Sestos

Template:Short description Template:Infobox ancient site Sestos (Template:Langx, Template:Langx) was an ancient city in Thrace. It was located at the Thracian Chersonese peninsula on the European coast of the Hellespont, opposite the ancient city of Abydos, and near the town of Eceabat in Turkey.

In Greek mythology, Sestos is presented in the myth of Hero and Leander as the home of Hero.Template:Sfnp

HistoryEdit

Classical periodEdit

File:Thracian Chersonese.svg

The environs of Sestos in Antiquity

Sestos is first mentioned in Homer's Iliad as a Thracian settlement,Template:Sfnp and was allied with Troy during the Trojan War.Template:Sfnp The city was settled by colonists from Lesbos in c. 600 BC.Template:Sfnp In c. 512, Sestos was occupied by the Achaemenid Empire,Template:Sfnp and Darius I ferried across from the city to Asia Minor after his Scythian campaign.Template:Sfnp Alongside Byzantium, Sestos was considered to be one of the foremost Achaemenid ports on the European coast of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.Template:Sfnp In 480, at the onset of the Second Persian invasion of Greece, Xerxes I bridged the Hellespont near Sestos.Template:Sfnp

In 479 BC, after the Greek victory at the Battle of Mycale,Template:Sfnp Sestos was besieged by Athenian forces led by Xanthippus.Template:Sfnp The Greek siege was resisted by a joint force of Persian soldiers and the city's native inhabitants and endured the whole winter, however, food supplies were inadequate as the siege was unexpected, and the city's garrison suffered from famine.Template:Sfnp The garrison subsequently capitulated and the Persian soldiers were imprisoned.Template:Sfnp Artayctes, the Persian governor of Sestos, had escaped, but was captured and crucified.Template:Sfnp However, Athenian influence over Sestos lapsed briefly, according to Plutarch, as Cimon retook the city in a second campaign at some point between 478 and 471.Template:Sfnp

Sestos became a member of the Athenian-led Delian League, and was part of the Hellespontine district.Template:Sfnp The city contributed a phoros of 500 drachmas annually from 446/445 to 435/434, after which Sestos provided 1000 drachmas until 421/420.Template:Sfnp At Sestos, a 10 per cent tax was levied on westbound, non-Athenian, merchant grain ships.Template:Sfnp The city served as a base for the Athenian fleet until it was occupied by Spartan forces led by Lysander in 404, during the Peloponnesian War.Template:Sfnp Sestos' population was briefly expelled and replaced by Spartan settlers, but the city's native inhabitants were permitted to return to the city soon after.Template:Sfnp

During the Corinthian War, Sestos was occupied by Athenian forces led by Conon in 393, and the city came under the control of Ariobarzanes, Satrap of Phrygia.Template:Sfnp In 365, an attack on Sestos by Cotys I, King of Thrace, was repelled with the aid of Timotheus, for which Athens was awarded with Sestos and Krithotai in the same year.Template:Sfnp A cleruchy was established at Sestos in 364,Template:Sfnp but the city was conquered by Cotys I after a surprise attack in 360, and a Thracian garrison was established.Template:Sfnp The Athenian general Chares seized Sestos in 353 and carried out andrapodismos whereby the male population was killed and women and children were enslaved; the city was repopulated by Athenian cleruchs.Template:Sfnp

Hellenistic periodEdit

File:Sestusdecree-BM.JPG

Decree from Sestos during the Hellenistic period in the British Museum

Sestos remained under Athenian control until the Peace of 337 and dissolution of the Second Athenian League, after which Sestos joined the Macedonian-led League of Corinth.Template:Sfnp Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, crossed over from Sestos to Asia Minor in 334 BC.Template:Sfnp After the death of Alexander the Great in 323, the city, alongside other Macedonian dependencies in Thrace, was allocated to Lysimachus as a result of the Partition of Babylon.Template:Sfnp The mint of Sestos was established in c. 300 BC.Template:Sfnp Lysimachus retained control of the city until his death at the battle of Corupedium in 281.Template:Sfnp

The city was seized by Philip V, King of Macedonia, in 200 BC,Template:Sfnp and remained under Macedonian control until the conclusion of the Second Macedonian War in 196 with the Peace of Flamininus, which proclaimed Sestos a free city.Template:Sfnp In 196 BC, during the Roman–Seleucid War, Sestos surrendered to Antiochus III, Megas Basileus of the Seleucid Empire, who refortified the city in 191 in preparation for a Roman attack, only for the city to surrender to Gaius Livius Salinator in 190.Template:Sfnp At the end of the war, the Treaty of Apamea of 188 awarded Sestos to the Kingdom of Pergamon.Template:Sfnp By the end of the Hellenistic period, the offices of gymnasiarch and of ephebarch, with responsibility for the neoi (young) and epheboi (adolescents), are attested at Sestos.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Roman periodEdit

Upon the death of Attalus III, King of Pergamon, in 133 BC, Sestos was annexed to the Roman Republic after Aristonicus, a pretender to the throne, had been defeated.Template:Sfnp The city was mentioned in Ptolemy's Canon Urbium Insignium.Template:Sfnp The mint of Sestos ceased to function in c. 250 AD.Template:Sfnp It is believed that Sestos, with Abydos and Lampsacus, is referred to as one of the "three large capital cities" of the Roman Empire in Weilüe, a 3rd-century AD Chinese text.Template:Sfnp Gaius Julius Solinus in Collectanea rerum memorabilium also makes reference to the city.Template:Sfnp

By late antiquity, the harbour of Sestos had silted up.Template:Sfnp In 447 AD, Sestos was sacked by the Huns.Template:Sfnp The city was damaged by an earthquake during the reign of Emperor Zeno in 478 AD.Template:Sfnp In the 6th century, according to Procopius' De Aedificiis, Emperor Justinian I refortified Sestos.Template:Sfnp

Medieval periodEdit

It is believed that Sestos is referred to as Ṣāṣah in the Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes, an 11th-century Arabic treatise.Template:Sfnp By the 13th century AD, the crossing from Lampsacus to Kallipolis had become more common and largely replaced the crossing from Sestos to Abydos.Template:Sfnp The fortress on the site of Sestos was later named Choiridokastron (pig castle), and was captured by Ottoman Turks led by Süleyman Pasha in 1355.Template:Sfnp According to Enveri's Dusturname, Choiridokastron was the first settlement in Europe to be conquered by the Ottoman Turks, whereas Aşıkpaşazade recorded that the fortress was attacked by Ottoman forces, after the fall of Tzympe.Template:Sfnp