| Abydos, Hellespont |
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Information About ™Abydos, Hellespont |
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| thrace | |
| milesian colonies | |
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Abydos was first mentioned in the catague of Trojan allies ('' Iliad '' ii.836). It probably was a Thracian town, as Strabo has it, but was afterwards colonized by Milesians , with the consent of Gyges, King Of Lydia ca. 700 BC. Darius burnt it in 512; here Xerxes crossed the strait on his bridge of boats in 480 B.C. when he invaded Greece . Abydos, a member of the Delian Confederacy , passed to the Achaemenid s, then to Alexander The Great . It is celebrated for the vigorous resistance it made against Philip V Of Macedon in 200 BC ( Polybius 16.29-34), and is famed in myth for the lovers Hero And Leander . It minted coins from the early fifth century BC to the mid-third century AD. The town remained till late Byzantine times the toll station of the Hellespont, its importance being transferred to the Dardanelles , after the building of the "Old Castles" by Sultan Mahommed II (c. 1456). REFERENCES
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