Abydus (Çanakkale)
A satellite photo can be found here.
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Abydus (Çanakkale) |
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Abydus was an important Greek city on a promontory (picture) on the southeastern bank of the Hellespont. That it was easy to cross the straits on this place, can already be inferred from the poems of Homer. The town was founded in the seventh century BCE as a colony of Miletus, with permission of a Lydian king, either Gyges or his son Ardys. When Lydia became part of the Achaemenid Empire, Abydus must have been added to the new state as well, because Greeks from the city joined the Ionian revolution against the Achaemenid king Darius I the Great. | |
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The Hellespont between Abydus and Sestus (Eceabat). At this place, the Persian king Xerxes bridged the strait in 480 and crossed from Asia to Europe (text). After his failed attempt to conquer Greece, Abydus joined the Delian League, the Athenian coalition, but during the Delian League, it revolted and joined Sparta, who used Abydus as naval base. The divided Greeks were an easy target for Persia, in 387/386, the town was occupied by Achaemenid troops again. In 334, Alexander the Great used the city as his bridgehead. | |
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In the confusion after the downfall of the Persian Empire, several
Diadochs
occupied the city, but in the end, it became part of the realm of the Seleucids;
their king Antiochus
III the Great refounded the city after it had been sacked by the Macedonian
ruler Philip
V (in 200). Abydus withstood a long Roman siege during the Syrian
War (but the inhabitants were forced to mass suicide), and became part
of the Pergamene Empire in 188, and was given to Rome in 133. It remained
a provincial town.
A satellite photo can be found here. |
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