the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Neapolis
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Νέα Πόλις)
Neapolis, ‘the Naples of Macedonia’ (Conybeare-Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed., 1877, i. 339), was the port to which St. Paul, sailing from Troas in answer to the call of the man of Macedonia, directed his course, and he reached it after a quick passage-a straight run (εὐθυδρομήσαμεν, Acts 16:11) before a southerly breeze. Here he first set foot on European soil. Neapolis originally belonged to Thrace (Pliny, Historia Naturalis (Pliny) iv. 18), but it was now in the province of Macedonia (Strabo, vii. fr. [Note: fragment, from.] 33; Ptolemy, iii. 13). Its name, ‘New Town,’ probably implies that it was an old town re-founded and supplied with a fresh colony. Strabo (vii. fr. [Note: fragment, from.] 36) appears to identify it with Daton, which had ‘fruitful plains, a port, streams, dockyards, and valuable gold mines, whence the proverb “A Daton of good things,” like “Piles of Plenty.” ’
The growing importance of Neapolis kept pace with that of Philippi, ten miles inland, which it served as a seaport. During the last stand of the Republicans at Philippi, their galleys were moored off Neapolis (Appian, de Bell. Civ. iv. 106; Dio Cass. xlvii. 35). The ancient city is generally identified with the small Turkish village of Kavallo, which stands on a promontory overlooking a bay of the same name, opposite the island of Thasos. Here many Latin inscriptions have been found, and there are the remains of a great aqueduct.
Literature.-See W. Smith, Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography ii. [1868] 411; W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, 1836, iii. 180; W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 205 ff.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Neapolis'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/n/neapolis.html. 1906-1918.
