CHERSONESE, THRACIAN

ancient region comprising the modern Gallipoli Peninsula, located on the European side of the Hellespont (the Dardanelles, in modern Turkey). A major wheat-exporting region, it was on the main trade route between Europe and Asia; one of its cities, Sestos, was at the main crossing point of the Hellespont. Aeolians from Lesbos and Ionian Greeks from Miletus founded about 12 cities on the peninsula in the 7th century BC. The Athenian general Miltiades the Elder established a colony there and built a defensive wall across the Bulair Isthmus, at the request of the native Dolonci, who chose him to be their king. Miltiades became tyrant of the Greek cities and founded a dynasty that survived until his nephew Miltiades the Younger abandoned the Chersonese to Darius I of Persia in 493 BC. After the Greco-Persian Wars, Athens enrolled the area into the Delian League in 478 and sent 1,000 additional settlers (cleruchs) there c. 448. Sparta briefly controlled it after the Peloponnesian War (431-404), but it reverted to the Athenians, who sent settlers there in 353. In 338 Athens ceded it to Philip of Macedon. It became part of the Seleucid Empire and was then given to Eumenes II of Pergamum (188) and to the Romans (133), who turned most of the area into ager publicus (state-owned land). Under the emperor Augustus it was imperial property.