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Abdera was an ancient Carthaginian and Roman port on a hill above the modern Adra on the southeastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

coast of

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. It was located between Malaca (now

Málaga Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...

) and Carthago Nova (now Cartagena) in the district inhabited by the Bastuli.

Name

Abdera shares its name with a city in Thrace and another in North Africa. Its coins bore the inscription (). The first element in the name appears to be the Punic word for "servant" or "slave"; the second element seems shared by the Phoenician names for Gadir (now Cadiz) and Cythera but of unclear meaning. It appears in Greek sources as ''tà Ábdēra'' () and ''Aúdēra'' (), ''Ábdara'' (), and ''tò Ábdēron'' ().

History

Abdera was founded in the 8th century BCE as a Phoenician colony. It became a Carthaginian trading station and, after a period of decline, became one of the more important towns in the Roman

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Hispania Baetica Hispania Baetica, often abbreviated Baetica, was one of three Roman provinces created in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) in 27 BC. Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Tarraconensis. Baetica remained one of ...

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ( ; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was Roman emperor from AD 14 until 37. He succeeded his stepfather Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC to Roman politician Tiberius Cl ...

seems to have made the place a

Roman colony A Roman (: ) was originally a settlement of Roman citizens, establishing a Roman outpost in federated or conquered territory, for the purpose of securing it. Eventually, however, the term came to denote the highest status of a Roman city. It ...

Coins

The most ancient coins bear its name with the head of

Melqart Melqart () was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre and a major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. He may have been central to the founding-myths of various Phoenician colonies throughout the Mediterranean, as well ...

and a

tuna A tuna (: tunas or tuna) is a saltwater fish that belongs to the tribe Thunnini, a subgrouping of the Scombridae ( mackerel) family. The Thunnini comprise 15 species across five genera, the sizes of which vary greatly, ranging from the bul ...

. Coins from the time of Tiberius show the town's main temple with two erect tunas as its columns. Early Roman coins were bilingual with Latin inscriptions on one side stating the name of the emperor and the town and with Punic text on the other side simply stating the name of the town.

Name

History

Coins

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading