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NEAPOLIS or NEA POLlS (Kavala) Thrace, Greece.

A coastal city, a colony of Thasos, on the site of the modern city of Kavala. It seems to have been founded ca. the middle of the 7th c. B.C. in this very strategic position through which pass the ancient coast road which joins Asia and Europe, and the road which leads from the shore to gold-bearing Mt. Pangaeum and the proverbial land of Datos.

After the flight of the Persians from Greece, Neapolis was a member of the first Athenian League, and from 454-453 B.C. on it is entered in the Athenian Tribute Lists with an unvarying tribute of 1000 drachmai a year. Close ties of friendship and alliance bound the city to Athens, as shown by two Athenian honorary decrees of 410 and 407 B.C. which praise the Neapolitans and give them several privileges in the sanctuary of Parthenos.

Around 350 B.C. Philip II of Macedon, who had captured one after another of the Greek cities in Thrace, took Neapolis also and used it as the harbor for Philippi. At the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.), the harbor of Neapolis was used as a base by the Republican generals, Brutus and Cassius. It kept its importance as a station on the Via Egnati through the Imperial and Early Christian periods.

The remains and known traces of the ancient city are scanty. Of its walls, which probably date to the early 5th c. B.C., a few large sections are preserved, chiefly on the N side of the Kavala peninsula, where the ancient town was, but some also on the E and W. The wall, built of granite blocks of varying sizes, is in places preserved to a height of ca. 2 to 4 m.

Notable was the sanctuary of the patron goddess of Neapolis, the Parthenos, probably a Hellenized figure of the Thracian Artemis Tauropolos or Bendis. An archaistic figure of the goddess is known from a bas-relief on an Athenian decree of 356-355 B.C. (National Museum 1480). Investigation in the area of the sanctuary, which is approximately in the middle of the ancient town in the years 1936-37 and 1959-63, uncovered sacred hearths, building walls, parts of the peribolos or a supporting terrace wall, and deposits of pottery and figurines. In the beginning of the 5th c. B.C. an Ionic peripteral temple built of Thasian marble was constructed in the sanctuary area (column capitals of excellent workmanship and architectural fragments from the temple are in the Kavala Museum). No houses or other buildings have been uncovered. The well-preserved and very impressive aqueduct of the city is the work of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

The pottery found in the excavations comes from the workshops of Asia Minor, Chios, Lesbos, the Cyclades, Attica, Corinth, and Lakonia. Among the most interesting pieces are a “Melian” amphora with representations of Peleus, Thetis, and the Nereids; a Chian krater with a representation of the Chalydonian boar hunt; and an Attic black-figure amphora by the painter Amasis. On the site or in the area of the Parthenon sanctuary three votive inscriptions were found (4th-2d c. B.C.), a marble naiskos-treasury, and a bas-relief of the mid 4th c. B.C. with the representation of a sphinx facing an amphora (Kavala Museum).


BIBLIOGRAPHY

IG I2 108; T. Bakalakis, Νεάπολισ-Χριστούπολισ-Καβάλα, A.E. (1936) Iff; a description of the excavations conducted under state auspices, ΠΑΕ (1937) 59ff; id., Ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς Παρθένου ἐν Νεαπόλει A .E. (1938) 106ff; ΑΔ (1960) 219ff; (1961-62) 235ff; (1963) 257; (1964) 370ff; (1967) 417; P. Collart, Philippes ville de Macédoine (1937) 102ff; J. Pouilloux, Recherches sur l'histoire et les cultes de Thasos I (1954) 109ff and 152ff; D. Lazarides, Νεάπολισ-Χριστούπολισ-Καβάλα, Ὁδηγός Μουσείου Καβάλας (1969).

D. LAZARIDES

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