SESTOS
Turkey.
City of the Thracian Chersonese on the Hellespont shore, opposite (due N of)
Abydos and having the advantage over that harbor in
wind and current. Mentioned in Homer's Trojan catalogue (
Il. 2.836). It was claimed by Athens against
Persia and Sparta, often successfully, from ca. 550 B.C.
to the mid 4th c., for the protection of her grain shipments. The city was relatively unimportant in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but later Justinian refortified it (the modern Choiridion castle). The ancient site apparently lay on a plateau ca. 100 m above sea level on the
S side of a good bay. (Ak Baş limani). Sherds, coins,
and some inscriptions have been found.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Hauvette-Besnault,
BCH 4 (1880)
515ff; H. G. Lolling,
AthMitt 6 (1881) 209; W. Leaf,
Strabo on the Troad (1923) 1 17-33
MI; S. Casson,
Macedonia (1926) 216f I.
T. S. MACKAY
