Stagira (ancient city)

Stagira (Greek Στάγειρα Stagira; originally Στάγειρος Stágeiros; alternative name forms Stagira, Stagiros ) was an ancient city on the eastern coast of Halkidiki. Their remains lie at the southeastern edge of the modern village Olymbiada (municipality Aristotelis ) on the Gulf peninsula extending into the Strymonic Liotopi.

The city was founded around 655 BC by Ionian settlers from Andros. The city joined after the Persian wars in which they had been conquered in 480 BC by Xerxes I, the Delian League. In the Peloponnesian War, it therefore first among the allies of Athens, but in 424 BC the citizens decided in the wake of the success of the Spartan commander Brasidas for the transfer to the opposing side. Tried in vain to take the Athenian general Cleon Stagira. In Nikiasfrieden (421 BC), the city was declared independent, but it was tributary to Athens. Later, Stagira was a member of the Federal Chalkidian.

As of Macedon Philip II 349 undertook a campaign against the Chalcidian cities, conquered and he destroyed a fortified place which the historian Diodorus Geira or Zeira calls; presumably there is a typo in the manuscript tradition, Diodorus probably meant Stagira. The capture and destruction of the city is also attested elsewhere.

Stagira was the hometown of the philosopher Aristotle, who was born there in 384 BC. Due to its origin it was Aristotle today in the literature yet familiar epithet " the Stagirite ". He is said to Philip and his son Alexander the Great who, whose teacher he was temporarily led to the reconstruction of the city.

The same place today Stagira is about eight kilometers south-west of it in the interior south of the mountain Stratonikio.

The ancient city was the inspiration for the naming of the 1997 newly created municipality of Stagira - Acanthus ( Dimos Stagira - Acanthou, Δήμος Σταγίρων - Ακάνθου ).