original PDF on 2015 09 21 Sources Grant Michael 1986 A Guide to the Ancient World Michael Grant Publications Agelarakis Anagnostis Agelarakis Argiro 2015 Abdera Polystylon A Byzantine Town in Western Thrace in the Context of Historical Developments during the 6th 14th Centuries as Depicted by its Archaeo Anthropological Record Byzantina Symmeikta 25 11 56 doi 10 12681 byzsym 1159 Adak Mustafa and Thonemann Peter 2022 Teos and Abdera Two Cities in Peace and War Oxford Oxford University Press External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Abdera Stillwell Richard ed 1976 Abdera Thrace Greece Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites Abdera Hellenic Ministry of Culture 2005 Archived from the original on 2008 02 03 Graham A J 1992 Abdera and Teos The Journal of Hellenic Studies vol CXII Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies pp 44 73 doi 10 2307 632152 JSTOR 632152 S2CID 162718165
