Ainos

Enez, ancient "Ainos"

Ancient sources provide various accounts regarding the founding of Enez: it is first mentioned as Ainos by Homer (Iliad IV, 520), who mentions Ainos as a city in Thrace. Likewise, Strabo (VII, 8, 319) agrees with Homer and writes that Ainos was called Poltyobria after Poltys, King of Thrace. Our excavations within the existing citadel on the acropolis yielded sherds dating to the 4" and 3'’ millennia BC, proving that the settlement dates back to the Chalcolithic. However, according to ancient authors and other sources Ainos was first founded by the Aeolians and was later re-founded as a colony of Mytilene and Cyme and developed as a city-state (polis) within the ancient Greek culture. According to some ancient sources, Ainos was founded by Geneus, a friend of Odysseus, and others say that Aeneas founded the city, (Eponoymos). Finds from the excavations and soundings done since 1971 within and outside the citadel, and the 4 Aeolian capitals from the 6(th) century BC that were recovered during construction of a foundation 30 m to the right of the citadel gate, are among the most important clues that supportthe historical sources.

Toward the end of the 6(th) century BC, Ainos passed into the hands of the Persians for a short while after the Scythian campaign of King Darius in 513 BC. In the 5(th) century BC, Xerxes passed to Thrace via the Dardanelles and marched his army into Greece via Ainos. Having been an independent city-state until this date, Ainos joined the Attic-Delian Sea League following the Battle of Salamis (480-479 BC) and paid an annual tax of 12 talents for a while, 10 talents in 439 BC and 4 talents thereafter. Ancient authors inform us that as a member of this league Ainos participated on the side of the Athenians in the Sicilian campaign in 415 BC (Thucydides IV, 28: VI, 57). Ainos regained its independence with the Peace of the King, then entered the Macedonian sovereignty. Ruled by the Ptolemies during the Hellenistic period, Ainos gained its independence back when the Romans conquered Thrace in 190 BC.

In late antiquity, Ainos was the capital of the Rhodope region. In the Middle Ages, however, it was the well-protected center of a principality that included the islands of Samothrace (present-day Semadirek) and Imbros (Gökçeada). In this period, the Genoese families of Gattelusis and Dorias ruled here for two centuries and in 1456 at the time of Mehmet the Conquerer, Has Yunus Bey besieged Ainos from both sea and land, and captured it for the Turks.

http://www.eucmos2008.info/admin/fckeditor/File/ABSTRACTS/POSTER/07/Akyuz%2007%20POSTER.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enez

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