History Globe
town or village
Neapolis
- Today Kavala
History
Neapolis, the "new city", is modern Kavala in eastern Macedonia, on a promontory facing the island of Thasos. It was founded in the archaic period by settlers from Thasos as a harbour on the mainland opposite. Its patron goddess was the Parthenos, the Virgin, whose temple stood on the promontory. In the fifth century BC the town struck its own silver coins and belonged to the Athenian alliance; Pliny lists it on the coast beyond the Strymon, with Philippi inland.
In the last years of the Peloponnesian War Thasos broke with Athens and, with the Peloponnesians, besieged Neapolis, but the town would not revolt. Athenian decrees of 410/409 and about 407 BC praise the Neapolitans for it, and order that a copy be set up in the temple of the Parthenos. When Philip II took the inland town of Crenides, about 15 km away, and renamed it Philippi, Neapolis became its port. In 42 BC, before the battles at Philippi, Brutus and Cassius kept their fleet at Neapolis, and in Roman times the Via Egnatia, the road across the Balkans, came down to the sea here.
Here Paul first landed on the European mainland. After a vision of a man of Macedonia calling him over, he and his companions sailed from Troas "with a straight course to Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis", and went on from there to Philippi. This is the only place in the Bible where Neapolis is named.
About AD 110, by the usual dating, Ignatius of Antioch, taken under guard to Rome, wrote to Polycarp that he had to sail suddenly from Troas to Neapolis, and asked him to write to the churches he had no time to write to himself. In the Byzantine period the town was renamed Christoupolis, "city of Christ", a name first recorded in the ninth century.
Scripture: Acts 16:9–10; Acts 16:11–12
Sources
- Athenian decrees honouring Neapolis, 410/409 and c. 407 BC (IG I³ 101; Attic Inscriptions Online 1176)
- Pliny, Natural History 4.42
- Appian, Civil Wars 4.106
- Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp 8.1
- M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen (eds.), An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004), s.v. Neapolis
- N. G. L. Hammond and G. T. Griffith, A History of Macedonia, vol. 2 (1979)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.
Verses (1)
- Acts 16:11
- Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis;
King James Version