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Olynthus was an ancient city of Chalcidice,
built mostly on two flat-topped hills 30–40m in height, in a fertile plain
at the head of the Gulf of Torone, near the neck of the peninsula of Pallene,
about 2.5 kilometers from the sea, and about 60 stadia (c. 9–10
kilometers) from Poteidaea.
History :
Olynthus, son of Heracles, or the river god Strymon, was considered the
mythological founder of the town. The South Hill bore a small Neolithic
settlement; was abandoned during the Bronze Age; and was resettled in the 7th
century. Subsequently, the town was captured by the Bottiaeans, a Thracian
tribe ejected from Macedon by Alexander I. Following the Persian defeat at
Salamis in 480 and with Xerxes having been escorted to the Hellespont by his
general Artabazus, the Persian army spent the winter of the same year in
Thessaly and Macedonia. The Persian authority in the Balkans must have
significantly decreased at the time, which encouraged the inhabitants of the
Pallene peninsula to break away. Suspecting that a revolt against the Great
King was meditated, in order to control the situation, Artabazus captured
Olynthus, which was thought to be disloyal, and killed its inhabitants.
The town had priorly been given to Kritovoulos from Toroni and to a fresh
population consisting of Greeks from the neighboring region of Chalcidice, who
had been exiled by the Macedonians (Herod. viii. 127). Though Herodotus reports
that Artabazus slaughtered them, Boetiaeans continued to live in the area.
Olynthus became a Greek polis, but it remained insignificant (in the
quota-lists of the Delian League it appears as paying on the average 2 talents,
as compared with 6 to 15 paid by Scione, 6 to 15 by Mende, 6 to 12 by Toroni,
and 3 to 6 by Sermylia from 454 to 432).
In 432 King Perdiccas II of Macedon encouraged several nearby coastal towns to
disband and remove their population to Olynthus, preparatory to a revolt to be
led by Potidaea against Athens (Thuc. 1.58). This synoecism was effected,
though against Perdiccas's wishes the contributing cities were preserved. This
increase in population led to the settlement of the North Hill, which was
developed on a Hippodamian grid plan. In 423 Olynthus became the head of a
formal Chalkidian League, occasioned by the synoecism or by the beginning of
the Peloponnesian War and fear of Athenian attack. During the Peloponnesian war
it formed a base for Brasidas in his expedition of
424 and refuge for the citizens of Mende and Poteidaea that had rebelled
against the Athenians (Thu. ii, 70). After the end of the Peloponnesian War the
development of the league was rapid and ended consisting of 32 cities. About
393 we find it concluding an important treaty with Amyntas III of Macedon (the
father of Philip II), and by 382 it had absorbed most of the Greek cities west
of the Strymon, and had even got possession of Pella, the chief city in
Macedon. (Xenophon, Hell. V. 2, 12).
In this year Sparta was induced by an embassy from Acanthus and Apollonia,
which anticipated conquest by the league, to send an expedition against
Olynthus. (Olynthian-Spartan war)After
three years of indecisive warfare Olynthus consented to dissolve the
confederacy (379). It is clear, however, that the dissolution was little more
than formal, as the Chalcidians appear, only a year or two later, among the
members of the Athenian naval confederacy of 378–377. Twenty years later,
in the reign of Philip, the power of Olynthus is asserted by Demosthenes to
have been much greater than before the Spartan expedition. The town itself at
this period is spoken of as a city of the first rank, and the league included
thirty-two cities. When the Social War broke out
between Athens and its allies (357), Olynthus was at first in alliance with
Philip. Subsequently, in alarm at the growth of his power, it concluded an
alliance with Athens. Olynthus made three embassies to Athens, the occasions of
Demosthenes's three Olynthiac Orations. On the third, the Athenians sent
soldiers from among its citizens.
After Philip had deprived Olynthus of the rest of the League, by force and by
the treachery of sympathetic factions, he besieged Olynthus in 348. The siege
was short; he bought Olynthus's two principal citizens, Euthycrates and
Lasthenes, who betrayed the city to him. He then looted and razed the city and
sold its population—including the Athenian garrison—into slavery.
According to the latest researches only a small area of the North Hill was ever
re-occupied, up to 318, before Cassander forced the population to move in his
new city of Cassandreia. Though the city was extinguished, through subsequent
centuries there would be men scattered through the Hellenistic world who were
called Olynthians.
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