Where was Philippi?

Question

Where was Philippi?

Accepted Answer

Philippi lay in eastern Macedonia, in today's northern Greece, on the Via Egnatia at the edge of a marshy plain about 14 km inland from its port Neapolis, modern Kavala, in a straight line. The ruins are an archaeological park near the village of Krinides and were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2016. Philip II of Macedon, Alexander's father, founded the city in 356 BC on the site of the Thasian colony Krenides, to hold the gold mines of Mount Pangaion, and gave it his name. In 42 BC the plain outside the walls saw the battle in which Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar; the victors settled veterans there, and after Actium Octavian refounded it as a Roman colony, which is why Luke calls it “the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony”, and why its magistrates and crowd speak as Romans. Paul came in about AD 50, landing at Neapolis and walking up to the city; on the sabbath he went “out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made” and met Lydia, and after the earthquake in the prison he left for Thessalonica. The church he founded was the first in Europe and the one that supported him; Philippians is addressed to it. Excavations since 1914 have uncovered the forum, the theatre, the Via Egnatia running through the city and the great Byzantine basilicas; a Roman cistern beside the forum is shown as the prison of Paul, without proof.